Polar Bear Declared Endangered Species

Original Source: Scientific American

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The U.S. Department of the Interior Wednesday listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, however, made clear several times during a press conference announcing the department's decision that, despite his acknowledgement that the polar bear's sea ice habitat is melting due to global warming, the ESA will not be used as a tool for trying to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for creating climate change.

The decision was based on evidence that sea ice is vital for polar bear survival, that this sea ice habitat has been reduced, and that this process is likely to continue; if something is not done to change this situation, the polar bear will be extinct within 45 years, Kempthorne said. He pointed to computer models he and his colleagues studied that project a 30 percent decline in sea ice by 2050.

U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in Oakland, Calif., on April 29 ordered the Bush administration to stop dragging its feet on the fate of polar bears and decide by May 15 whether declining sea ice in the Arctic threatens their existence. That ruling was a small victory for a coalition of environmentalists?the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace International and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)--which sued to force the Interior Department to decide whether to protect these Arctic predators under the ESA, which it had committed to do by January 9.

Rep. Edward J. Markey (D?Mass.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, accused the Bush administration of not going far enough to protect the polar bear, noting that the Interior Department included exemptions to the decision that do not address the reason the sea ice is melting and allowing oil drilling to continue in a major polar bear habitat. The administration "simultaneously announced a rule aimed at allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic to continue unchecked even in the face of the polar bear's threatened extinction," he said in a statement issued Wednesday. "Essentially, the administration is giving a gift to Big Oil, and short shrift to the polar bear."

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Photos courtesy of Steve Amstrup, U.S.G.S., and Susanne Miller, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service