"It's not a question of animals being on the endangered species list, we the Inuit people are also on the endangered species list," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a Canadian who is spokeswoman for 150,000 native people spread in the far north of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the easterly tip of the former Soviet Union.

"Climate change is the last straw... this is the beginning of the end of the Inuit culture as we know it."

In a feisty presentation, Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of an NGO called the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, said the Inuit -- previously known as eskimos -- were being driven from their homes by rising global temperatures.

She enumerated a long list of problems that threatened communities who live by the coast and depend on fishing and hunting for seals, venturing out onto sea ice to make their catch.

Almost ignored by people "in the south" who wrote off the polar lands as a frigid wilderness, higher temperatures have caused the traditionally reliable ice season to become shorter but also highly unpredictable, she said.

The result: the sea ice had become thinner during much of the year, making it dangerous for hunters and fishermen, or completely melted away, taking the seals and other prey with it.

"We don't hunt for sport or recreation. Hunters put food on the table. You go to the supermarket, we go on the sea ice," Watt-Cloutier told a press conference on Wednesday.

"Eating what we hunt is at the very core of what it means to be Inuit. When we can no longer hunt on the sea ice, and eat what we hunt, we will no longer exist as a people."

Another problem was that warmer weather melted the permafrost during the late spring and summer, causing a torrential, treacly runoff that eroded cliffs and beaches and prompting some communities to contemplate fleeing to safer locations.

Her organisation had garnered testimonies from Sachs Harbour, a tiny community in Canada's Beaufort Sea, who recounted that the local climate had changed so much that new species of birds, including barn owls and robins, had taken up residence there; there were invasions of mosquitoes during the summer; and the sea had become so warm that the children could bathe there during the hottest weather.

Added to anecdotal evidence is scientific data which says the Arctic polar ice cap is shrinking steadily and, during the northern summer, may eventually be reduced to just a small circle around the North Pole.

It is the first time that the Inuit have mustered the organisational skills and money to make a pitch at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), of which the Milan talks are the ninth in the series.

Watt-Cloutier admitted that it was "daunting" for a tiny, poor, scattered community of just 150,000 to make its case when the planet counted six billion other people.

Paul Crowley, a lawyer who advises Watt-Cloutier's organisation, said the Inuits were mulling a plan to file a case against the United States, the biggest single culprit for the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, under the 1948 American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man.

By winning a case at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which vets the declaration, the Inuit could make headway on getting international recognition for the plight, even though they had little hope of gaining compensation or even a stop to the US pollution, he said.

The UNFCCC is the parent treaty of the Kyoto Protocol, the pact on cutting greenhouse gas emissions that has been abandoned by the United States and now needs ratification by Russia to take effect. The 12-day Milan talks run until Friday.

SPACE.WIRE