Feds seek delay in polar bear listing

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – The Department of the Interior wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the animal’s habitat.

The Interior Department on Jan. 9 missed a deadline for a final decision and three conservation groups sued.

In the government response Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing.

A spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity immediately said that falls outside requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

“These are not questions for attorneys,” said Kassie Siegel, the principal author on the petition seeking protections for polar bears.

“They’re questions for scientists.”

The petition seeks additional protections for polar bears because of the threat to their sea ice habitat from global warming.

The request for more time, Siegel said, likely is a tactic by political appointees to delay a decision until the Minerals Management Service can finish issuing offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest shore, home to one of two polar bear populations in Alaska.

“There’s no justification for the delay,” she said.

“Nothing they’ve put forward comes close to justifying it. They’re just stalling.”

The groups will ask for an agency decision no later than a week after a court hearing May 8 before U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin in Oakland, Calif.

Alaska has the only two polar bear populations in the United States, the Beaufort Sea group off the state’s north coast and the Chukchi Sea group, shared with Russia.

Polar bears depend on sea ice for hunting seals and most females in the Beaufort population use sea ice for denning and giving birth.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent 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.

A U.S. Geological Survey study predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.

A decision to list polar bears because of global warming could trigger a recovery plan that has consequences beyond Alaska.

Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to review if they generate greenhouse gases that add to warming in the Arctic.

Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in January that a delay in the polar bear decision was needed to make sure it came in a form easily understood.

In the court filing, Laverty tied the delay to “the complexity of the legal and scientific issues,” including the need to review about 670,000 public comments and USGS reports.

The service’s Alaska office in December transmitted a draft final listing.

In early February, Laverty wrote, the agency determined the draft “raised various factual and legal issues” and a new draft was prepared.

Laverty did not specify who revised the draft, Siegel said.

“They don’t have any polar bear biologists in Washington, D.C.,” she said.

Laverty wrote that he reviewed the new version and decided it still was not ready because it raised significant and complex factual and legal issues, including questions on how soon bears could be in trouble, their range and the uncertainly of modeling of Arctic sea ice.

Laverty wrote he could not speculate as to a final outcome after his office and federal attorneys analyze the issues.

“At this point it would be pre-decisional to speculate on the outcome of that analysis or even some of the intricate nuances involved in a resolution,” he wrote.

Andrew Wetzler of the Natural Resources Defense Council rejected the need for more time and said the Endangered Species Act was unambiguous in calling for a decision months ago.

“The scientific evidence is as overwhelming and undeniable – polar bears are an endangered species that ought to be protected by the Endangered Species Act,” he said.