By Martha Dixon BBC, Alaska

The new regulations come into force in time for this autumn's hunting season

The mighty brown bear is one of the world's largest land carnivores.

Alaska has a unique brown bear population of 35,000, and holds 98% of the brown bears left in America.

They've survived in this wilderness while in other parts of the world the species has been wiped out by hunting, poaching and the erosion of their habitat.

Mitch Demientieff is a native Athabascan. Swarmed by mosquitoes, we creep through thick undergrowth in the forest in the interior of Alaska.

Everybody needs money these days. We are no exception to that Mitch Demientieff

He's doing what his people have been doing for survival for centuries - hunting for bears.

Like many native Americans, Mitch is classified as a subsistence-level hunter. It means that, by law, he can catch and kill one bear per year for him and his family to eat.

But now, as chairman of the Federal Subsistence Board, he has helped push through a new regulation meaning he and other subsistence hunters can sell on parts of a captured bear in a commercial market.

He says: "We depend on subsistence for food but we have to send our kids to school.

"We are not nomadic any more and we need to be a member of the cash economy in the state of Alaska, the US and the world. Everybody needs money these days. We are no exception to that."

'Growing concerns'

This is bear country. Alaska is a living example of what the lower 48 states were like before the bear population was devastated by the arrival of people.

Many furs are for sale - though not those of brown bears, yet

Poaching is a problem, though, in this vast state which is difficult to police.

Conservationists are worried that protecting bears will be harder still if there are cash incentives to kill them.

Dave Cline of the Kodiak Bear Trust says: "I and others have growing concerns that we can't allow the commercial take of brown bears in such a way that it could lead to the international trafficking of its parts which has gone on unfortunately in other parts of north America and the world.

"That is, killing bears strictly for the sale of their hide, gall bladders, or their claws."

Hunting trophies are popular in Alaskan stores. Across the state all sorts of furs are for sale - including polar bears and wolves. But not brown bears.

The new law means brown bear furs will be on offer and about $300 could get you real brown bear claws instead of fake ones - though the items do have to be made into a native Alaskan art form, like necklaces.

Conservationists worry about the effects of new law on this threatened species

Gus Gillespie from the Alaska Fur Exchange in Anchorage says: "At the moment we sell artificial claws because there's such a demand for them.

"People come in asking for brown bear claws all the time. And I think that if it's legalised there will be a huge market. I think that the fur itself would probably be used for trim in coats."

The bear regulations come into effect this summer in some parts of the state in time for the start of the autumn hunting season.

Subsistence hunters say only the bears already killed for food will be used commercially. But conservationists say the blurring of the lines between subsistence and profit is a worrying trend for this threatened species.