The designation of polar bears as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act, due to loss of habitat, was upheld Friday by a Washington, D.C., appellate court, which ruled against a challenge from the state of Alaska and allied industry interests.
The polar bear received the designation in 2008 under the Bush administration, which was in the process of selling oil and gas leases to Shell Oil in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, whose ice flows are prime hunting grounds for the great Arctic predators. No action was taken to protect the bruins’ habitat.
The reason the bears are “threatened” is loss of sea ice: The Arctic summer ice pack reached its lowest recorded level in the late summer of 2012. It covered just 24 percent of the Arctic Ocean, compared to the previous record low of 29 percent in the summer of 2007.
The designation, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is the first time a species has been listed due to the threatened loss of habitat.
The global population of polar bears stands at about 25,000. With global warming, however, scientific studies predict the population may shrink to a tiny remnant in the far northeast reaches of the Canadian Arctic. (Canada still allows the hunting of polar bears.)
Already, Seattle-based bird research George Divoky has encountered thin, hungry polar bears coming ashore on Cooper Island, north of Barrow, seeking birds eggs and chicks for food. The bears live most of their lives on ice flows, with ringed and bearded seals their normal food source.
Canadian scientists have detected a decline in the polar bear population near the town of Churchill on Hudson Bay, near the southern end of the bear’s habitat.
“We have grave, long-term concerns for the polar bear,” Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta scientist who has studied the bears for 20 years, told ABC News. He said the bears are “100 percent dependent” on sea ice, not only to feed but to breed.
The state of Alaska, a virtual operating arm of the oil industry, used phrases like “locked up” in appealing the Endangered Species Act designation, saying the state’s economy would be left “languishing” without development. Its briefs have ignored the fact that the Bush and Obama administrations have proceeded with allowing Big Oil to drill in waters that are the bears’ habitat.
Earlier this week, after a mishap-filled start, Shell Oil announced it will not drill in the Arctic during the summer of 2013.
One of its drilling ships broke loose from its moorings in a Gulf of Alaska storm, and ran aground near Kodiak Island. A second drilling ship is being investigated by the Coast Guard for 16 environmental and safety violations. Both ships are to be taken to Asian ports for repairs.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was unanimous in its ruling, saying designation by the Fish and Wildlife Service was “reasonable and adequately supported by the record.”
Despite highfalutin language in its appeal, Judge Harry Edwards wrote that the state of Alaska and other interests “neither pointed to mistakes in (Fish & Wildlife Service) reasoning nor adduced any data or studies that the agency overlooked.”