JG Prime News - BUSH ADMINISTRATION SUED TO FORCE POLAR BEAR PROTECTION

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - Monday the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the Bush administration for missing its legal deadline for issuing a final decision on whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming.

“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 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.”

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 by 2012.

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 species would guarantee that 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, specifying measures for the bear’s protection. The government has received 670,000 comments in support of protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

SOURCE: Center for Biological Diversity
CONTACT: Kassie Siegel, CBD,
CELL: (951) 961-7972,
EMAIL: ksiegel@biologicaldiversity.org
Serena Ingre, NRDC
CELL: (703) 296-0702
OFFICE: 202-289-2378
EMAIL: singre@nrdc.org
Jane Kochersperger, Greenpeace
OFFICE: (202) 319-2493
CELL: 202-680-3798
WEB SITE: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/North_Pacific_right_whale/index.html.