The special regulations issued by the administration and
generally called a “special rule” or a “4(d) rule” effectively
waive many of the protections the polar bear would have received
through its listing under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists
predicted, and have now documented, the grim impacts to polar bears
as the Arctic warms rapidly. In September, the U.S. Geological
Survey predicted that, based on polar bear distribution and current
global warming projections, two-thirds of the world’s polar bear
population would likely be extinct by 2050, including all polar
bears within the United States.
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced on May 14
that he was classifying the polar bear as a “threatened species”
under the Endangered Species Act, the nation’s strongest and most
successful law for the protection of plants and animals on the
brink of extinction. At the same time, the administration claimed
that the listing would add virtually no new protections for the
polar bear and have no bearing on the regulation of greenhouse gas
emissions.
“The listing of the polar bear is a momentous event that
provides immediate and significant protections for the species, but
the bear will not survive unless we actually implement the full
protections of the law,” said Kassie Siegel, climate program
director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of
the 2005 petition to protect the species. “The Endangered Species
Act requires the government to identify and then eliminate threats
to a species. The administration’s attempt to create an exemption
for greenhouse gas emissions, the primary threat to the polar bear,
violates both logic and the law.”
One of the Endangered Species Act’s primary protections is the
prohibition against any person, corporation, or other entity
“taking” a listed species, which includes killing or otherwise
harming it. The special regulations attempt to exempt from
regulation both greenhouse gas emissions and activities occurring
outside Alaska.
“The back-door regulations weaken polar bear protections and
were announced without any public process or the environmental
analysis required by law,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the
Endangered Species Project at NRDC. “We are confident the rules
won’t survive court review and that the polar bear will be given
the full protection of the Endangered Species Act that it so badly
needs.”
The Arctic melt is also outpacing predictions. September 2007
shattered all previous records for sea-ice loss when the Arctic ice
cap shrank to a record 1 million square miles – equivalent to six
times the size of California – below the average summer sea-ice
extent of the past several decades, reaching levels not predicted
to occur until mid-century. Scientists already predict this year’s
sea-ice minimum could shatter the record previously set in 2007.
Several leading scientists now predict the Arctic Ocean could be
ice-free in the summer by 2012.
“While we successfully forced the administration to list the
polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, the administration is
still undercutting all efforts to implement the law to protect the
polar bear,” said Melanie Duchin, global warming campaigner for
Greenpeace USA in Alaska. “The administration’s continued attempt
to block meaningful progress on global warming is no surprise, but
it won’t succeed.”
# # #
VVPR info: Jane Kochersperger, Greenpeace, cell: (202) 680-3798; [email protected]
