MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Benchmark US ruling on polar bears (and global warming)

A US federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming. The decision was hailed by conservation groups which have been hounding the US government on the issue for years.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with conservation groups that the Interior Department missed a January 9 deadline for a decision. She rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered it to act by May 15. "Defendants have been in violation of the law requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days" the judge, based in Oakland, Calif., wrote in a decision issued late Monday. "Other than the general complexity of finalizing the rule, Defendants offer no specific facts that would justify the delay, much less further delay". A spokesman for the Interior Department said Tuesday the decision was being reviewed. The ruling is a victory for conservation groups that claim the Bush administration has delayed a polar bear decision to avoid addressing global warming and to avoid roadblocks to development such as the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast to oil company bidders. "We hope that this decision marks the end of the Bush administration's delays and denial so that immediate action may be taken to protect polar bears from extinction," Greenpeace representative Melanie Duchin said in a statement. A decision to list polar bears due to global warming could trigger a recovery plan with consequences beyond Alaska. Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to federal review if they generate greenhouse gasses that add to warming in the Arctic. Scientists with the US Geological Survey predicted in September 2007 that most of the bears would be gone in a few decades: "Future reduction of sea ice in the Arctic could result in a loss of two-thirds of the world's polar bear population within 50 years." Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, the lead author of the petition submitted in 2005, called the judge's order a huge victory, despite not knowing whether polar bears ultimately will be listed. "It means that whatever political interference going on right now is going to be short-circuited" she said. "The politicians and the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., are going to have to stop interfering with the decision and get it out the door." The law requires a decision based on science, she said, and science shows the Arctic is thawing. In response to the petition filed in 2005, the US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in December 2006 that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of their primary habitat, Arctic sea ice. Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40% less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030.