NYT: Russia, US cooperating on polar bear CITES protection effort

A report in today's New York Times indicates that Russia and the United States are cooperating in an attempt to convince fellow signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora to ban international commerce in polar bear body parts.

The two nations will attempt to convince Canada, Denmark, or Norway to go along with the idea at this week's CITES conference in Bangkok, Thailand.

Those five nations are the most important participants in the debate over how to handle trade in polar bear skin and fur because polar bears have habitat within their borders.

A previous effort to afford polar bears the protection sought by the U.S. and Russia failed in at  a prior CITES meeting in 2010.