Feds seek more time for decision on listing polar bears {Enviros go nuts....well, more nuts]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Department of the Interior wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in one of the animals' two U.S. habitats.

The Interior Department on Jan. 9 missed a deadline for a final decision, and three conservation groups sued. In the government response Thursday, Assistant Interior Secretary Lyle Laverty said the department needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing.

A spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity said the government's request falls outside requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

"These are not questions for attorneys," said Kassie Siegel, the principal author on the petition seeking protections for polar bears. "They're questions for scientists."

The petition seeks additional protections for polar bears because of the threat to their sea ice habitat from global warming.

In the court filing, Laverty tied the delay to "the complexity of the legal and scientific issues," including the need to review about 670,000 public comments and USGS reports.

Siegal said the request for more time is likely a tactic by political appointees to delay a decision until the Minerals Management Service can finish issuing offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest shore, home to one of two polar bear populations in Alaska, to further protect the leases from legal challenges.

The conservation groups said they would ask for an agency decision no later than a week after a court hearing May 8 before U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilkin in Oakland, Calif.

Alaska has the only two polar bear populations in the United States, the Beaufort Sea group off the state's north coast and the Chukchi Sea group, shared with Russia.

Summer sea ice last year shrank to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. A decision to list polar bears because of global warming could trigger a recovery plan that has consequences beyond Alaska. Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to review if they generate greenhouse gases that add to warming in the Arctic.

Yeah, polar bears are going extinct. At least if you ignore some of the other scientists in the field

“In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it’s 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent.” - Dr. Andrew Derocher, Univ or Alberta

“Polar bears, for example, survived several episodes of much warmer climate over the last 10,000 years than exists today. There is no evidence to suggest that the polar bear or its food supply is in danger of disappearing entirely with increased Arctic warming, regardless of the dire fairy-tale scenarios predicted by computer models.” - Evolutionary Biologist and Paleozoologist Dr. Susan Crockford of University of Victoria in Canada has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed academic journals

“We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period. This is telling us that despite the on-going warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don’t have to be quite so worried about the polar bear.” - Award-winning quaternary geologist Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson, a professor from the University of Iceland, has conducted extensive expeditions and field research in both the Arctic and Antarctic

“We don’t know what the future ice conditions will be, as there is apparently considerable uncertainty in the sea ice models regarding the timing and extent of sea ice loss. Also, polar bear populations are generally healthy and have increased worldwide over the last few decades,” - Biologist Dr. Matthew Cronin, a research professor at the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

“I think climate change is happening, but as far as the polar bear disappearing is concerned, I have never been more convinced that this is just scaremongering. People are deliberately seeking out skinny bears and filming them to show they are dying out. That’s not right,” - Naturalist Nigel Marven is a trained zoologist, botanist, and a UK wildlife documentary maker who spent three months studying and filming polar bears in Canada’s arctic in 2007.

“In warmer regions it takes far less effort to ensure survival. How did the polar bear survive the last warm period? … Look at the polar bear’s close relative, the brown bear. It is found across a broad geographic region, ranging from Europe across the Near East and North Asia, to Canada and the United States. Whether bears survive will depend on human beings, not the climate.” - Biologist Josef Reichholf, who heads the Vertebrates Department at the National Zoological Collection in Munich

“I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid. Churchill [in Northern Canada] is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears. They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears’ best interests at heart.” - Polar bear expert Dennis Compayre, formerly of the conservation group Polar Bears International, has studied the bears for almost 30 years in their natural habitat

“Why scare the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction when there is good evidence that there are now twice as many of these iconic animals, most doing well in the Arctic than there were 20 years ago?” - Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife

Man.....can’t you guys quit bringing up facts and get with the program? Saving the polars bears is agenda number one....anyone who says anything else...is a polar bear denier. Even if the entire grizzly bear population is killing off the polar bear population instead...we gotta act and kill off the grizzly bears to save the polar bears. Even if the entire population of Alaska is hindering and possibly killing the polar bears....we may have to move every Alaska citizen and even native American Indians....possibly to New Mexico for resettlement...to save the polar bears.

We gotta “SURGE” here....and save the polar bears...because its right...you know...right.

Well...maybe I have had too much caffeine and maybe I’ve had a six-pack of Mountain Dews in the last hour...but I’m ok...really.

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