Anchorage Daily News

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has declined an invitation to explain to a U.S. Senate committee why no decision has been made on additional protections for polar bears.

The deadline for a decision on listing polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act was Jan. 9. Conservation groups more than three year ago petitioned to list polar bears as threatened because their habitat, sea ice, is shrinking from global warming.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, on Thursday asked Kempthorne to appear at an April hearing.

"It is time for the Interior Secretary to answer questions about the administration's continued foot-dragging on the polar bear listing," she said in a statement.

Kempthorne on Friday declined in a letter sent by Lyle Laverty, an assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks.

Laverty said Kempthorne on Monday had offered to testify before the committee after a decision is made on polar bears, and to update Boxer privately on progress toward a decision.

But Laverty reiterated that Kempthorne would seek a mutually agreeable date for a hearing only after a decision is made.

Boxer on Friday called the offer for a phone briefing and a committee appearance after the decision "wholly inadequate."

"A hearing is urgently needed because the department is currently in violation of the Endangered Species Act and is already the subject of a lawsuit filed by conservation groups to compel a final decision," Boxer wrote to Kempthorne.

She said the department only proposed the polar bear for listing after it was required to do so under a settlement agreement.

"As Secretary of Interior, you have a responsibility to the people to answer questions before the oversight committee on this serious breach of the Department's duty to follow the law and protect the magnificent polar bear from the threat of extinction," she wrote.

The original petition to list polar bears as threatened was submitted in February 2005 by the Center for Biological Diversity. Conservation groups have accused the Bush administration of delays for nearly that long. A polar bear listing, they say, could delay plans for outer continental shelf oil and natural gas leases in polar bear habitat off Alaska's coast. They also say a polar bear recovery plan could trigger agency review of new sources of greenhouse gases that contribute to warming.

When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service missed the initial 90-day review deadline, conservation groups sued in December 2005.

A year later, in December 2006, the agency published a 35-page recommendation in the Federal Register that polar bears be listed. Under the law, the agency then had until Jan. 9 to take public comment and additional scientific study.

The U.S. Geological Survey added nine studies in September, including one that concluded polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050 because of warming.

Summer sea ice in the Arctic last year shrank to about 1.65 million square miles, the lowest level in 38 years of satellite record- keeping and nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030.

Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said in January his agency had never made an endangered species decision connected to climate change. He said it was more important to "do it right and have it explained properly to the public" than to meet the deadline.

He also said he expected a decision by Kempthorne within a month.

In February, the Minerals Management Service, another arm of the Interior Department, held an offshore oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea, the habitat of one of two Alaska populations of polar bears.

The sale drew high bids of nearly $2.7 billion on 2.76 million acres within an area about the size of Pennsylvania off Alaska's northwest coast.

The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace on March 10 sued the Interior Department, asking a federal court in San Francisco to order administration officials to make a polar bear decision.

In response to conservation groups, the Interior Department's inspector general this month also announced a preliminary investigation into why the department had not made its listing decision.

ADVERTISEMENT