Shownotes
Subscribe to Chrysalis at https://www.johnfiege.earth/
Show notes: https://www.johnfiege.earth/25-abraham-joffe-the-polar-bear-trade
Listen to Chrysalis on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Captivate.
Why is there an international trade in polar bear body parts, despite their iconic status as a symbol of climate change?
More than any other animal, the polar bear is an icon of climate change.
Considering this iconic status, you might be surprised to learn that there is an international trade in polar bears.
In the early days of talking about the greenhouse effect, scientists and activists had a hard time getting the public to care about the abstract, seemingly far-off threat of climate change.
Polar bears, however, offered a story and a powerful visual to help the pubic understand the possible consequences of a changing climate.
The diet of a polar bear is composed almost exclusively of seals, and they hunt those seals almost entirely on the sea ice in the Arctic. As the climate warms and the Arctic sea ice disappears, polar bears have much less habitat to hunt seals.
Scientists in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s began to document the loss of sea ice and eventually its impact on polar bears. By the late 1990s, polar bears began to appear in the media as symbols of climate change. The iconic status of these charismatic, fuzzy, white teddy-bear-like animals, and their extraordinarily adorable cubs, achieved new heights in 2006, when the Academy Award-winning Al Gore climate change documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, used polar bears in their graphics as a symbol for the threat of climate change.
In 2008, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service listed polar bears under the Endangered Species Act, making the polar bear the first animal listed soley due to the threat of climate change. Despite arguments from some scientists and activists that the polar bear deserved an endangered listing, the highest level of protection, due to the dire prospects for sea ice, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under George W. Bush decided to list polar bears only as threatened, one level below endangered.
Over the years, there has been a lot of debate about whether the polar bear should have been used as the symbol of climate change. The criticism is largely that polar bears and the Arctic can seem far away and unrelated to people's lives and the immediate threats of climate change to people all over the world. Polar bears, critics argued, were not the best symbol for mobilizing the public to demand an immediate reduction of carbon emissions.
Regardless of whether polar bears were an effective icon of climate change, the fact is that their future in the wild is in grave danger.
The lowest levels of sea ice in the Arctic typically occur in September, and the largest global climate models predict that the Arctic will be practically free of sea ice in September by 2050, if not before.
It is on the context that the Australlian flimmaker, Abraham Joffw, has released his film about the global trade in polar bears, called Trade Secret. I was shocked to hear that a trade in polar bears even exists, as was Abraham when he forst learned of it. Some of the trade is illegal, but much of it is legal, and there are countires and other powerful players fighting to keep the trade open.
Taking joy or profit in buying or selling the body parts of endangered animals seems to plumb the depths of depravity, but sadly it's a reality; and Abraham's film brings this story to light in a captivating way.
I saw Trade Secret last fall during Climate Week in New York City, at the Climate Film Festival, where my film Raising Aniya was also screening. Soon after the screening, Abraham sat down with me to discuss how he found this story and the epic journey to make the film.
I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis. You can subscribe at johnfiege.earth, where you will also find show notes and all episodes of the podcast, plus my writing, photographs, and films.
Here is Abraham Joffe.
Notes and Media Recommendations:
- An Accidental Icon
- https://polarbearsinternational.org/news-media/articles/polar-bear-climage-change-icon
- Why Polar Bears Became an Icon of Climate Change
- https://www.earth.com/news/polar-bears-climate-change-2/
- Bearing Witness? Polar Bears as Icons for Climate Change Communication in National Geographic
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17524032.2018.1435557
- Why the Climate Movement doesn't Talk About Polar Bears Anymore
- https://grist.org/culture/climate-change-polar-bears-symbol-history/
- The Polar Bear as a Climate Icon
- https://polarbearsinternational.org/news-media/articles/polar-bear-as-a-climate-icon
- Why Polar Bears are no Longer the Poster Image of Climate Change
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231113-climate-change-why-photos-of-polar-bears-dont-work
- The polar bear became an 'accidental icon' of climate change. Is it time to rethink that?
- https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whatonearth/retire-polar-bear-as-climate-icon-1.6555579
- The Big Meltdown
- https://time.com/archive/6742122/the-big-meltdown/
- Arctic Meltdown, TIME Magazine, September 4, 2000
- https://content.time.com/time/covers/europe/0,16641,20000904,00.html
- Move over, polar bears: Climate change has a new symbol
- https://grist.org/article/move-over-polar-bears-climate-change-has-a-new-symbol/
- Polar bears
- https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear/
- Polar Bears: Listing Under the Endangered Species Act
- https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33941.html
- Polar Bear Designation Under the U.S. Endangered Species Act
- https://toolkit.climate.gov/case-study/polar-bear-designation-under-us-endangered-species-act
- Court Upholds Endangered Species Act Protection for Polar Bears
- https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/court-upholds-endangered-species-act-protection-polar-bears
- The Polar Bear as a Climate Icon
- https://polarjournal.net/the-polar-bear-as-a-climate-icon/
- Arctic Sea Ice Minimum Extent - Earth Indicator
- https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/arctic-sea-ice-minimum-extent/#:~:text=Key%20Takeaway:,decade%20due%20to%20warmer%20temperatures.
- Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph
- https://nsidc.org/sea-ice-today/sea-ice-tools/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph
- Sea Ice
- https://arctic.noaa.gov/report-card/report-card-2025/sea-ice-2025/
- Predicting the Future of Arctic Ice
- https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/arctic-ice-study#:~:text=One%20set%20of%20projections%20from,the%20global%20climate%20model%20systems.%E2%80%9D
- Simulations suggest ice-free Arctic summers by 2050
- https://climate.esa.int/nl/projecten/sea-ice/news-and-events/news/simulations-suggest-ice-free-arctic-summers-2050/
- Arctic Sea Ice in CMIP6
- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2019GL086749
- Why has the Arctic sea ice minimum not set a new record in over 10 years?
- https://polarbearsinternational.org/news-media/articles/why-has-the-arctic-sea-ice-minimum-not-set-a-new-record-in-over-10-years
- Untitled Film Works
- https://untitledfilmworks.com.au/
Credits
This episode was edited by Isabella Fleming. Music is by Daniel Rodríguez Vivas. Mixing is by Morgan Honaker.