Center for Biological Diversity

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Photos - By permission from Center for Biological Diversity

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Polar Bear Habitat Receives Record Number of Bids

Polar Bear Habitat Receives Record Number of Bids

Lawsuit to Stop Sell-off of Millions of Acres of Polar Bear Habitat



On January 31 the Center for Biological Diversity and allies took the Bush administration to court over its plan to sell 30 million acres of prime polar bear habitat for oil and gas development in the Chukchi Sea. The action comes in response to the administration's fast-tracking of oil lease sales as it delays a final Endangered Species Act listing decision for the polar bear.



The lawsuit maintains that the administration violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act in approving the oil lease sales off Alaska's coast in the Chukchi Sea.


Read more in CNSnews below




By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 06, 2008

Royal Dutch Shell was the highest bidder for leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast. The federal Minerals Management Service will take about 90 days to review bids.

The Minerals Management Service received a record number of bids for oil and gas exploration in the Chukchi Sea on Wednesday, land that is home to 20 percent of the world's polar bears.

Environmental groups have challenged the sale. They say the Bush administration delayed classifying the polar bear as an endangered species until the sale could be completed. The official deadline for classification was Jan. 9, 2008, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to make a decision.


Robin Cacy, public affairs officer for the Minerals Management Service, told Cybercast News Service that the lease received 667 bids and the final lessee will be announced by 3 p.m. Alaska Standard Time.

"Companies have expressed a great deal of interest in the Chukchi Sea area," she said. "The area has got the potential for a large number of reserves for oil and gas, and I believe industry is interested in looking for that resource for the nation," she said.

Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) told Cybercast News Service: "The domestic oil and natural gas this region can provide for the American people is significant. With an estimated 15 billion barrels of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the Chukchi lease sale has the potential of significantly reducing our growing dependence on foreign sources of energy from the Middle East and Venezuela."

"This significant source of domestic energy has justifiably received an extremely large amount of interest with a record number of bids being submitted to the Minerals Management Service for an Alaskan OCS sale," he said.

"The administration has taken a significant step toward helping our nation address the national security problems associated with an over-reliance on foreign governments for energy, and this will provide a major stimulus to our national economy," Young added.

Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, however, said, "The companies that are bidding are on notice that we believe the sale is being conducted illegally because a lawsuit has been filed challenging that sale."

She told Cybercast News Service that her organization filed a lawsuit last week to contest the sale.

"We don't think they should have held the sale," she said. "We don't think the sale should go forward until they fully analyze the environmental impacts, and that hasn't been done.

"Once they hold the sale it's very likely that changing their minds will involve a very expensive buyout by the taxpayers, and there is no reason for that," said Siegel. "There is no legal deadline for the sale, but there is a legal deadline for the polar bear finding, and they are missing that deadline."

Cacy, however, noted that the litigation could not change results of the sale.

"Selling off our natural heritage to the highest bidder is a sad spectacle and represents a step backwards in our efforts to save the irreplaceable Arctic and the magnificent polar bears for future generations," said Carter Roberts, president and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in a statement.

"We already know the future of the polar bear in the arctic is tenuous due to global warming," said Margaret Williams, WWF's director of the Bering Sea Program.




Cybercast News Service. "There is a concerted attempt to block all new oil production. I think it's promising that they've actually been able to push this one through. I think it's important that they keep opening up these offshore places until Congress opens up ANWR," the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.




Photos by Urso Branco

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Northern oil drilling will hurt polar bears

Two polar bears on a chunk of ice in the arctic.
(AP / Dan Crosbie / Canadian Ice Service)

Northern oil drilling will hurt polar bears: WWF

Thu. Feb. 7 2008 - CTV.ca News Staff

Canada's decision to open bidding for the rights to drill in the northern Beaufort Sea will destroy a large area of critical polar bear habitat and put the animal's future in danger, the World Wildlife Foundation said Thursday.




"These are areas where polar bears and bowhead whales and beluga whales and who knows what else call home," Dr. Peter Ewins, WWF Canada's director, told CTV.ca on Thursday. "Clearly these areas are important, perhaps critical, habitat for the pressured polar bears."

The rights to oil and gas exploration on more than 2.9 million acres of continental shelf in the Beaufort Sea, north of the Yukon and Northwest Territories, were recently offered up by the Canadian government. Bids will be accepted until June 2, when the rights will be issued.

On Wednesday, the U.S. government began selling similar property in Alaska. More than $2.6 billion was offered for the purchase of 2.7 million acres of the continental shelf in the Chukchi Sea. In the next few days, the U.S. is expected to decide whether to add polar bears to its Endangered Species Act -- a decision Ewins said was postponed in order to give the U.S. government time to sell more land.

Ewins said the Beaufort and Chukchi seas are the "last conventional oil and gas frontiers" left for development.The governments are rushing to open oil drilling now because they will not be allowed to if the polar bear is declared endangered, he said. "They're trying to sneak in as many of these oil and gas sales as possible before the polar bear gets listed as threatened," he said.

If the polar bear is listed as threatened, the onus would be on a developer to ensure their actions do not interfere with the animal's habitat. With polar bears on the verge of being placed on the endangered species list, Ewins said this could be the tipping point.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada is currently assessing the animal's status and will announce its decision in April. If they deem it a threatened species, Species at Risk will have a 180-day window to develop recovery plans. Those plans could include habitat protection in the Beaufort Sea.

Ewins said it would be too late to stop any sales completed on June 2 -- possibly worth more than $2 billion to the federal government. "It's great if you're the finance minister, but not so good if you're interested in polar bears, like most Canadians are," he said.

Critics say the government should wait for reports on the polar bear's health before letting gas companies into their habitat. Meanwhile, Manitoba declared that the polar bear was an endangered species in the province on Thursday. Conservation Minister Stan Struthers said Manitoba's government would protect polar bear habitat in the province and continue combat climate change. "We must continue to take action to protect one of our province's most unique species which is clearly being affected by climate change," said Struthers.

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Greenpeace Polar bear paddle boat protest

Greenpeace activist Tom Wetterer
dressed in polar bear costume
is arrested by outside the US Department of the Interior.

Bush Administration delaying listing as endangered

01 February 2008

Washington, DC, United States — What's a polar bear to do? Your ice is melting, politicians won't listen, and the government is dragging its feet about listing you as endangered... Off to Washington, to start your own floating vigil! Uh oh, here comes the fuzz.

OK, it was one of our activists in a costume - peacefully protesting the Bush Administration's delay in issuing a final Endangered Species Act listing for the polar bear due to global warming. Yesterday, the activist, dressed in a polar bear suit, sat quietly in a paddleboat in a park pond in front of the Department of Interior. (Until the police took him to jail, where he remains as of writing.)




Full steam ahead for new oil

While the Department of Interior is dragging their feet on protecting polar bears, they are moving full steam ahead on plans to drill for oil in prime polar bear habitat. New oil leases are opening up in the Chukchi Sea and oil companies are lining up quickly to obtain licenses to drill. A fifth of the remaining Arctic polar bears depend on Chukchi Sea ice in their hunt for food.

In December of 2005, Greenpeace and two other conservation groups sued the Bush administration when it missed its first legal deadline to respond to the petition for an endangered species listing. On December 27, 2006, the Service announced its proposal to list the species as "threatened" and had one year to make a final listing decision. The legal deadline for doing so was January 9, 2008.

Every week it seems there is new evidence that the sea ice is melting and that the polar bear’s habitat is disappearing. The US Geological Survey released a report this past September predicting that if current warming projections continue, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will likely be extinct by 2050, including all of the polar bears in Alaska. With a timeline like that, it is hard to understand how the polar bears aren’t already protected.

Why Listing is So Important?

If the polar bears were listed under the United States Endangered Species Act - a safety net for plants and animals on the brink of extinction - they would be granted a broad range of protection. The protection would include a requirement that United States federal agencies ensure that any action carried out, authorized, or funded by the United States government will not "jeopardize the continued existence" of polar bears, or adversely modify their critical habitat.


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This article is reproduced from Greenpeace

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Center for Biological Diversity (and allies) Lawsuit

Suit Filed to Save 30 Million Acres of Polar Bear Habitat



On January 31 the Center for Biological Diversity and allies challenged the Bush administration's plan to sell 30 million acres of prime polar bear habitat to the oil and gas industry. The administration has fast-tracked the oil lease sale while at the same time illegally delaying an Endangered Species Act listing decision for the bear.

In its listing proposal, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife stated it did not have enough information to designate the polar bear's critical habitat. "If the interior secretary claims to not know what areas are essential to the conservation of the polar bear, then he certainly cannot sell off huge tracks of polar bear habitat to oil companies and claim it will have no impact on the species," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center.

The oil and gas development is slated to occur in an area that provides crucial habitat not only for polar bears, but also endangered bowhead whales, gray whales, Pacific walrus, ribbon seals, threatened spectacled eiders, and other marine birds and fish. Read more from Reuters!




Groups sue to block Alaska oil drilling plan

* Reuters
* Thursday January 31 2008

By Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Environmental groups sued the Bush administration on
Thursday to stop plans to allow oil and natural gas drilling in the icy Chukchi Sea off Alaska, which they claim will endanger polar bears.

The U.S. Interior Department plans to lease about 30 million acres of land in the Chukchi Sea -- home to about 10 percent of the world's polar bear population -- on Feb. 6. Environmental groups including the National Audubon Society, National Resources Defense Council(The Earth's Best Defense) and Earthjustice (Because the Earth Needs a Good Lawyer) filed suit in a federal court along with Alaska native groups to stop the lease sale -- which the federal government has put on a fast track for action. The Chukchi Sea is one of the few "frontier areas" where new oil and natural gas deposits can be found in North America, and could hold 15 billion barrels of oil, according to the Minerals Management Service, which oversees oil and gas leasing for the Interior Department.

Plaintiffs in the suit claim drilling will endanger polar bears, along with bowhead whales, gray whales, Pacific walrus, ribbon seals, threatened spectacled eiders, and other marine birds and fish.

"The only thing keeping pace with the drastic melting of the Arctic sea ice is the breakneck speed with which the Department of Interior is rushing to sell off polar bear habitat for fossil fuel development," said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs.A spokesman for the Minerals Management Service declined to comment.

A key decision on whether to list the big Arctic bear as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act is due in coming weeks from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which could coincide with the lease sale.

Earlier this month, MMS director Randall Luthi told a congressional panel that the risk to the bears from oil drilling would be negligible. If the oil sales went through before a decision was reached on the polar bears, there would be "an additional layer of consultation" with conservation officials as oil and gas companies worked in the area, Luthi said.

World polar bear populations are currently stable, but U.S. scientists estimate that two-thirds of them could be gone by 2050 if predictions about melting sea ice hold true. Polar bears live and hunt on sea ice; when it melts, they either drown or are forced onto land, where they are inefficient hunters.

This is the first time global warming has been a factor in arguing for "threatened" status for any species in the United States, and that makes the decision more complex.

(Editing by Russell Blinch and by Matthew Lewis)

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