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<p>AP) -- Nine polar bears were observed in one day swimming in open ocean off Alaska's northwest coast, an increase from previous surveys that may indicate warming conditions are forcing bears to make riskier, long-distance swims to stable sea ice or land.</p>

The state of Alaska has sued the U.S. government, arguing that listing polar bears as a threatened species will hurt Alaskan oil and gas exploration, fisheries and tourism. The lawsuit, filed on Monday in federal court in Washington, seeks the withdrawal of a May 14 decision to list the big Arctic bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because climate change is melting their sea ice habitat. "We believe that the ... decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said in a statement. Polar bears...

August 4, 2008, Fairbanks, Alaska – Governor Sarah Palin announced today the State of Alaska has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This action follows written notice given more than 60 days ago to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior and Director Dale Hall of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asking that the regulation listing the polar bear as threatened be withdrawn.“We believe that the Service’s decision to list...

A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles through near-freezing water to reach Iceland was shot by local police - just in case it posed a danger to humans. The death of the bear, thought to be the first to reach Iceland in about 15 years, caused a public outcry from animal lovers, the Guardian reported. A police spokesperson said that it would not have been possible to sedate the bear. "There was fog up in the hills and we took the decision to kill the bear before it could disappear into the fog," police spokesman Petur Bjornsson. Iceland’s...

Alaska Suing U.S. Gov't over extra Polar-Bear Safeguards Written by Reuters Thursday, 22 May 2008 The state of Alaska is suing the U.S. government to stop it listing the polar bear as a threatened species. Gov. Sarah Palin says an endangered-species designation will slow development in her state. The Republican governor has argued that the ice-dependent bear, the first mammal granted Endangered Species Act listing because of global warming, does not need additional protections, as mandated by U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. " We believe that the listing was unwarranted and that it's unprecedented to list a currently healthy...

SPECIES STATUS: Unreliable data, threat to energy development cited. By DAN JOLING The Associated Press The State of Alaska will sue to challenge the recent listing of polar bears as a threatened species, Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday. She and other Alaska elected officials fear a listing will cripple oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat off the state's northern and northwestern coasts.

US lists polar bear as threatened species By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 3 minutes ago Government officials say the Interior Department has decided to protect the polar bear as a threatened species because of global warming. The officials told The Associated Press the bears are threatened by the decline in Arctic sea ice. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the official announcement was to come from Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. He scheduled a news conference Wednesday. The action comes a day before a court-imposed deadline on deciding whether the bear should be put under the protection of...

January 25, 2008 Dear President Bush: On behalf of Property Rights Alliance (PRA), I write to urge you to halt the movement to list the polar bear as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This move, proposed by Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, would mark the first time a species is added to the ESA due to global warming. As you know, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 remains in dire need of reform. In over thirty years, the success rate of its main objective, to promote species recovery, was less than one percent. The original...

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...

Knut, the once-cute celebrity polar bear turned vicious killer, is at the center of a controversy over his brutal slaughter of ten carp at the Berlin Zoo. The massive polar bear, who has lived at the zoo since birth, apparently fished the carp out of the moat surrounding him and ripped them to shreds in front of several disgusted zoo patrons. One of Germany's top newspapers, Bild, ran the headline "Knut Embroiled in Carp Scandal," and featured an article which quoted animal rights groups who criticized zoo officials for placing live animals within Knut's reach.

Stuart Brown describes Norbert Rosing's striking images of a wild polar bear coming upon tethered sled dogs in the wilds of Canada 's Hudson Bay:The photographer was sure that he was going to see the end of his dogs when the polar bear wandered in, but The Polar Bear returned every night that week to play with the dogs.

Germany's celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of visitors. Critics say Berlin Zoo should not have put live fish inside Knut's enclosure. But German media report that the carp were put there to eat up algae. There is speculation that hand-reared Knut killed the carp just for fun. A new polar bear cub - Flocke - made her public debut at Nuremberg Zoo on Tuesday, shown live on television. The zoo is expecting up to 25,000 visitors daily, eager to see Flocke (German...

Citizens United Proudly Announces: Don't Trust the Polar Bear: A Parody Ad The Polar Bears are now candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Some environmental groups are claiming that the Polar Bears are in danger of extinction caused by future global warming. This is dangerous and possibly an extremely costly mistake. Currently global population levels of these mammoth bears are healthy. Not only that, but their population has doubled since 1964. In the 1960's population levels hovered near 10,000, but today they number as many as 25,000. The U.S. even produced a study where they found that polar...

Environmentalists welcomed a bill introduced Thursday by the chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming that would delay the sale of land in Alaska for oil exploration. They believe the Department of Interior has delayed classifying the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act until after they can sell this land, which is also polar bear habitat. "The only thing keeping pace with the melting of the sea ice is the breakneck speed with which the Department of the Interior is rushing to approve oil and gas activities in polar bear habitat," said Kassie Siegel,...

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Citing the complexity of the decision, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Monday it would not meet a deadline for a recommendation on listing polar bears as a threatened species due to global warming under the federal Endangered Species Act. The deadline for a listing decision by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is Wednesday. A listing could trigger restrictions on development that affect polar bears or their habitat. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency hopes to have a recommendation within weeks so that Kempthorne can announce his decision within...

I saw that Coca-Cola is promoting the movie [<a href="http://zenit.org/article-21008?l=english">What Every Parent Should Know About "The Golden Compass"</a>], and I wrote to them to express my feelings about it -- including mentioning that the villains are called "The Magisterium" in the movie. Here is the response I got: "We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concerns. "The Golden Compass movie is a story about friendship, love, loyalty, tolerance, courage and responsibility. This movie also provides an opportunity for Coca-Cola to help raise awareness about climate change and the perilous state of the polar bear. "We do not believe that...

Governor Sarah Palin on Friday called on Congressman Brad Miller to use scientific information, not political rhetoric, to set important public policy issues. Miller recently tried to undermine the State of Alaska's April 2007 comments on the proposed listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. He attempted to discredit one of 54 studies the State had cited. The study was one of many supporting Alaska's position that polar bears should not be listed. The State concluded the best available scientific and commercial data do not demonstrate that the polar bear is likely to become endangered in...

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- The show is over: The Berlin zoo's fast-growing polar bear cub, Knut, won't be appearing anymore with the keeper who raised him. Thomas Doerflein, above, said he remains on hand for Knut but will no longer play in public with him. 1 of 2 The zoo said Monday that it has ended 7-month-old Knut's twice-daily public appearances with keeper Thomas Doerflein. The playful pair have delighted audiences since Knut -- then an irresistibly cute 20-pound cub -- made his first public appearance in late March. Now nearing about 110 pounds, the boisterous bear, who will remain...

Abandoned baby polar bear is 'better off dead' than raised in zooLast updated at 18:04pm on 19th March 2007The Berlin Zoo's abandoned polar bear cub Knut looks cute, cuddly and has become a front-page media darling, but animal rights activists insisted he would be better off dead than raised by humans. When Knut was born last December his mother ignored him, zoo officials intervened and chose to raise him themselves "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws," animal rights activist Frank Albrecht told the mass-circulation Bild, which has featured regular full-color photo...

Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA) is encouraging the U.S. government and the public to act now to protect polar bears from the life-threatening effects of melting sea ice in the arctic. In a letter to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the Alliance supported the FWS’ proposal to list polar bears as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. ... 15 years ago it was poachers. They told us none of them would make it through that! And given the choice between being hunted by helicopter by four rednecks with assault rifles, or trying to...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea may be turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice keep them from getting to their natural food, a new study by American and Canadian scientists has found.

RESOLUTE, Nunavut — Bob Hudson says he has played in the Rose Bowl, jumped out of airplanes, scuba dived off Fiji and stalked bighorn sheep in the Rockies. But for all the excitement of his 67 years, there was one thrill he still craved: hunting polar bear in the high Canadian Arctic. He sold his beloved Jaguar XKE on eBay for $26,000 to do it. After heavy wind and snow ruined his hunt in April, he took another $14,000 out of his retirement account for a return trip. "Life is short," Mr. Hudson joked. "The last check you write should...

Polar bears are cute. Just ask the marketing executives at Coca-Cola which used animated polar bears to hawk their wares in recent years. Bears, pandas, lions and elephants are "charismatic megafauna" -- meaning basically cute animals that people care about. If you want to sell a product, or a cause, just tie it to one of these animals and you've got the attention of millions of people; kids and adults alike. Thus, environmental alarmists have made much of research claiming the Arctic's great white bear faces extinction from human-caused global warming. Snails, snakes and spiders withering in the sun just...

IVUJIVIK, Quebec, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A Canadian woman this week fought off a polar bear and saved her son and two other children from harm, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported Friday. Lydia Angiyou, 41, of Ivujivik, a small community on the northern coast of Quebec, says she and her sons encountered the bear Wednesday. "'My boy, my boy, my boy is going to be killed, nothing I can do,'" she told the CBC, describing what raced through her mind. "But I started yelling and after that I felt better when he was far, the boy was far." Angiyou said...

One worried bear - an apt symbol of the grim news from the planet's twin sentinels By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 30/09/2005) The white wastes at the Poles are often called the planet's sentinels; they provide an early warning system that will reveal what is in store for the rest of the world. For decades, scientists have predicted that if the effects of global warming took hold, they would first be measurable at the frozen extremes, where the impacts would be felt with a rapidity and intensity unlike anywhere else. The reason the Poles are a litmus of climate...

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A Canadian man was awarded a Carnegie Medal on Monday for an act seemingly pulled straight from the tall tales of the American frontier. Dr. Eric Fortier, 34, used a pocket knife to attack a polar bear on Canada's Baffin Island, just south of the Arctic Circle, to save two friends who were being mauled. "All of the research and all of the preparation I did leading up to the trip gave no indication that there were bears in the Soper (River) valley where we were canoeing," he said. Fortier, an orthodontist, learned that there was...

A polar bear has killed the last villager on Russia's Vrangel island off the northern Chukotka peninsula, scientists at a local reserve said today. The reserve's workers attempted to save Vasilina Alpaun, who was attacked on her own doorstep, but were too late. The Ushakovskoye village had been abandoned since 1997, when its inhabitants were moved to the peninsula to make way for the bear reserve, but Alpaun, 25, returned to her old home shortly afterwards. Bears roam free on the island and are rarely aggressive, the reserve's director Leonid Bove said, adding that the woman most likely provoked the...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Paint the polar bear purple and the crowds will come. That seems to be the lesson a zoo in Mendoza has learned, after its 23-year-old bear Pelusa was sprayed with an antiseptic spray that turned her normally white fur a dark shade of violet. The unusual color - a temporary side effect of the treatment for dermatitis - has turned the aging bear into a minor celebrity in Argentina and prompted thousands of schoolchildren and tourists to make their way to the Jardin Zoologico de Mendoza in the western city beneath the snow-capped Andes. "We never...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Paint the polar bear purple and the crowds will come.That seems to be the lesson a zoo in Mendoza has learned, after its 23-year-old bear Pelusa was sprayed with an antiseptic spray that turned her normally white fur a dark shade of violet.The unusual color — a temporary side effect of the treatment for dermatitis — has turned the aging bear into a minor celebrity in Argentina and prompted thousands of schoolchildren and tourists to make their way to the Jardin Zoologico de Mendoza in the western city beneath the snow-capped Andes.“We never thought she would...

Paint the polar bear purple and the crowds will come. That seems to be the lesson a zoo in Mendoza has learned, after its 23-year-old bear Pelusa was sprayed with an antiseptic spray that turned her normally white fur a dark shade of violet. The unusual color — a temporary side effect of the treatment for dermatitis — has turned the aging bear into a minor celebrity in Argentina and prompted thousands of schoolchildren and tourists to make their way to the Jardin Zoologico de Mendoza in the western city beneath the snow-capped Andes. "We never thought she would get...

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