SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
polar bears
The US Should Protect Polar Bears, Not Turn Their Home Into an Oil Field
On the 50th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, it’s time for us to speak up for these struggling bears and use the law to protect them.
Feb 22, 2024
Apparently the U.S. Congress thought it was okay to break treaty obligations when they passed a rider that mandated two oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Biden administration is being forced to hold a second lease sale this year.
This plot to industrialize the Arctic refuge threatens a population of 500 polar bears that wander along the Beaufort Sea shore and den on the coastal plain of our largest and wildest refuge. While they can’t speak to Congress, they certainly have rights and laws that should protect them.
In January, pregnant polar bears are curled up in dens that they have dug out in snowdrifts. Soon they will give birth to one or two cubs in the dark, icy cold of winter. The newborn bears are about the size of a guinea pig and weigh only a pound. They are helpless and dependent on their mothers who nurse them for about three months in the den. Sensitive to noise and disturbance, polar bear mothers will abandon their cubs if startled by industrial noises that are associated with seismic trains and drilling rigs. The cubs will not survive if their mothers leave the den.
Polar bears have the right to survive.
Since 2008, the Southern Beaufort Sea population of threatened polar bears has been protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Over the past two decades their population has decreased by 40% because of the continued loss of sea ice habitat that they need for survival. More and more bears are denning on land because of the unstable nature of ocean ice or absence of it. Polar bears might be the largest land carnivore, but they are also a victim of climate change, showing us the catastrophic effects of our emissions each and every day they try to survive on vanishing ice floes.
In 1973 five Arctic nations signed the Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears to ensure that polar bear populations remained strong and healthy. One of the provisions of this multilateral treaty is that all nations will protect critical denning habitat for polar bears. Never before has the North Slope of Alaska been more critical for denning habitat than it is now. The United States needs to honor this polar bear treaty and protect the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge, not turn it into an oil field. After all, it’s a refuge, and these bears are in serious long-term danger of extinction.
When the Arctic refuge was established in 1980, the purposes were clear: to conserve fish and wildlife populations and habitats in their natural diversity including, but not limited to, the Porcupine caribou herd, polar bears, grizzly bears, muskox, Dall sheep, wolves, wolverines, and an array of migratory birds. A second purpose requires that the Secretary of Interior fulfill international treaty obligations of the United States with respect to fish and wildlife, including polar bears, and their habitats. The opportunity for continued subsistence uses by residents is to be provided, along with ensuring water quality and quantity.
Secretary Deb Haaland and the Biden administration have a duty to honor the original purposes of the Arctic refuge, to fulfill the obligations of the polar bear treaty, and to protect Beaufort Sea polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. Polar bears are also protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
With three laws and an international treaty that protect polar bears, and the fact that some of the Beaufort Sea bears den in a wildlife refuge, one would think these animals are safe. But not so—not if the 2017 Tax Act leasing mandate is unrightfully prioritized over these bedrock environmental laws and a long-standing international agreement.
On the 50th Anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, it’s time for us to speak up for these struggling bears and use the law to protect them. We should elevate their status from “threatened” to “endangered.” Polar bears are as awesome as the American condor and as magnificent as the humpback whale. They are loved by children all over the world and featured in stories and movies. Companies have used them in flashy animated ads.
Polar bears have the right to survive. Their plight is as clear as melting ice. The least we can do is protect the sensitive region where they give birth in the Arctic refuge and do everything we can to lower our global emissions.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Biden Interior Dept Denounced for Giving Big Oil Green Light to Harass Polar Bears, Walruses
"President Biden promised bold climate action, but this is business as usual. Polar bears and walruses deserve better."
Aug 04, 2021
Wildlife defenders on Wednesday denounced the Biden administration after the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a rule allowing fossil fuel companies operating in northern Alaska to harass polar bears and walruses while searching or drilling for oil and gas.
"The Arctic should be protected, not turned into a noisy, dirty oil field."
--Kristen Monsell, CBD
Responding to a request from the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the rule (pdf), which authorizes the "nonlethal, incidental, and unintentional harassment" of polar bears and Pacific walruses that "may result from oil and gas exploration, development, production, and transportation activities occurring for a period of five years."
The rule applies to drilling, seismic blasting, infrastructure construction and operation, and other activities.
The new authorization covers a massive swath of the Alaskan Arctic, including nearly eight million acres in the Beaufort Sea, as well as the area containing the Willow Master Development Plan, a multibillion-dollar ConocoPhillips project approved during the final months of former President Donald Trump's tenure and defended by the Biden administration.
The southern Beaufort Sea's polar bear population is one of the world's most imperiled, with only around 900 animals remaining, according to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), which says that "scientists have determined that the population cannot sustain any injuries or deaths from oil and gas activities."
According to CBD:
The heavy equipment used in seismic exploration and drilling activities can crush polar bears in their dens or scare denning polar bears out too early, leaving cubs to die of exposure or abandonment by their mothers. The noise generated by routine oil operations can disturb essential polar bear behavior and increase stress on the animals' when food may be scarce.
Walruses are also highly sensitive to human disturbance. Without summer sea ice for resting, walrus mothers and calves have been forced to come ashore, where they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when the animals are startled by noise.
"It's disturbing to see the Biden administration letting oil companies continue their assault on polar bears, walruses, and our climate," Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "The Arctic should be protected, not turned into a noisy, dirty oil field. President [Joe] Biden promised bold climate action, but this is business as usual. Polar bears and walruses deserve better."
The new rule comes as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced Tuesday that it will conduct another environmental review of oil and gas leasing in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said "multiple legal deficiencies" were found in a prior review by the Trump administration, which rushed to auction off fossil fuel drilling leases there in its final weeks.
On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order temporarily pausing new drilling on public lands, pending "a new, comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impacts of the oil and gas program."
In June, the Biden administration suspended some of the Arctic drilling leases auctioned at the end of Trump's term, a move welcomed as a step in the right direction by environmentalists and some Indigenous people.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Change: Mind-Blowing Warnings from Arctic and Antarctica
We all need to be worried.
Jul 27, 2020
2020 is continuing to bring deeply worrying climate news from both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
First the Arctic, where our climate emergency is playing out in real time, with devastating consequences.
Every day brings new horrors and new insights into how our climate emergency is driving the extreme weather.
I have already blogged recently that the region has quite literally, been on fire, and has been experiencing record temperatures and unprecedented fires.
But every day brings new horrors and new insights into how our climate emergency is driving the extreme weather.
Scientists from France, Germany, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, and the UK have been collaborating to examine whether and to what extent human-induced climate change has been causing the Arctic heatwave to intensity and become more likely.
The scientists conclusions are damning: They said, "the January to June 2020 prolonged heat was made at least 600 times more likely as a result of human-induced climate change."
They warned that the region, which is warming at least three times faster than the rest of the world, could experience a worse case scenario of seven degrees of warming by 2050.
They added, "by 2050 the Siberian region could expect to have temperatures increase by at least 2.5 degrees compared to 1900, but this increase could be as high as 7 degrees."
If this happens, the region as we know it will be no more, with a spiraling chaos of extreme heat, fires, methane releases, and the decimation of iconic species.
This extreme heat is impacting the sea ice. Yesterday an article in Mashable warned that the Arctic sea ice just crashed to an extreme, record low. In total, Mashable warned "Arctic sea ice is about 500,000 square kilometers (some 193,000 square miles) under the previous record low for this time of year."
Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the site, "right now it's quite extreme." He is not the only one worried. Meteorologist Simon Lee tweeted:
\u201cThe unprecedented disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic this summer is a mind-blowing manifestation of the changes we are causing to Earth's climate.\u201d— Dr Simon Lee (@Dr Simon Lee) 1595272064
The loss of sea ice is having a devastating impact on polar bears, who use it to hunt for seals.
A new study, published in Nature Climate Change, warns that under a business as usual scenario, polar bears could nearly be extinct by the end of the century, now only present in the Queen Elizabeth Islands, the northernmost cluster in Canada's Arctic.
"It's been clear for some time that polar bears are going to suffer under climate change," Peter Molnar, a biologist at the University of Toronto, and lead author of the study, told the Guardian. "Even if we mitigate emissions, we are still going to see some subpopulations go extinct before the end of the century."
The news from the South Pole, Antarctica, is equally depressing, with scientists discovering active leaks of methane, the most potent greenhouse gas, from the sea floor. This is deeply troubling as Antarctica is estimated to contain as much as a quarter of earth's marine methane reserves. If this escapes into the atmosphere it could seriously worsen our climate emergency.
Andrew Thurber, from Oregon State University, who led the research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said "It is not good news...The methane cycle is absolutely something that we as a society need to be concerned about. I find it incredibly concerning."
We all need to be worried. As the Independent added about the research, "as the climate crisis means ice shelves retreat, the release of methane from subsurface marine reservoirs is expected to become increasingly common."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular