Protecting the polar bear

The need for a review of the Arctic animal's status is forcing the White House to examine the very climate change factors it has downplayed and even denied

National Geographic (Feb 18, 2006) The Bush administration has kicked off a process to determine whether polar bears should be added to the United States endangered species list because their habitat is melting.

The action is "a significant acknowledgement of what global warming is doing to the Arctic ice," said Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity in Joshua Tree, Calif.

In December the conservation group, along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defence Council, sued the U.S. government to protect the world's polar bears from extinction.

The conservationists say Earth's steadily rising temperature is causing the polar bear's habitat to melt. Many scientists say the warming is due, in part, to human activities such as driving cars and burning coal, which release heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.

If the bears are given federal protection, they would be the first U.S. mammals officially deemed to be in danger of extinction because of global warming, the conservation groups said.

Rosa Meehan, the chief of marine-mammal protection at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska, said the conservation groups presented sufficient information to merit a close look at the status of polar bears.

"It doesn't mean that we are going to list them or that we're not," she said. "We know things are changing. We know a lot more about polar bears than we did a few years ago. We need to review their status."

The Fish and Wildlife Service will spend the next 12 months examining scientific evidence about the changing Arctic environment and how it is affecting polar bears.

Polar bears, which live only in the Arctic and can grow to about 2.5 metres (eight feet) tall, depend on sea ice for survival. They hunt their primary prey, the ringed seal, from the ice. They also travel, mate and sometimes give birth on the ice, but the ice is melting. Scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Boulder, Colo., reported that in September 2005 the sea ice had shrunk to its lowest level on record.

If the melting trend continues, the Arctic could see ice-free summers by 2040, according to a Canadian climate model. Other models suggest open Arctic waters by the end of the century. Bears in some areas spend the summer months on land. They fast until the ice forms in the fall, when they can use it as a vast platform for hunting.

Studies of polar bear populations around the western coast of Hudson Bay show that this wait, and the bears' period of fasting, has increased by three weeks since the 1970s. The population there is noticeably skinnier now, scientists say, and has declined by 15 per cent in the last decade.

In northern Alaska, the U.S. Minerals Management Service has concluded some polar bears are drowning as they try to swim increasingly long distances between the ice and land. The federal agency documented four drowned bears that had tried to swim a record 260-kilometre gap in September 2004. The worldwide polar bear population is estimated at 20,000 to 25,000. "We are not going to lose the polar bears," said Terry Root, an ecologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. "We will always have individuals around in zoos and places like that, but we are going to lose the natural behaviour of polar bears.

"We are so strongly affecting their habitat, their way of life, that they are going to have to basically become very similar to raccoons (which rely heavily on humans for survival), in the sense they are not going to be able to feed the way they have fed before, on seals and off the ice."

Today encounters between humans and polar bears are increasing on land, because the bears are stranded by the retreating ice, explained Meehan, the Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

To combat the problem, the Fish and Wildlife Service is working with oil and gas companies and villagers to develop "strategies for people to be safe in bear country," Meehan said.

Environmental groups often criticize the Bush administration for ignoring scientific evidence of global climate change.

Siegel, the Centre for Biological Diversity attorney, said the decision to conduct a status review of polar bears forces the Bush administration to examine the very science on climate change it has "questioned, denied, and downplayed."

If the polar bears are given protection, federal agencies will be required to consider how their decisions affect polar bears. For example, the listing of polar bears could affect a coal plant seeking federal permission to emit heat trapping gases or an automaker seeking to sell a gas-guzzling car.