Senate works to bring dead polar bears into the U.S.

Martin LopatkaThis is what a polar bear looks like, in case you don’t own a dead one.

Here is what the Senate is debating today. From NBC News:

Sportsmen might soon have more access to federal lands and be able to bring home as trophies 41 polar bears killed in Canada before the government started protecting the animals as a threatened species. …

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The polar bear provision would allow the 41 hunters — two from the home state of Montana Sen. Jon Tester, the Democratic sponsor of the bill — who killed polar bears in Canada just before a 2008 ban on polar bear trophy imports took effect to bring the bears’ bodies across the border. The hunters involved were not able to bring the trophies home before the Fish and Wildlife Services listed them as a threatened species. …

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Tester said it would just allow a few people who have polar bear trophies stored in Canada to finally bring them home. “These polar bears are dead, they are in cold storage and we know exactly who they are,” he said when the bill first came to the floor in September.

It is expected that Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) will vote for the bill, given his long-standing enthusiasm for killing polar bears.