In a Dec. 12 Compass piece, Attorney General Dan Sullivan questioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and stated that the act will impact development here in Alaska. I would like to answer those questions and address those concerns.
It's true that world polar bear populations did recover from extreme overharvest in the 1950s and 1960s, largely thanks to the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation and Management of Polar Bears signed by the five Arctic nations that established frameworks for harvest management. The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was the management framework applied in the United States and the protections the polar bear now enjoys under the ESA are not remarkably different from those it had under the MMPA since 1973.
To say that polar bears are "thriving" today, however, is misleading. The most recent meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Polar Bear Specialist Group reported that, among those subpopulations of polar bears for which there is adequate data to identify a trend, only one is currently increasing, while eight are declining and three are stable. (In Canada's Western Hudson Bay, for example, population declines have been directly linked to loss of ice habitat due to climate change.)
That said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to list the polar bear as threatened was based on the best available science. It was subjected to extensive oversight through the peer review process and was supported by polar bear species and climate change experts from nations across the range of the bear.
Many people fear that Endangered Species Act listings will curtail development in Alaska, but there is no evidence that this ever has been or will be the case. Keep in mind that there have been federally listed species (and some with designated critical habitat) in Alaska for years -- from bowhead whales to spectacled and Steller's eiders -- and yet oil and gas exploration and other developmental activities have continued and expanded.
More than 1,000 ESA consultations (project reviews) have been conducted in Alaska since 2006 (most of which were completed through the informal consultation process), and none has caused a single project to be stopped, abandoned or significantly altered.
The Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has an excellent record of working with developers in our state to enable progress while protecting the species under our trust. The oil and gas industry has, in particular, proven to be a valuable, concerned and conscientious partner in conservation.
In the case of the polar bear, for example, we've worked with industry through the incidental (unintentional) take program to minimize bear-human interactions while allowing development to continue. As part of this program, we require monitoring information that has increased our understanding of polar bear behavior and biology. We've also worked with industry to develop more accurate means of locating denning polar bears and guidelines to avoid disturbance of denning females.
The simple fact is that development and the protection of threatened and endangered species can and do coexist in Alaska, precisely because of these cooperative efforts and in concert with the careful and prudent application of the Endangered Species Act.
Geoffrey L. Haskett is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Alaska regional director.
By GEOFFREY L. HASKETT