US:The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the US government on record as saying that global warming could drive one of the world's most recognisable animals out of existence.
The administration's proposal - which was described by an interior department official who spoke on condition of anonymity - stems from the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are shrinking the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting.
Identifying polar bears as threatened with extinction could have an enormous political and practical impact. As the world's largest bear and as an object of children's affection, the polar bear occupies an important place in the American psyche.
Because scientists have concluded that carbon dioxide from power plant and car emissions is helping drive climate change worldwide, putting polar bears on the endangered species list raises the legal question of whether the government would be required to compel US industries to curb their carbon dioxide output.
"We've reviewed all the available data that leads us to believe the sea ice the polar bear depends on has been receding," said the interior official, adding that US fish and wildlife service officials have concluded that polar bears could be endangered within 45 years. "Obviously, the sea ice is melting because the temperatures are warmer."
Northern latitudes are warming twice as rapidly as the rest of globe and by the end of the century, annual ocean temperatures in the Arctic may rise an additional 13 degrees Fahrenheit.
As a result, researchers predict that summer sea ice, which polar bears use as a platform to hunt for ringed seals, will decline 50 to 100 per cent.
By submitting the proposal yesterday, the interior department is meeting a deadline under a legal settlement with three environmental advocacy groups that argue the government has failed to respond quickly enough to the polar bear's plight.
Senior attorney Andrew Wetzler, one of the lawyers who filed suit against the administration, welcomed the proposal for listing. "It's such a loud recognition that global warming is real," he said.
There are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, 4,700 of which live in the Alaska and spend part of the year in Canada and Russia. The other countries with polar bears in their Arctic regions are Denmark and Norway.
The ice in Canada's western Hudson Bay is now breaking up 2½ weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, giving polar bears there less time to hunt and build up fat reserves that sustain them for eight months before hunting resumes. As local polar bears have become thinner, female polar bears' reproductive rates and cubs' survival rates have fallen, spurring a 21 per cent population drop from 1997 to 2004.
Scientists have not charted the same rapid decline within the US polar bear populations, but federal scientists have observed a number of troubling signs as the bears have resorted to open-water swimming and even cannibalism in an effort to stay alive.
Polar bears normally swim from one patch of sea ice to another to hunt for food, but they are not accustomed to going long distances. In September 2004, government scientists observed 55 polar bears swimming offshore in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea, an unprecedented spike, and four of those bears died. - (LA Times-Washington Post service)