Groups push for polar bear decision

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Environmental groups Monday condemned a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delay its recommendation regarding additional protections for polar bears, saying evidence is overwhelming that their habitat is threatened by global warming.

The groups were quick to claim politics in the postponement to list polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

“Delaying the decision about the polar bear’s status raises suspicions that the Bush Administration is seeking to avoid scrutiny of oil and gas leases in polar bear habitat under the Endangered Species Act,” said Larry Schweiger, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation.

Dale Hall, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said Monday the agency hopes to have a recommendation within weeks so that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne can announce a decision on polar bear listing within a month.

The department has never declared a species threatened or endangered because of climate change, Hall said.

“That’s why this one has been so taxing and challenging to us,” he said.

Schweiger called for postponement of an oil and gas lease sale scheduled next month for the Chukchi Sea, home to one of two of Alaska’s polar bear populations, until after a decision on polar bears is announced.

The Minerals Management Service last week announced it would conduct a Chukchi Sea outer continental shelf petroleum lease sale Feb. 6 on nearly 46,000 square miles of ocean bottom, an area just smaller than the state of Pennsylvania. MMS is another branch of the Interior Department. MMS director Randall Luthi said the sale would allow companies to explore an area with estimated reserves of 15 billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of conventionally recoverable natural gas while protecting coastal resources, including wildlife.

Andrew Wetzler of the National Resource Defense Council said the polar bear listing delay was outrageous and unwarranted.

“Urgent action is required by our government,” he said. “Polar bears’ very existence is already threatened by environmental disaster, and they also face toxic contamination and habitat destruction from oil and gas development.”

Kempthorne in January 2007 proposed listing polar bears as “threatened.” He cited thinning sea ice as a major problem for the animals.

The Endangered Species Act requires a decision one year after a proposal. “Endangered” means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. “Threatened” is one step below, a category that means a species is likely to become endangered. Either listing likely would trigger development restrictions.

Hall said his agency sought additional information for the decision last year. The U.S. Geological Survey in September handed over nine scientific reports. One concluded that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears, including the entire population in Alaska, will be killed off by 2050 because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic.

The Fish and Wildlife Service reopened the comment period to let the public weigh in on the USGS reports and to let Fish and Wildlife officials themselves digest the information to prepare a final report for publication in the Federal Register, Hall said. He did not like missing the deadline, he said.

However, “It is far more important to us to do it right and have it explained properly to the public,” he said.

He said the law prohibits saying which way the agency is leaning for its recommendation.

“We are going to be very diligent about following the science,” he said.

Kassie Siegel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity and the lead author of the petition to list polar bears, said environmental groups will begin legal action when the deadline passes Wednesday. They will file a formal notice to sue as required by the Endangered Species Act, she said.

She’s hoping the polar bear will be listed within 30 days, she said, but no other species has been listed in 607 days, a record. The Bush administration, she said, has established a pattern of having political appointees rewrite scientific conclusions.

The Fish and Wildlife Service in November reversed seven rulings that denied endangered species increased protection. An investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary who resigned in May. Siegel said environmental groups are pushing for a review of another 55 proposed listings that may have been interfered with.

“Over and over again, that’s happened,” Siegel said. “That’s why we’re so concerned.”

The summer of 2007 set a record low for sea ice in the Arctic with just 1.65 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.