An auction has been held in Las Vegas to sell the chance to hunt polar bears in the Canadian Arctic, with part of the money raised going towards fighting a trophy hunting ban in the UK.

Safari Club International, which describes itself as a group that will "advocate, preserve and protect the rights of all hunters" as well as promoting "safe, legal and ethical hunting and related activities", sold the hunting trip for $65,000 on Friday. The trip, which comes with a personalized souvenir book, lets the winner stalk and hunt a member of the endangered species, and "take" the animal with a rifle.

The auctioneers note that the "Current law forbids the importation of hides and skulls of both polar bear and Atlantic walrus into the USA or Mexico," but adds that the auctioneers, Canada North Outfitting, will help arrange the storage of trophies.

Polar bears are protected by the US Marine Mammal Protection Act and have been listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act in the US since 2008, which banned sport-hunted polar bear trophies from being brought into the US.

The UK government recently announced that it would ban trophy hunters from bringing the body parts of 7,000 species into the country, a move which Safari Club International sees as a threat to global conservation. It claims that the money raised by selling off hunting licenses helps preserve the species. Some scientists and conservationists have also spoken in favor of regulated trophy hunting, arguing there is compelling evidence that regulated hunting has seen "more land...conserved than under National Parks," while poorly managed trophy hunting — or areas where it is entirely unregulated — have seen dramatic declines in local populations.

"Although there is considerable room for improvement, including in governance, management, and transparency of funding flows and community benefits, the IUCN calls for multiple steps to be taken before decisions are made that restrict or end trophy hunting programs," a group of 130 international scientists wrote in 2019.

"Some people find trophy hunting repugnant (including many of us), but conservation policy that is not based on science threatens habitat and biodiversity and risks disempowering and impoverishing rural communities."

However, Safari Club International has come under particular criticism for its record book, where hunters can submit their score and method of kill for any species and gain a ranking. For lions, the bigger the skull of the hunted animal, the better the score.

"By taking out the elephants with the biggest tusks, the lions with the biggest manes, they're affecting the gene pool, and you get more and more elephants with smaller tusks. You get more males that are tuskless. You get lions with smaller manes," primatologist and anthropologist Dr Jane Goodall said in an interview with Channel 4 News in the UK.

"So you're definitely altering the genetics of the different species. And the long-term effect of that? I couldn't begin to tell you."

A study in 2016 and another in 2021 found poaching elephants for ivory in Mozambique triggered female elephants to rapidly evolve being tuskless. 

It's also unclear how the "no alternative for funding" argument holds up in the Canadian Arctic, where, for example, tours to see the endangered bears could be used to raise comparable sums of money. 

British comedian Ricky Gervais, who supports the ban on the import of trophies into the UK, told The Mirror that the trophy hunters are "sadists", and particularly criticized funds being used to fight the ban. 

“They are doing it to raise funds to thwart democracy in Britain – everyone here wants to ban this trade," he said. "They are going to blast this poor creature to bits so someone can get an adrenaline rush and pay slick lobbyists to spin their web of deceit.”

“We’re seeing polar bear numbers edging towards extinction. But they still think it’s OK to shoot them for a laugh. What planet are they on?" he added.