VEEP

Palin Sued To Push Polar Bears Off Endangered List

by Mary Gilbert

Monday, Sept. 1, 2008


Polar bears, the cute and seemingly cuddly stars of Coca-Cola's holiday season commercials, inhabit the nation's northernmost reaches and also occupy a special place in the hearts of many Americans. But Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin thinks that Uncle Sam is being too soft on the gigantic beasts.

On Aug. 4, just weeks before John McCain tapped her as his running mate, Palin led her state in suing the Interior Department for overprotecting the bears by designating them as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

"She's like an Alaskan ostrich, burying her head in the tundra to avoid scientists' warnings," said Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "Her support for Big Oil's energy agenda blinds her to melting ice."

When Secretary Dirk Kempthorne added polar bears to Interior's list of threatened species in May, the department said the action was "based on the best available science, which shows the loss of ice threatens... polar bear habitat." Yet Palin had declared in a January New York Times column that "adding them to the list is the wrong move" because "there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future -- the trigger for protection under the Endangered Species Act."

The law actually defines "the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of [a species'] habitat or range" as a sufficient criterion for federal protection. And it is indisputable, says climate scientist Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, that the bears' stomping grounds are rapidly shrinking.

Arctic sea ice, where polar bears live and feed, is disappearing at an alarming rate because of climate change, Ekwurzel says. Last summer saw the greatest loss of sea ice ever recorded. Scientists recently reported finding a group of nine polar bears lost in the Arctic Sea 640 kilometers from land.

Kempthorne commissioned a series of U.S. Geological Survey studies after environmental groups petitioned to have the bear classified as endangered. The agency concluded in 2007 that sea ice is vanishing so quickly that two-thirds of the world's polar bears will disappear by mid-century -- adding that its projection might prove too conservative.

Ekwurzel said that ending federal protection of the polar bear, as Palin advocates, "would have a profound effect" on the future of the species.

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