US denies polar bears protection from climate change

Decision by Obama administration to uphold a Bush-era ruling that limits protection of the polar bear from global warming brings immediate protests from wildlife and environmental groups
Suzanne Goldenberg, guardian.co.uk 8 May 09;

The Obama administration today declined to protect polar bears from the single greatest threat to their survival – the melting of sea ice by global warming. The decision brought immediate protests from wildlife and environmental groups.

The interior secretary, Ken Salazar, said he would not overturn one of the most controversial last-minute rules of the George Bush era. The rule had denied protection to the polar bear because Bush did not want to be pressed into regulating the industries that emit greenhouse gases.

"To see the polar bear habitat melting and an iconic species threatened is a tragedy of the modern age," Salazar said. But he said existing wildlife legislation, which was crafted in the 1970s, was not equipped to deal with threats to the polar bear from heat-trapping pollution occurring miles away from its Arctic home. "The endangered species act is not the best mechanism for cutting down on climate change."

He said it would be far more effective to work towards a comprehensive strategy on climate change – which he said the Obama administration and Congress were pursuing as their "signature" issue. "We need a comprehensive energy and climate change strategy that curbs climate change and its impact, including the loss of sea ice," he said.

However, the rationale that it was better to drop the protections under the endangered species act rather than use an imperfect body of law will carry very little weight among environmentalists who have led a dogged campaign to press Obama to overturn the Bush rule.

Salazar's announcement also contradicts the logic of a decision last month that clean air legislation, of similar 1970s vintage to the endangered species act, compelled the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions as a dangerous pollutant.

In his brief remarks to reporters, Salazar acknowledged that climate change was the biggest threat to the animal. "The single greatest threat to polar bear is the melting of Arctic ice caused by climate change."

There are estimated to be 20,000-25,000 polar bears living in the wild.

The decision is easily among the most unpopular to date among environmentalists, and Salazar acknowledged that the administration could face a legal challenge. Greepeace gathered more than 80,000 signatures on a petition campaign calling for polar bear protection. Earlier this week, more than 45 law professors wrote an open letter to Salazar urging him to revoke Bush's rule on polar bears.

"The special rule is a death warrant for the polar bear," said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity. "With its sea-ice habitat rapidly disappearing, the polar bear needs the full protection of the Endangered Species Act."

Today's move is also at odds with the Obama administration's efforts to roll back a number of the so-called midnight regulations from the Bush era. But Salazar said the decision was in keeping with the administration's policy of letting science dictate policy on the environment. Other decisions by Salazar have been criticised by environmentalists. In March, he upheld a decision by Bush to take grey wolves off the endangered species list in Montana and other rocky states.

Congress gave an opening to Salazar to overturn the Bush rule in March, ordering him to make a decision about the polar bear within 60 days. In a sign of the extreme sensitivity of the issue, the interior secretary waited until the very end of a deadline to make the announcement, and took only two questions from reporters.

Obama won't fight global warming with bear rules
H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press Yahoo News 8 May 09;

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration, which promised a sharp break from the Bush White House on global warming, declared Friday it would stick with a Bush-era policy against expanding protection for climate-threatened polar bears and ruled out a broad new attack on greenhouse gases.

To the dismay of environmentalists, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar refused to rescind a Bush administration rule that says actions that threaten the polar bear's survival cannot be considered when safeguarding the iconic mammal if they occur outside the bear's Arctic home.

The rule was aimed at heading off the possibility that the bear's survival could be cited by opponents of power plants and other facilities that produce carbon dioxide, a leading pollutant blamed for global warming.

The Endangered Species Act requires that a threatened or endangered species must have its habitat protected. Environmentalists say that in the case of the polar bear, the biggest threat comes from pollution — mainly carbon dioxide from faraway power plants, factories and cars — that is warming the Earth and melting Arctic sea ice.

Salazar agreed that global warming was "the single greatest threat" to the bear's survival, but disagreed that the federal law protecting animals, plants and fish should be used to address climate change.

"The Endangered Species Act is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue, and that is the issue of global warming," said Salazar, echoing much the same view of his Republican predecessor, Dirk Kempthorne, who had declared the polar bear officially threatened and in need of protection under the federal species law.

Kempthorne at the same time issued the "special rule" that limited the scope of the bear's protection to actions within its Arctic home.

The iconic polar bear — some 25,000 of the mammals can be found across the Arctic region from Alaska to Greenland — has become a symbol of the potential ravages of climate change. Scientists say while the bear population has more than doubled since the 1960s, as many as 15,000 could be lost in the coming decades because of the loss of Arctic sea ice, a key element of its habitat.

Environmentalists and some members of Congress had strongly urged Salazar to rescind the Bush regulation, arguing the bear is not being given the full protection required under the species law.

Others, including most of the business community, argue that making the bear a reason for curtailing greenhouse gases thousands of miles from its home would cause economic chaos.

Reaction to Salazar's decision Friday was sharply divided.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hailed the decision as a "clear victory for Alaska" because it removes the link between bear protection and climate change and should help North Slope oil and gas development. Both of Alaska's senators and its only House member also praised the decision and rejected claims the bear won't be protected.

Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a global warming skeptic and the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment Committee, applauded Salazar "for making the right call and applying a commonsense approach to the Endangered Species Act" and climate.

But environmentalists and some of their leading advocates in Congress were disappointed.

"The polar bear is threatened, and we need to act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the environment panel, adding that she disagreed with Salazar's decision not to revoke the Bush regulation.

Andrew Wetzler, director of wildlife conservation at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Endangered Species Act should be part of the government's arsenal in fighting climate change "and it shouldn't be unilaterally disarming itself for no reason."

"For Salazar to adopt Bush's polar bear extinction plan is confirming the worst fears of his tenure as secretary of interior," said Noah Greenwald, of the Center for Biological Diversity, which along with the NRDC and Greenpeace has a lawsuit pending challenging the bear rule.

Salazar noted that he has overturned a string of Bush-era regulations, including last week restoring a requirement that agencies consult with the government's most knowledgeable biologists when taking actions that could harm species. "We must do all we can to protect the polar bear," he said, but that using the species protection law "is not the right way to go."

The way to deal with climate change is a broad cap on greenhouse gases, he said.

Congress is considering cap-and-trade legislation forcing a reduction on greenhouse gases, and, separately, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun working on a climate regulation under the Clean Air Act. Last month, the EPA declared carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gases a danger to public health.

The last word is still to be heard on linking species protection and climate change.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began a review of whether the American pika, a tiny rabbit relative living in high altitudes of 10 Western states, is threatened by climate change because the mountain areas are becoming warmer.

The American pika is no polar bear, but the arguments may be the same.

U.S. Curbs Use of Species Act in Protecting Polar Bear
Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times 8 May 09;

The Obama administration said Friday that it would retain a wildlife rule issued in the last days of the Bush administration that says the government cannot invoke the Endangered Species Act to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases threatening the polar bear and its habitat.

In essence, the decision means that two consecutive presidents have judged that the act is not an appropriate means of curbing the emissions that scientists have linked to global warming.

The bear was listed as a threatened species under the act last May. But the special rule, adopted in December, said this designation did not give the Interior Department the authority to limit greenhouse gases outside the bears’ Arctic range.

In announcing Friday that the rule would stand, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “The single greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice due to climate change.” But, Mr. Salazar said, the global risk from greenhouse gases, which are generated worldwide, requires comprehensive policies, not a patchwork of agency actions carried out for particular species.

“It would be very difficult for our scientists to be doing evaluations of a cement plant in Georgia or Florida and the impact it’s going to have on the polar bear habitat,” Mr. Salazar said. “I just don’t think the Endangered Species Act was ever set up with that contemplation in mind.”

“I do think what makes sense is for us to move forward with climate change and energy legislation,” he added. “It is a signature issue of these times.”

Environmental groups have turned in recent years to a variety of legal tools, including the endangered species law, as a strategy to force government agencies to rein in emissions that scientists say are the dominant cause of recent warming.

This year, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency, prodded by a lawsuit, agreed under the Clean Water Act to start assessing the risks posed by the main greenhouse gas emission, carbon dioxide, as it is absorbed in seawater.

And only this week, also in response to a lawsuit, the Interior Department announced that a study was being undertaken to assess whether another mammal, the diminutive American pika, should be listed as threatened because of climate change.

The administration’s decision to retain the polar bear rule appears to signal President Obama’s willingness to let such suits play out in the courts as broader policies are developed to fight global warming.

Environmentalists who had been pressing the White House to drop the Bush-era rule criticized the decision, predicting that the rule would ultimately be deemed illegal in the courts.

“The action taken by Salazar today, and the spin on that action, is every bit as cynical, abusive and antiscientific as the Bush administration,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of several environmental groups that have sued to challenge the rule.

Some critics of the decision said it contradicted the approach the administration took when it chose to pursue restrictions on greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That measure, which applies to national air pollution standards, is also not a perfect fit for a globally dispersed gas like carbon dioxide, they said.

Yet Democratic lawmakers, dozens of whom had signed a letter to Mr. Salazar urging that the rule be dropped, were largely silent on Friday. They are pushing hard for climate legislation limiting greenhouse gases and are still working out details with Mr. Obama.

Republicans in Congress and industry representatives had argued that without the rule, any proposed housing development, power plant or other project requiring a government permit could face a review of how its emissions might harm not only polar bears but eventually a list of other species that could be imperiled by climate change.

Jack N. Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, endorsed Friday’s move by the administration, saying it would provide “greater regulatory certainty not only to the oil and natural gas industry but also to all U.S. manufacturers.”

Some environmental campaigners offered a mixed view of the situation.

John Kostyack, executive director for wildlife conservation and global warming at the National Wildlife Federation, criticized the decision to retain the rule, which he said falsely asserted that there was no direct link between specific greenhouse gas emissions and the decline in the polar bear’s habitat.

But Mr. Kostyack said there was no way that the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for carrying out the Endangered Species Act, could handle the burden of trying to police emissions.

In addition to conventional threats, a vital focus for wildlife managers should be figuring out how to help vulnerable species adapt to climate stresses, he said.

“The last thing we want to do,” he said, “is saddle them with solving the causes of global warming, too.”