Anchorage Daily News

The head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the agency hopes to decide within a month whether polar bears deserve Endangered Species Act protection. Conservation groups on Wednesday took legal steps to hold him to his word.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace submitted a formal notice to federal agencies in Washington, D.C., of their intent to sue the Bush administration for missing the deadline to decide whether polar bears will be listed due to effects of global warming.

A formal notice must be sent before a lawsuit may be filed in federal court. The deadline for Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision on listing was Wednesday.

Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity said missing the deadline was illegal and unjustified.

"Endangered Species Act listing decisions must be based only on science, and the scientists have finished their work on the polar bear listing," she said.

The Bush administration, she said, has established a pattern of having political appointees rewrite scientific conclusions. The Fish and Wildlife Service in November reversed seven rulings that had denied increased protection for animals. An investigation found the actions were tainted by political pressure from Julie MacDonald, a former deputy assistant secretary who resigned in May. Environmental groups are pushing for a review of another 55 proposed listings.

Fish and Wildlife Service director Dale Hall announced Monday that the deadline for a polar bear decision would not be met in part because of the complexity of the issue. The agency has never declared a species threatened or endangered because of climate change, he said. The research effort has been taxing and challenging, he said.

The U.S. Geological Survey in September submitted nine research reports affecting the polar decision. One concluded that two-thirds of the world's polar bears, including the entire population in Alaska, will be killed off by 2050 because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic.

The Fish and Wildlife Service reopened the public comment period afterward and the agency is considering those comments as well as the research, Hall said. The agency hopes to have a recommendation within weeks so that Kempthorne could announce a decision on polar bear listing within a month, he said.

"Endangered" means a species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. The "threatened" listing proposed for polar bears is one step below, a category that means a species is likely to become endangered.

Polar bears are considered marine mammals because they spend most of their lives on sea ice. They use ice to hunt their main prey, ringed seals.

RECORD MELTDOWN

Summer 2007 set a record low for sea ice in the Arctic with just 1.65 million square miles, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000.

Almost three years have passed since the polar bear listing petition was submitted in February 2005. Siegel was the lead author.

The groups first sued the Bush administration in December 2005 when the Fish and Wildlife Service missed its first deadline to respond.

The agency responded to the lawsuit in February 2006 and determined that protection of polar bears "may be warranted." That triggered a full status review of the species and the proposal on Jan. 9, 2007, to list the species as threatened. Kempthorne a year ago cited thinning sea ice as a major problem for the animals and expressed concern that polar bear habitat may be melting.

CALCULATED DELAY?

The conservation groups said delays in listing other species have been used to rewrite conclusions of federal scientists.

"The science confirms that the polar bear is endangered, but the Bush administration continues to downplay the danger of global warming and delay any action to address the issue," said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace USA.

The conservation groups can go to court 60 days after filing the notice to sue. They can move sooner if they can show a delay poses a substantial risk to the species.

"We believe that exception applies but we're taking it day by day," Siegel said.

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