Decision ordered on polar bear status

On Monday evening (April 28, 2008)a federal judge rebuked the Bush administration for delaying a decision on whether to protect the polar bear while rushing to approve oil and gas drilling in its Arctic habitat.

Polar Bear Protection Delay Ended

Photo - Peter Spruance

In a court order issued yesterday, Judge Claudia Wilken sided with the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Greenpeace against the Bush administration. Bringing the government's irrational and illegal protection delays to an end, Wilken gave it just two weeks to decide whether to list the polar bear as an endangered species. In addition, she ordered the decision to become effective immediately instead of being delayed by the usual 30 days.

The Bush administration has been rushing out Arctic oil and gas leases at the same time it has delayed deciding whether to declare the polar bear an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Making the decision immediately effective May 15 will ensure that all future oil and gas decisions take into account the polar bear and global warming.

Photo Johnathan Hayward - Canadian Press/AP

ANCHORAGE (AP) — 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. "Defendants have been in violation of the law requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days," the judge, based in Oakland, wrote in a decision issued late Monday. "Other than the general complexity of finalizing the rule.

Defendants offer no specific facts that would justify the delay, much less further delay." Allowing more time would violate the Endangered Species Act and congressional intent that time was of the essence in listing threatened species, Wilken wrote.

The ruling is a victory for conservation groups that claim the Bush administration has delayed a polar bear decision to avoid addressing global warming and to avoid roadblocks to development such as the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast to oil company bidders.

"We hope that this decision marks the end of the Bush administration's delays and denial so that immediate action may be taken to protect polar bears from extinction," Greenpeace representative Melanie Duchin said in a statement.

A decision to list polar bears due to global warming could trigger a recovery plan with consequences beyond Alaska. Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to federal review if they generate greenhouse gasses that add to warming in the Arctic.

Representatives of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Tuesday morning. Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty has said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing. Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead author of the petition submitted in 2005, called the judge's order a huge victory, despite not knowing whether polar bears ultimately will be listed.

"It means that whatever political interference going on right now is going to be short-circuited," she said. "The politicians and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to have to stop interfering with the decision and get it out the door."

The law requires a decision based on science, she said, and science shows the Arctic is thawing. "The science is perfectly clear. There's no dispute. The polar bear is an endangered species," she said.

In response to the petition filed in 2005, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in December 2006 that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of their primary habitat, Arctic sea ice.

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40% 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. A U.S. Geological Survey study generated in response to the listing petition predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.

A decision on the proposed listing was due Jan. 9, but Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said in January that a delay was needed to make sure it came in a form easily understood. He promised a decision within a month, but that deadline also passed and the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace sued in March.

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Polar bears don't need more protection yet

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

Polar bears don't need more protection yet: group

The Canadian Press

Polar bears don't need stiffer laws yet to protect their numbers, says the scientific group that advises the government on endangered species.

But the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada does say climate change is a threat to the northern bear, so it continues to be a species of special concern.

The committee assessed almost three dozen plants and animals this week at a meeting in Yellowknife.

"The primary threats to the polar bear are over-harvesting in the northeastern part of its range (and) decline of the summer sea ice in parts of the southern part of its range,'' committee chairman Jeff Hutchings said Friday.

Environment Minister John Baird must accept the group's findings if polar bears are to be formally acknowledged by the government as a species of special concern. That would oblige Ottawa to address threats to the animal's survival, including climate change.

But a management plan for Canada's roughly 15,000 bears wouldn't be required until 2014 _ a date by which some scientists believe the Arctic could be completely free of summer sea ice, the bears' favoured hunting platform.

When the committee previously listed the bears under special concern in 2002, the government asked them to re-examine the issue. No management plan was created.

In Ottawa, Baird said the government will begin consulting environmentalists, scientists and wildlife managers on how to proceed after he receives the committee's report in August.

"This government cares about the future of the polar bear and as minister of the environment, I am committed to action,'' he said.

Hutchings said evidence wasn't strong enough to recommend changing the polar bear's status to either threatened or endangered.

"There was insufficient reason to think the polar bear was at imminent risk of extinction,'' he said. "That's not to say that it's not in trouble. A special concern species is a species at risk in Canada.''

The problem, said Hutchings, is in trying to calculate how melting summer sea ice correlates with declining numbers of polar bears.

"Does a 10 per cent reduction in sea ice result in a 10 per cent reduction in polar bears? There's lots of models, lots of predictions, lots of projections, and the committee felt that there is still sufficient uncertainty...to determine how precisely polar bears might be affected by reductions in sea ice.''

Hutchings said some bear populations are in decline, but some are stable and some are actually growing.

However, Pete Ewins of the World Wildlife Fund pointed out that seven of Canada's 13 populations are either in decline or showing signs of stress such as reduced body weight.

Ewins called the committee's recommendation not to change the polar bear's status "an easy way out.''

"This is like steady-as-she-goes Canada, when in fact inactivity now will forclose all its opportunities. We'll be lucky if there aren't regional extinctions by the time the government gets around to this wonderful management plan.

"The regular man on the street knows that in places where the ice is disappearing fast, this isn't just of special concern. It is an urgent crisis.''

The Canadian discussion on the polar bear's status mirrors a similar debate in the United States, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deciding whether to declare the animals endangered. That decision, expected last January, has now been put off until June.

In all, the committee examined 31 species of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects and plants. Fourteen species, eight of them plants, were given a more serious rating.

The ferruginous hawk, native to the Prairies, was upgraded to threatened from special concern, while two populations of the eastern foxsnake in Ontario are now considered endangered.

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Showdown looming

Showdown looming over polar bear hunt quota

The Canadian Press, Apr. 20 2008

Inuit hunters are bracing for another showdown this week with government wildlife scientists, this time over how many polar bears they'll be allowed to kill from one of Canada's largest populations of the iconic predator.

Scientists say the bears of Baffin Bay have been overhunted for years -- partly by Greenlanders -- and they will argue at hearings beginning Tuesday in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, that the number of valuable tags for the animals should be cut by 40 per cent, if not eliminated.

But Inuit say the bears are fine and that researchers haven't even counted them in more than a decade. They point to a recent admission that scientists drastically underestimated bowhead whales in the Arctic as a reason to be skeptical of bear estimates.

Some say if they're cut off from harvesting an animal they depend on for food and clothing, they'll ignore regulations and shoot as many bears as they need.

"We don't believe the scientists' information any more,'' said Jayko Alooloo, head of the Hunters and Trappers Organization in Pond Inlet, one of the three communities along the east shore of Baffin Island that hunts the bears. "(Hunters) will ignore new quotas.''

The territorial government wants the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board to reduce the Baffin Bay bear quota to 64 from 105 immediately and consider reducing it further or eliminating it.

The last time anyone counted -- in 1997 -- there were 2,100 polar bears along the area's mountainous coast and rugged sea ice.

But Nunavut increased hunting quotas in 2004. And the year after that, Greenland revealed its hunters had been taking more than twice as many bears as previously thought.

Computer models suggest the population is now 1,500 -- almost a 30 per cent drop.

Nonsense, says Alooloo.

The survey is too old. As well, scientists look for bears in the wrong places at the wrong times.

Hunters north of Pond Inlet routinely see several bears a day, Alooloo said.

"My brother-in-law, he's seen six bears in a day,'' he said. "They always see the bears and the tracks. That's why we don't believe the government. We know they're increasing every year.''

Alooloo points to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' recent admission that, far from being threatened, bowhead whales have in fact returned to the numbers they enjoyed before commercial harvesting -- just as Inuit elders insisted all along.

"That's the same thing with the polar bear,'' said Alooloo.

Scientific information has to be combined with traditional knowledge to develop hunting quotas, he said.

Steve Pinksen of Nunavut's environment department defends the scientific estimates, saying bears are much easier to number than whales.

"To assume that because one is wrong they're all wrong is not a fair conclusion. We do have what we feel is a fairly accurate population survey system.''

Greenland has acknowledged the problem and drastically cut its quotas, Pinksen said.

Ian Stirling, a retired Environment Canada polar bear researcher, said bear sightings are misleading because hunters naturally go to the best habitat. Population declines would start at the margins, he said.

"I don't think hunters would see changes in numbers of polar bears in the kind of travelling they do,'' he said.

Other pressures could increase human-bear contacts.

"It could be the ice is melting earlier in Baffin Bay and (the bears) are coming ashore a little bit hungrier and looking for an alternate food source.''

In fact, Stirling said a recent survey of hunters suggested about 57 per cent of them felt bears were thinner than they used to be.

Still, Inuit are feeling increasingly beset by southerners telling them how to manage what they feel are their animals, said Colin Saunders, Pond Inlet's economic development officer.

"Sometimes, scientists do need to listen to Inuit people more,'' he said.

Inuit hunters are also frustrated by forces outside their control, such as anti-sealing campaigns in Europe and the American effort to declare polar bears an endangered species.

"There are people who would rather generate an income from being out on the land rather than a nine-to-five job,'' Saunders said.

"There are people who still want to hunt. That's just in them.''

Although a polar bear tag is worth up to $25,000 to a sport hunter, Alooloo said they will be cut off if the reduced quotas are imposed. Inuit needs will come first, as bear meat provides needed variety from seal and fish and the hide makes warm clothes.

"It's Inuit food, like cows for southern people,'' Alooloo said.

"It's going to be like cutting off our hunters' arm if the NWMB decreases our quota.''

Photo by Canadian Press

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Interior secretary dodges hearing

Interior secretary dodges hearing

Kempthorne Hides, Center Testifies (and Sues); at Yesterday's Congressional Polar Bear Hearing
Kassie Siegel, the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate, Air, and Energy Program director, testified as a legal and global warming expert at the April 2 Senate hearing on the Bush administration's refusal to list the polar bear as an endangered species. Siegel blasted Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne for rushing to sell oil leases in polar bear habitat while illegally delaying the protection decision.Kempthorne brazenly refused to attend the hearing, but told reporters that he would continue to delay the decision until early summer. Good luck with that, Mr. Kempthorne: the Center, NRDC, and Greenpeace filed a summary judgment motion yesterday to fast-track our suit to end the delay.

Anchorage Daily News

POLAR BEAR STATUS: Senate panel inquires about 3-month delay.

By ERIKA BOLSTAD
ebolstad@adn.com

Published: April 3rd, 2008 12:46 AM
Last Modified: April 3rd, 2008 10:18 AM

WASHINGTON -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was a no-show Wednesday in front of a Senate committee seeking an explanation for why his agency has been slow to decide whether to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

Kempthorne, summoned in front of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, refused to testify. Instead, he sent a letter and spoke personally to several of the committee members. He also pledged to testify once he had issued a decision, now three months late.

"Careful deliberation will not imperil the survival of the polar bear, it will better ensure that the decision is legally sound and based upon the best available science and the requirements of the law," Kempthorne wrote in his letter.

But that was not enough for the committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, who said she was "disappointed" with Kempthorne's behavior -- especially since he had been on the panel while in the Senate. Boxer scolded Kempthorne's record on endangered species designations, pointing out that he had yet to classify a single species as endangered during his tenure as interior secretary.

"The Bush administration does not have the right or the discretion to decide to not carry out the law," Boxer said. "I guess maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I always learned that when laws are passed by Congress, and signed by the president, they must be obeyed. But that's not what's happening here."

ACTS PRESSED BY LAWSUITS

Every step of the process toward listing the bears as threatened has required environmentalists to file lawsuits to persuade the administration to act, said Kassie Siegel at the Center for Biological Diversity. There is still time to do something about bears, Siegel said, "but the window to act is now."

Some Republican members of the panel said they were concerned about the effects of listing polar bears, since the animals are losing their habitat because of global warming caused by worldwide greenhouse gas emissions.

The hearing was not about "protecting the bear," said Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee. Rather, it was about using the Endangered Species Act to "achieve global warming policy that special interest groups can not otherwise achieve through the legislative process."

"The ESA is simply not equipped to regulate economy-wide greenhouse gases, nor does the Fish and Wildlife Service have the expertise to be a pollution control agency," he said.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, which is overseen by the Interior Department, first proposed in 2007 to list polar bears, at the prompting of environmental groups. The agency was scheduled to issue a decision on polar bears at the beginning of January, but postponed it because its scientists needed more time to analyze studies from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Those government studies show that as many as two-thirds of the world population of the bears could disappear by mid-century as their habitat melts, leaving a small population of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic. Bears could disappear from U.S. waters, including the Chukchi Sea, where the Interior Department recently issued $2.7 billion in oil and gas leases.

Environmentalists complained at Wednesday's hearing that the timing of the leases remains suspect. And Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. accused the administration of dragging its feet on a polar bear decision so that leases could "sneak in" before an endangered species listing held them up.

"It looks a little bit to this observer as if the endangered species determination was slow walked on purpose," Whitehouse said.

Kempthorne in his letter downplayed any connection between the delays in listing polar bears and the recent oil leases in the Chukchi Sea. The threat to the polar bear is "receding sea ice," Kempthorne wrote, and oil and gas activities "do not threaten the species throughout all or a significant portion of its range."

Kempthorne also wrote that if the polar bear is listed, any oil and gas exploration and development would be subject to the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws governing such activity in protected habitat.

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