Delay in Bush Administration Polar Bear Policy Stirs Probe
The Interior Department’s inspector general has begun a preliminary investigation into why the department has delayed for nearly two months a decision on listing the polar bear as threatened because of the loss of Arctic sea ice.
A recommendation to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was to have been made in early January by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether to declare the bear threatened. But when the deadline came, the agency said it needed another month, a timetable that also was not met.
A spokesman for the department’s inspector general’s office said a case had been opened in response to a letter from several environmental groups. He said the preliminary inquiry would determine whether a full-fledged investigation is warranted.
“The letter had specific allegations … (so) we started an initial inquiry,” said Kris Kolesnik, associate inspector general for external affairs. “If the initial inquiry produces something that warrants us to take further action, that’s when we open an investigation.”
Scientists have said the bear is under a growing threat because of the significant loss of Arctic sea ice due to global warming.
The Interior Department in early 2007 proposed listing the bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, triggering a year of scientific review. By law a recommendation was to have been made by the Fish and Wildlife Service by Jan. 9, a year after the initial action.
The letter to Inspector General Earl Devaney, signed by six environmental groups, alleges that Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall violated the agency’s scientific code of conduct and the Endangered Species Act in delaying the decision after all of the scientific data had already been developed and sent to Washington before Christmas.
The code is aimed at preventing inappropriate political influence as the agency administers the Endangered Species Act. The code came into being because of another inspector general’s report that detailed widespread political interference on species protection decisions that led to the resignation of a senior Interior Department official in May.
Hall has told members of Congress that the delay on the polar bear decision was needed to make sure the decision was in a form easily understood. He has strongly denied any political interference in the decision. He said the agency’s recommendation, when given to Kempthorne, would be based “on the science in front of us.”
The decision on whether to list the polar bear for protection under the Endangered Species Act is one of the most complex - and possibly far reaching - actions facing the department. For the first time an endangered species decision would link an animal’s protection to the impacts of global warming.
In September a series of reports from the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that as much as two-thirds of the polar bear population could disappear by mid-century because of the loss of sea ice attributed to climate change.
Hall has said analyzing those studies and subsequent public comments has contributed to the delay in making a decision.
Environmentalists have argued that politics is involved. They cite the decision to proceed with an auction for oil and gas leases in early February in the Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. The sea ice in those waters provides a key habitat for polar bears.
“They delayed (the bear decision) to get them beyond the Chukchi Sea leasing. And here we are on March 7, another 30 days and nothing has happened,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and a former head of the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clinton administration.
“We certainly have something much more than science going on,” said Clark, who was among those who signed the letter to the inspector general’s office.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who held a hearing in January on the polar bear listing, said “this internal investigation is needed and long overdue.
“Given this administration’s closeness with the oil industry, its history of politicizing scientific decisions … I am wary of the integrity of this process,” Markey said in a statement.
© 2008 Associated Press
Just about every species is endangered these days.
too bad we’re so concerned with baseball players using steroids.
but ya gotta look like you’re doing SOMETHING, i suppose.
been the wrong “somethings” since 2000, unfortunately.
Alaska’s Republican leaders OK’d the killing of wolves from planes and helicopters with high-power rifles. There’s nothing the right-wing imperialists love more than to kill and destroy anything, be it humans or animals. It makes the sadistic bastards feel powerful, I guess.
Do we even really KNOW that the polar bear is threatened? Or is this just another knee jerk reaction to a problem with seems to be more political than scientific.
I think it’s fairly plain that these fascist bastards will kill Arabs, eskimos, polar bears, latin american reformers or anything and anyone else that gets in the way of their mission from god- which seems to be the power of the control of all oil on the planet at $106 a barrel.
This makes me sick. An article calling this political interference was posted on one of the websites I read daily in January, noting how the Bush Administration was doing a last ditch effort to throw money to its friends/coherts by selling them leases to the oil rich Chukchi Sea. I was so angry when I saw that the next day, the article had been pulled from the news-on-line agency this website gotten the article from. I sent e-mails to CBS, NBC, ABC, DFA, Lou Dobbs, CNN and only received 3 replys back saying they would further investigate, but they couldn’t post anything at this time do to the severe accusations I was making (They were sure I would understand!)
I knew there were several Congressman involved, trying to push the Polar Bear endangered act thru so as to stop the selling off of the leases, since it would diffinately endanger them, but as you can see, they were unsuccessful. Now its too late. What good is have news agencies that do not go after news???
BELOW IS THE WEBSITE OF THE ORIGINAL NEWS ARTICLE AND THE E-MAIL I SENT TO THE NEWS AGENCIES ASKING FOR THEM TO LOOK INTO THIS. It gives a brief over-view of what the article contained.
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3359083.ece
There is a frantic act being committed by this administration in its final days to sell gas and oil rights in the Arctic to companies before they leave office. The problem with this is that they are blocking a report that took 6 years to develop that would guide the countries that boarder the Arctic so that they could proceed safely for the ecology and Global Climate. The US has frustrated all countries bound by the Arctic circle because they had all agreed to go slow, to not sell any land/sea to oil or gas companies until safe measures were identifed, hence this 6 year study. The Bush administration is not only blocking the release of this report here, but is selling the land in the Chukchi Sea above Alaska. Congress was trying to see the impact this would have on the polar bear and other wild life in the area, since the chance of a spill is 40% or greater. Congress and the House of Representatives are both aware of this selling of the last prestine wilderness left on this globe. Please, research this, report on this, put presure on this administration to stop bastardizing our land for the sake of the almight dollar in their hands and the hands of their friends. All other countries involved in the committment to proceed thru safety are very frustrated with the US. Many scientists from different countries were involved in the study to determine the impact on the Arctic area and the Global Climate as a whole, along with spieces population, especially the Polar Bear, which may go extinct.
I first read about this in The Indepentent online, the next day the article, “Race to the Arctic” shows a 404 Error report when you try to link to it. I’ve enclosed it anyway. http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3359083.ece The American people should know what this administration is doing on and in the name of its behalf.
lakota1445,
Thank you.
Try this:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20050105/ai_n9696485/pg_1
I will be back.
Here’s another one:
As Race for Oil-Rich Arctic Heats Up, Inuit Stake Their Claim, Too
By Colin Woodard
The Christian Science Monitor
Tuesday 25 September 2007
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/092507EB.shtml
And this:
March 8, 2007
Memos Tell Officials How to Discuss Climate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/08/washington/08polar.html
Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so.
In December, the Bush administration, facing a deadline under a suit by environmental groups, proposed listing polar bears throughout their range as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the warming climate is causing a summertime retreat of sea ice that the bears use for seal hunting.
Environmentalists are trying to use such a listing to force the United States to restrict heat-trapping gases that scientists have linked to global warming as a way of limiting risks to the 22,000 or so bears in the far north.
It remains unclear whether such a listing will be issued. The Fish and Wildlife Service this week held the first of several hearings in Alaska and Washington on the question.
Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading “Foreign Travel — New Requirement — Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,” the cover note said:
“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”…..(continued)
***
People are watching.
Yep the gold rush is on- ain’t it great maybe we can melt the artic faster by nuking it- just a few scientific precision missles to have a controled burn- here’s a press release from the fine government employee wistleblowers group PEER on certain other mammals that are endangered as these oil lease sales proceed this summer-
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=992
How hot will the globe have to get before the lice at the head of our government expire?
Hey gang here’s the mother of all regular tv network investigative programs on the big money Alaskan Oil Scandel/PBS
http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/347/index.html
It’s the same old Euro/Genocidal policy of discovery rearing it’s ugly head again. The Inuit People have lived on these lands for millennia. Are they not the true owners? Of course they are. No Country has the right to claim territory on the basis it’s ability to militarily and administratively hold and control the lands. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was passed in 2007. This is not the year 1492.
“Inappropriate political influence?”
The bush White House has predicated an entire presidency, and an entire administration based on “Inappropriate political influence.” If it were not for “Inappropriate political influence,” there wouldn’t even be a bush presidency.
Jeez, you think this sounds familiar with other statements cheney/bush have made in the past? Remember - “We’ll stay in Iraq as long as it takes, not a day longer.” Read - “We’ll stay in Iraq until we gain total control of the oil (then we’ll stay there forever).” The delay in the listing of the polar bear is so obvious it’s almost not even news.
“Only after the last tree has been cut down…the last river has been poisoned…the last fish caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”
Cree Indian Prophesy
Hope they don’t kill our Zoo’s two polar bears. Probably won’t, polar bear liver is poisonous.
Wonder if there will be a Senate investigation about Paris Hilton? If the polar bears become extinct, the house cat sized Arctic fox will go too, they rely upon food from the bear’s kills.
Did you know that all polar bears are left pawed? That’s a fact, they always hook their prey with their left paw and always toss scraps to any nearby, awaiting fox with their left paw. When stalking a basking seal, they cover their black nose with snow to hide it, as they slowly creep and slide across the ice. Amazing animals.