“The Bush administration seems intent on slamming shut the
narrow window of opportunity we have to save polar bears,” said
Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for
Biological Diversity and lead author of the 2005 petition seeking
the Endangered Species Act listing. “We simply will not sit back
and passively allow the administration to condemn polar bears to
extinction.”
Polar bears live only in the Arctic and are totally dependent on
the sea ice for all of their essential needs. The rapid warming of
the Arctic and melting of the sea ice pose an overwhelming threat
to the polar bear, which could become the first mammal to lose 100
percent of its habitat to global warming.
The groups filed their lawsuit today in U.S. District Court for
the Northern District of California. The lawsuit seeks a court
order compelling the administration to issue the final decision on
polar bear protection immediately.
“The Endangered Species Act is absolutely unambiguous: the Fish
and Wildlife Service was required to make a final decision months
ago. Now it’s up to a federal court to throw this incredible animal
a lifeline,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of NRDC’s Endangered
Species Project. “We need urgent action from this administration to
protect the polar bear and reduce greenhouse gas pollution, not
continued delay.”
The Endangered Species Act listing process for the polar bear
due to global warming was initiated with a scientific petition from
the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace. In
December 2005 the groups sued the Bush administration for failing
to respond to the petition. As a result of that first lawsuit, 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. A settlement agreement in that case
committed the Service to make the second of three required findings
in the listing process by December 27, 2007, at which time the
Service announced the proposal to list the species as threatened.
By law, the Service was required to make a final listing decision
within one year of the proposal. The decision is now more than two
months overdue.
Noting that the federal government initiated lease sales to
drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea earlier this month, Kert Davies,
research director at Greenpeace USA, said: “Our lawsuit has forced
the Bush administration’s hand on the issue of global warming like
no other, even as it rubberstamps drilling rights for Big Oil in
pristine polar bear habitat. If the federal government is really
serious about protecting the polar bear, then its next steps will
be to cancel lease sales in the Chukchi Sea and immediately
implement a plan for deep cuts in U.S. global warming
pollution.”
Since the petition to protect polar bears under the Endangered
Species Act was first filed in February 2005, new science paints a
dim picture of the polar bear’s future. In September, the U.S.
Geological Survey 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. Several leading scientists
now predict the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer as early as
2012.
Global warming is worsening, with impacts in the Arctic
outpacing predictions. September 2007 shattered all previous
records for sea-ice loss when the Arctic ice cap shrank to a record
one 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.
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. Unprecedented instances of polar bear cannibalism have also
been documented along the north coast of Alaska and Canada.
Listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act
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 Fish and Wildlife Service will be required to
prepare a recovery plan for the polar bear, specifying measures
necessary for its protection.
To date, the government has received approximately 670,000
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.
# # #
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.
http://www.greenpeace.org/
VVPR info: Contact: Jane Kochersperger, Greenpeace, office: (202) 319-2493; cell: 202-680-3798
