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© JONATHAN HAYWARD / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES

WINNIPEG, MB - February 8, 2008 - Polar bears in Manitoba now have special protection under the province's Endangered Species Act, a move designed to restrict how close people can come to female bears and their cubs along the Hudson Bay coast, the province said Thursday.

The hunting of polar bears was already banned in Manitoba, but Conservation Minister Stan Struthers said the new designation listing the bears as threatened means tour operators will be limited to how close they can encroach on polar bear dens along the coast from Ontario to Nunavut.

The new rule, which took effect Thursday, covers all bear denning areas outside of parks and wildlife management areas.

"We've done this in an ongoing effort to help the polar bear," Struthers said.

The province took a similar step in 2006 for the woodland caribou.

Many consider polar bears a barometer for climate change, saying their numbers are reduced and their health impaired because of a shorter hunting season on the sea ice.

A three-year study completed in 2006 found there were 935 bears in Manitoba's western Hudson Bay area. A previous count in the mid-1990s found a population of roughly 1,200.

"As far as we can tell, there shouldn't be a negative impact on Manitoba's tourism industry," said John Gunter, general manager of Frontiers North Adventures, one of two companies allowed to offer polar bear tours in the province's wildlife management areas.

Gunter said he doesn't expect the new designation to affect his company's Tundra Buggy tours, which already adhere to Manitoba Conservation permit restrictions.

The buggies travel on frozen lakes and paths created by the military in the 1940s and 1950s, he said, not on the sea ice of the Hudson Bay.

"We were as much interested in this report as everyone else, because it's not in our best interests to kill the goose that laid the golden egg," he said.

News of the designation was heralded by the David Suzuki Foundation, which released a report last winter urging provinces who hadn't listed the polar bear as threatened to do so.

Biodiversity policy analyst Rachel Plotkin said Manitoba has shown "provincial leadership," and wished the federal government would follow suit.

Steve Kearney, director of Manitoba Conservation's northeast region, said he doesn't expect any immediate changes as a result of the designation aside from, "another level of protection of the bears, and with emphasis on habitat."

He said existing tour operators likely won't be affected, but new developments in areas like tourism or mining would have to demonstrate their activities won't affect bears and their habitat, or if so, how they would mitigate the impact. Some areas, like denning areas, will be more restricted than others, he said.

The province is planning to develop a polar bear management plan, said Kearney, who hopes to see a completed plan within a year or two.

In 2002, the province introduced the Polar Bear Protection Act, which regulates the capture, holding and export of live polar bears.

There are also stronger regulations under a new Resource Tourism Operators Act, which established fines and stricter licensing regulations for outfitters and ecotourism operators, some of whom work in these sensitive habitats.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca
lindsey.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca