Property Rights Alliance Opposes Inclusion of Polar Bear Under ESA

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 bill not only yielded poor results for endangered species, but also infringed upon the rights of property owners and their privately owned land. The ESA created an adversarial relationship between the property owner and the federal government, hindering the cooperation needed to produce successful results for species recovery.

The true intent of this push is not to save a threatened species, as studies have shown the polar bear population continues remain steady at upwards of 20,000 worldwide. Rather this is a politically motivated scheme to restrict access to land for exploration. Today, the ESA continues to be the most effective tool for special interest groups to usurp local land control and violate property rights. Provisions in the ESA require that any project that involves the federal government must meet the approval of the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) before the project can move forward. Since the proposed listing of polar bears in Arctic Alaska is the result of hypothesized global warming, any activity by property owners across the United States that allegedly affects climate change could be challenged by Department of the Interior (DOI) and FWS. This would put a halt to oil and gas exploration in the United States and threaten recreation, user access, grazing, mining, and many other uses on public and private land.

Allowing the listing of the polar bear to move forward would limit the potential of the economy and directly interfere with America’s entrepreneurial drive. There is no justification to grant polar bears federal ESA protection and all the regulatory land use control that comes with it.

This is all regarding ANWR, I think.

Designating the polar bear an endangered species would basically put anything which COULD endanger the species off limits. Take a high powered leftist envirowacko lawyer and ask him/her (hem?) to make a case and Katie bar the door - he/she/it will make it a world crisis!

H. Sterling Burnett of the National Center for Policy Analysis wrote earlier this year that it is a mistake to assume polar bears can’t adapt to a warmer climate:

Comprehensive research demonstrates that since the 1970s — while much of the world was warming — polar bear numbers increased dramatically to approximately 25,000 today (higher than at any time in the 20th century). Research conducted by the World Wildlife Fund shows that of the 20 distinct polar bear populations worldwide only two — accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total number of bears — are decreasing. Those populations are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region. By contrast, another two populations — about 13.6 percent of the total — are growing, and they live in areas were air temperatures have risen.

Evolutionary biologist and paleozoologist Susan Crockford, of Canada’s University of Victoria, points out that polar bears have historically thrived when temperatures were warmer than today’s — during the medieval warming 1,000 years ago and during the Holocene Climate Optimum 5,000 to 9,000 years ago.

Polar bears thrive during warmer climates because they are omnivores, like brown and black bears. Though seals are currently their primary food source, research shows that they have a varied diet and take advantage of other foods when those are available. Their diets can include fish, kelp, caribou, ducks, sea birds, the occasional beluga whale and musk ox and scavenged whale and walrus carcasses.

Mitchell Taylor also testified to the FWS that a modest warming may be beneficial to bears. It creates a better habitat for seals and would dramatically increase the growth of blueberries on which the bears like to gorge.

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