The bear in the thaw: political inheritances of polar bear conservation and management

• Main Author: Kennedy-Slaney, Liam
• Other Authors: Erickson, Bruce (Environment and Geography), Peyton, Jonathan (Environment and Geography), Thorpe, Jocelyn (Women's and Gender Studies/History)
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Political ecology; Conservation; Animal studies; Wildlife management; Arctic; Canada; inuit; polar bear
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1993/34514

In Canada and abroad, polar bears have historically been framed as imperiled beasts requiring protection from myriad anthropogenic threats. Wildlife conservation professionals, agents of the colonial state and, more recently, the popular media have advanced this discursive framing of the polar bear. However, increasingly Inuit and polar bear hunters are contesting this understanding of the bear. In this thesis, I argue that conservation practices and technologies have played a crucial role in conditioning the way that the polar bear is seen as an object that is best managed by state technocrats. I examine three technologies of polar bear management to advance this argument. These include the polar bear hunting quotas, the conservation reserve, and polar bear monitoring and deterrence programs. Through these examples, I show that the polar bear is remade through management as either a risk to be managed or a resource to be optimized. Under both of these outcomes, the polar bear management entrenches settler colonial power structures and produces arctic geographies that fulfill technocratic management schemes. February 2020