By a vote of 188-242, House members rejected an amendment to prohibit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from granting any more permits for importing the polar bear parts.
All five Oklahoma members of the House voted against the ban; 68 Democrats joined 174 Republicans to kill it.
Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., offered the amendment to the spending bill that funds the Interior Department. He argued that polar bears are already endangered and the U.S. shouldn't condone hunting them at the same time the Fish and Wildlife Services has proposed designating them as a threatened species.
"We don't want the last polar bears to be heads and skins in dens,” Inslee said.
But Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, argued that Inslee's amendment would actually cut off funds used for conservation and management programs for polar bears.
A permit to import polar bear trophies into the United States carries a $1,000 fee that the Fish and Wildlife Service says is used "to develop and implement cooperative research and management programs to conserve polar bears in Alaska and Russia.”
And Boren, an avid hunter, said during the debate, "This is one step further in the campaign to ban hunting.”
Polar bear hunting in the United States is prohibited except for small numbers of Alaskans who must do so for subsistence.
But Congress amended the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1994 to allow permits for polar bears killed in approved parts of Canada.
Fish and Wildlife Service spokesman Bruce Woods said Wednesday an average 80 bears per year are brought into the United States as trophies.
Boren, who is vice chairman of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, owns an interest in a hunting ranch in Batesville, Texas, that provides deer hunting for a fee. Former Oklahoma Rep. Bill Brewster is a co-owner.
The Senate spending bill for the Interior Department includes the prohibition, inserted by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.
"Trophy hunters shouldn't be able to skirt the spirit of U.S. law by killing polar bears abroad and bringing their heads back across the border to America,” Reed said.
If Reed's amendment survives the full Senate, the issue would have to be resolved during a House-Senate conference committee.
