Feds to Designate Critical Habitat for Polar Bears

The Interior Department announced today that it has agreed to designate "critical habitat" for the recently-listed polar bear.

A spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the agency doesn't yet know what portion of the Chukchi Sea might be designated and noted that the federal government is coping with uncertainty about how much of the Arctic Ocean region may be free of ice in the summer in future years.

Because the Endangered Species Act prohibits federal government actions that could damage critical habitat, the decision could result in restrictions on future offshore oil drilling in the Arctic.

The announcement came as part of a settlement of a lawsuit challenging the Bush Administration's failure to designate critical habitat filed by several environmental advocacy organizations in March.

The lawsuit was filed in the federal district court in Oakland, CA. According to Kassie Siegel, a spokesperson for one of the environmental group plaintiffs, the critical habitat designation will be made next year. The government agreed to a June 30, 2009 deadline for the final specification of critical habitat for the polar bear.

Enviros Sue to Force Wolverine Listing

Environmentalists have challenged the Bush Administration's refusal to list the wolverine as an endangered or threatened species. In a complaint filed Sept. 30 in federal court in Missoula, MT, the plaintiffs argue that there is "substantial genetic discontinuity" between Canadian and U.S. populations of the mammal and no substantial migration or cross-breeding and thus that the American wolverine population is "discrete" and entitled to Endangered Species Act protection.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied a petition to list the wolverine in March on grounds that the species would survive even if all American individuals were extirpated because of genetic links between those wolverines and wolverines in Canada.

The case involves wolverines outside of Alaska.

Global climate change is an issue related to the fate of the wolverine, as the creature requires spring mountain snowfall to rear young.

Feds to Withdraw Wolf De-Listing?

The Associated Press reports that the Bush Administration plans to withdraw its ruling de-listing the Northern Rocky Mountains gray wolf.

If true, such a decision would mean that the wolves of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming would remain protected by the Endangered Species Act.

A federal judge in Montana ruled in July that the de-listing was unlawful.

Alaska Files Polar Bear Lawsuit

Alaska has filed its lawsuit challenging the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.

The listing, announced by the Interior Department in . . ., is based on a conclusion that the bear's habitat is being lost as ice melts in the Arctic.

According to a report in the Anchorage Daily News:

Polar bears rely on sea ice for hunting ringed seals. In recent years, summer sea ice has receded far beyond the relatively shallow, biologically rich waters of the outer continental shelf, giving polar bears less time in prime feeding areas.

The bear's numbers rebounded after the 1970s, but conservation groups contend that was in response to measures taken to stop over-hunting.

Polar bear researchers fear recent effects of the loss of sea ice on Alaska polar bear populations. A 2006 study by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded that far fewer polar bear cubs in the Beaufort Sea were surviving and that adult males weighed less and had smaller skulls than those captured and measured two decades previously - trends similar to observations in Canada's western Hudson Bay before a population drop.

However, Alaska authorities argue that the listing was not justified on the basis of
reliable scientific information.

Most experts on the ESA, however, disagree.

Should the Wolverine Be Put on the Endangered Species List?

The wolverine (Gulo gulo) was once a ubiquitous presence across the United States.

According to the Wolverine Foundation,

The historical North American distribution of the wolverine included the northern part of the continent southward to the northernmost tier of the United States from Maine to Washington state. It extended south along the Sierra-Cascade axis through Oregon into the southern Sierra Nevada in California and along the Rocky Mountains into Arizona and New Mexico. Records of the wolverine within the upper midwest apparently pre-date human settlement, with the animal most likely absent by the early 1900's. The wolverine has been extirpated from the northern plains states east of Montana.

In California, the historic range of the wolverine included much of the north coastal area and the Sierra Nevada. . . .

Wolverines likely occupied a wider variety of habitats during pre-settlement times as evidenced by historical presence in upper mid-western states, and fossil evidence of extant representatives in Great Basin habitats of southern Idaho. Human encroachment into historically occupied wolverine habitat may have forced the wolverine into its present distribution.

The Bush administration, disregarding the loss of range in this country and the decline of the species to no more than several hundred individuals in the northern Rockies, declined in March to list the wolverine as an endangered species. The Interior Department justified its decision on grounds that sufficient numbers of wolverines exist in Canada to make extinction unlikely.

Now the New York Times has weighed in with an editorial urging Bush to reconsider.

The paper specifically took aim at the administration's rationale that the animal is plentiful enough in other countries to preclude protection here:

If that logic — ignoring the health of an animal here if it is doing well elsewhere — had been allowed to prevail, many of the act’s notable successes, including preserving the grizzly bear and the American bald eagle, would never have happened.

Several environmental groups are considering a lawsuit challenging the administration's refusal to list the wolverine.

Judge Orders Gray Wolves Returned to Endangered Species List

The Rocky Mountain gray wolf is again an endangered species.

The population numbers haven't changed since the Bush Administration removed the species a few months ago. Instead, a federal judge in Montana issued an injunction Friday requiring the Interior Department to restore Canis lupus to protected status.

According to a New York Times article to be published in Saturday's editions, the court's decision was heavily swayed by the administration's decision to reverse course from an early refusal to allow Wyoming to put in place a management plan allowing extensive hunting.

According to a press release issued by Natural Resources Defense Council, one wolf per day has been killed, with mortality exceeding 100 animals, since the Bush Interior Department removed Endangered Species Act protections on March 28, 2008.

The gray wolf was originally listed as an endangered species in 1973, shortly after the Endangered Species Act became law. The species was eliminated from about 95 percent of its habitat in the United States by the 1930s after a lengthy, government-sponsored extermination campaign.

An Ice-Free North Pole This Year?

This summer could see the North Pole ice-free for the first time since the Pleistocene era, say scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Satellite data accumulated by CU's National Snow and Ice Data Center show that relatively young sea ice that is no more than about 60 inches deep and much more susceptible to melting away now comprises only 72 percent of the Arctic ice sheet. Using that estimate, scientists at the center see a 50 percent chance that ice at the highest point in the Arctic will melt by the summer's end.

Center research Andy Mahoney says the weather will determine whether the prediction turns out to be accurate.

"It will probably come down to how cloudy it is this summer," Mahoney told ABC News. "If there's clear skies and if atmospheric patterns resemble last year's, you're going to see a lot more melt."

The loss of Arctic sea ice would likely cause the planet's atmosphere to heat up even more because the ice pack bounces the sun's rays back into space. This reflective property, known as albedo, also prevents the rays from reaching the ocean, where heat is absorbed.

Therefore, a loss of sea ice results in warmer ocean waters, which in turn increases the melt of the ice even more.

"Losing the ice sheet means losing an important way of cooling down," Mahoney told ABC News. "As a result, global warming would accelerate as the ice retreats."