The administration was required by law to make its decision by
Wednesday following its proposal one year ago, but today announced
“we expect to.finalize the decision within the next month.” The
Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural
Resources Defense Council (NRDC) will begin legal action Wednesday
with a formal notice to sue as required by the Endangered Species
Act.
“We certainly hope that the polar bear will be listed within the
next month. But this is an administration of broken promises, from
Bush’s campaign pledge to regulate greenhouse gases to Secretary
Kempthorne’s failure to list a single species under the Endangered
Species Act in the last 607 days,” said Kassie Siegel, climate
program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, and lead
author of the 2005 petition. “We’ll begin the enforcement process
Wednesday.”
The Endangered Species Act requires a listing process of no
longer than two years, but in this case almost three years have
passed since the scientific petition was submitted in February,
2005, calling on the government to list the polar bear under the
Endangered Species Act. The groups sued the Bush administration in
December, 2005, when it missed its first deadline. Responding to
the suit in February, 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
found that protection of polar bears “may be warranted,” and
commenced a full status review of the species. Then, 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 is January 9, 2008.
“The polar bear needs a lifeline,” said Andrew Wetzler, director
of the Endangered Species Project at NRDC. “Urgent action is
required by our government. Polar bears’ very existence is already
threatened by environmental disaster, and they also face toxic
contamination and habitat destruction from oil and gas development.
The administration’s endless delay is outrageous and
unwarranted.”
Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent
upon the sea ice for all of their essential needs. Their future in
a rapidly warming Arctic is dim. In September 2007, scientists
reported that the Arctic cap has lost one million square miles – an
area six-times the size of California – shattering records from the
past several decades and beating predictions not expected until
mid-century. The U.S. Geological Service also predicted that
two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population would likely be
extinct by 2050, including all polar bears within the United
States.
Shrinking sea ice also drastically restricts polar bears’
ability to hunt their main prey, ice seals. In the spring of 2006,
scientists located the bodies of several bears that had starved to
death. Reduced food availability due to global warming has also
caused polar bears to resort to cannibalism off the north coast of
Alaska and Canada.
“The Bush administration has squandered seven years denying the
devastating scientific evidence of global warming,” said Kert
Davies, research director for Greenpeace USA. “Stalling has cost us
dearly, putting the polar bear at risk of extinction and
jeopardizing the future welfare of billions of people around the
world. This further unjustified delay is emblematic of the
administration’s approach.”
To date, the government has received more than 500,000 comments
in support of protecting the polar bear under the Endangered
Species Act, including letters from eminent polar bear experts,
climate scientists, and more than 60 members of Congress. This is
a record number of public comments in support of an Endangered
Species Act listing.
Listing the polar bear guarantees federal agencies will be
obligated to ensure that any action they authorize, fund, or carry
out will not jeopardize the polar bears’ continued existence or
adversely modify their critical habitat, and the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service will be required to prepare a recovery plan for
the polar bear, specifying measures necessary for its
protection.
The Endangered Species Act is one of the world’s most powerful
and successful laws when it comes to saving animals on the brink of
extinction. Over 98 percent of the animals and plants protected by
the Endangered Species Act are still alive today thanks, in large
measure, to the safety net this Act provides.
# # #
Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organization with 2.7
million members worldwide that uses peaceful protest and creative
communication to expose global environmental problems and promote
solutions for the future.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a non-profit conservation
organization with over 40,000 members dedicated to the protection
of imperiled species and their habitats.
www.biologicaldiversity.org
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit
organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists
dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded
in 1970, NRDC has 1.2 million members and online activists, served
from offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San
Francisco and Beijing.
VVPR info: Jane Kochersperger, Greenpeace, 202-680-3798 (cell); [email protected]
