The US government agency responsible for including the polar bear on its list of endangered species faced a new legal challenge on Monday over its failure to protect the Arctic animal.
Environmental groups were ready to sue the administration of US President George W. Bush in federal court in California, claiming the Fish and Wildlife Service is in breach of its own mandate.
A decision on classifying the polar bear as threatened because of climate change was due to have been made by Jan. 9, a year after consultations began on the issue. Officially, the service says it is still reviewing technical data and more than 670,000 comments on the issue, but its own inspector-general has announced a preliminary investigation into the delay to determine whether a full investigation is warranted.
Environmental campaigners widely believe the decision is being held up by the administration so it can complete sales of valuable oil and gas leases in coastal waters in Alaska that are considered prime bear habitat.
"The Bush administration seems intent on slamming shut the narrow window of opportunity we have to save polar bears," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of three groups, including Greenpeace and the National Resource Defense Council, involved in the action.
With the polar bear a leading symbol of the planet's deepening environmental crisis, its inclusion on the endangered list is important to groups seeking to force the Bush administration to recognize climate change as a consequence of manmade atmospheric pollution.
While US law requires an endangered species listing decision to be made strictly on the basis of scientific information regarding the foreseeable future, groups believe that recent sales of oil and gas leases in the Chukchi Sea, as well as expectations of an energy and mining boom across the entire Arctic region, are the administration's motivation.
"This administration has listed fewer species than any other -- ever -- under the Endangered Species Act," Siegel said. "Time and again we have seen political interference in listing proposals that are supposed to be based on science."
But polar bears are difficult to count in the wild and there is disagreement over population numbers. While Alaskan political figures maintain the bears' population is steady, a recent US Geological Survey report stated that unless greenhouse gas emissions were curbed significantly, two-thirds of the world's polar bears, including all Alaska bears, would disappear by 2050. In theory, declaring the bear threatened could affect planning and policymaking across the US.
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