by Playfuls Staff |
27th December 2006
The US government plans to propose including polar bears under the Endangered Species Act because global warming is shrinking the Arctic sea ice that is crucial to their survival, [more] the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The move would represent the right-wing administration's most important recognition to date of global warming after six years of President Bush's resistance to scientific papers linking man-made pollution to rising temperatures.
It could also have huge practical implications by compelling the government to regulate US industries to curb the carbon dioxide emissions that are a driver of climate change.
Quoting an unnamed Interior Department official, the paper said the government would include the proposal in the Federal Register, which would open it to public comment for 90 days.
"We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding," said the Interior official, who added that officials have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years. "Obviously, the sea ice is melting because the temperatures are warmer."
The proposal followed a legal suit by three environmental advocacy groups - the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace - that argued the government failed to respond quickly enough to the polar bears' plight. The department has been examining the status of the bears for more than two years.
There are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide and initial studies suggest that climate change has already exacted a toll on the animals.
Polar bears use the ice floes as platforms to hunt for ringed seals. With ice breaking up earlier polar bears have less time to hunt and build up fat reserves that sustain them for eight winter months before hunting resumes. As local polar bears have become thinner, female polar bears' reproductive rates and cubs' survival rates have fallen, causing a 21 percent population drop from 1997 to 2004, the report said.
In 2004 polar bears were spotted taking unusually long swims between the ice floes, with some drowning on the traverse. Federal scientists also noted several instances near the Beaufort Sea in which polar bears ate one another.
© 2006 DPA
