by Playfuls Staff |
28th December 2006
The Interior Department gives heed to biologists’ reports that polar bears are in a critical situation and is proposing to consider the species endangered.
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Experts are warning that global warming has seriously affected arctic ice, causing it to melt. Polar bears are thus losing their home, and their lives. The global warming that’s melting the ice is partly due to human activity.
In a conference call with reporters, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne pointed out that while his department is acknowledging the melting of the arctic ice and its consequent danger to polar bears, it is not taking a position on the reasons or solutions for this.
Kempthorne said that the Bush administration “takes climate change very seriously and recognizes the role of greenhouse gases in climate change,” however, it is not his department's job to identify causes or find solutions. “That whole aspect of climate change is beyond the scope of the Endangered Species Act,” Kempthorne added.
The department’s proposal includes a scientific analysis that hypothesizes build-up of greenhouse gases is the probable cause of ice-melting; also, if these gases continue to build up, they could create ice-free arctic summers later this century, and possibly in as little as three decades.
The Interior Department has a year to gather and study comments on the proposed listing and make a final determination. It must also design a recovery plan to control and reduce harmful impacts to the species, usually by controlling the activities that cause the species harm.
A year ago, three environmental groups sued the Interior Department in order to force it to declare polar bears a threatened species. Kert Davies, the research director for Greenpeace USA, one of the groups, commented that the Bush administration is “clearly scrambling for credibility of any kind in this issue.”
He added: “They've boxed themselves in by the things they've said” suggesting a lack of scientific consensus on the issue.
Kassie Siegel is the lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, a group based in Arizona that took the lead in the lawsuit calling on the department to list the polar bear. She said, “I don't see how even this administration can write this proposal without acknowledging that the primary threat to polar bears is global warming and without acknowledging the science of global warming.”
The Interior Department had a court-ordered deadline of Wednesday to make a decision, a result of the lawsuit.
The remaining 20,000 or 25,00 polar bears are spread across Russia, Denmark, Norway, Canada and the United States. One-quarter to one-fifth of that population occupies waters off the shores off Alaska or the nearby coastlines, with separate groups in the Chukchi Sea off northwestern Alaska, the Northern Beaufort Sea, the Southern Beaufort Sea off the North Slope of Alaska.
As Kempthorne said, "Polar bears are one of nature's ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world's harshest environments. But we are concerned the polar bear's habitat may literally be melting."
