Polar Bears finally on the endangered list

by Janet Ritz

Cross-posted on Reuters

After months of delay following the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recommendation to place the polar bear on the endangered list (a delay that included Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne's failure to appear at a Senate hearing and a final order from a federal judge), the government finally listed the polar bear as threatened today:

“While the legal standards under the ESA [Endangered Species Act] compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says in a statement.

"Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective. That is why I am taking administrative and regulatory action to make certain the ESA isn’t abused to make global warming policies.”

The move requires the government to protect the species and to take measures to help the bears survive, an important consideration and the likely reason for the delay, as this is the first time a species has been listed due to climate change.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmentalist groups that sued the government to force the decision has said they will fight to for regulations on emissions that they cite as the causal relationship to the melting ice that is harming the bears.

"This is a profound acknowledgment of the threat not only to polar bears but to the entire Arctic ecosystem," said Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It is going to provide important protection for polar bear populations."

Dirk Kempthorne's response made it clear that he did not want to see this decision lead to a broader effort to curtail global warming...

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Judge orders Interior Dept to decide Polar Bear's fate

by Janet Ritz,

Stormchaser John and
The Environmentalist Staff

Cross-posted on Reuters

A judge in Oakland, CA, has ordered the U.S. Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether to list the polar bear as an endangered species due to climate change. This comes after the Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, failed to appear at a Senate hearing on the status of the polar bear.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with conservation groups that the department missed a Jan. 9 deadline for a decision. She rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered it to act by May 15.

"The science is perfectly clear. There's no dispute. The Polar Bear is an endangered species," Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead author of the petition submitted in 2005, said.

The Interior Department has refused to make a decision after a proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in December 2006, to list the Polar Bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of Arctic sea ice due to climate change.

Since the proposal, the sea ice has retreated at a record rate, further reducing the Polar Bears' ability to survive, as they require the sea ice to hunt and feed. There have also been reports of Polar Bears drowning in attempts to reach ice. In addition, scientists monitoring the bears have noted a marked decrease in weight of both adult and their young, an unsustainable trend with such a large animal.

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030

The order from the judge is not a victory, as the Interior Department could refuse to list the Polar Bear as endangered. Contraindicated by science, the politic pressure from the right to keep the Polar Bear off the list ties to the efforts to obtain oil rights in Alaska and the concern that the listing will grow beyond the arctic region to include other threatened species. The action was brought by several groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club...

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