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January 2008

Vol. 13, No. 2 Week of January 13, 2008

Interior delays polar bear listing

Conservation groups sue government; ask for Chukchi Sea lease sale to be ‘placed on hold’

Eric Lidji

Petroleum News

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has given itself another month to decide whether or not to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, the federal agency announced Jan. 7.

In a national teleconference, Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall said the agency needed more time to review recent scientific data about world polar bear populations and habitats.

According to federal guidelines, the agency was supposed to have announced its decision Jan. 9.

“We take this responsibility very seriously,” Hall said. “And while we do not like missing timelines that are called for under the act, it is far more important to us to get the right answers and to have it explained properly to the public. And so we’ll be needing to take some extra time to finish that up.”

In response to the delay the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace, three environmental groups in support of listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, filed suit against the government to enforce the original deadline.

“At the same time the administration is illegally delaying a decision on the polar bear listing, it is also racing to sell some of the polar bear’s most important habitat in the Chukchi Sea for oil and gas development,” Andrew Wetzler, director of the Endangered Species Project at NRDC, said in a statement. “These oil and gas sales must be placed on hold at least until the polar bear listing is finalized.”

Delay caused by new reports

At issue is whether the Fish and Wildlife Service will follow a January 2007 proposal to list the polar bear as a “threatened species” under the Endangered Species Act. That listing would protect polar bears from activities deemed dangerous to the species, including certain elements of Arctic oil and gas exploration and production.

The polar bear is the first animal to be considered for protection under the Endangered Species Act because of threats related to climate change.

In an effort to provide more information for the Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Geological Survey released nine reports on the polar bear this past September, including new climate models, sea ice trends, population figures and habitat projections.

Hall said the reports prompted a new round of public review, forcing his agency to pause its efforts to reach a final decision. The Fish and Wildlife Service received more than 670,000 comments on the proposal, Hall said.

Connected to lease sale?

But the conservation groups, as well as a congressional committee, are questioning whether the delay was in some way connected to an upcoming oil and gas lease sale in the Chukchi Sea.

On Jan. 2, the Minerals Management Service — an agency within the Interior Department, like both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the USGS — announced plans to open nearly 30 million acres of offshore waters in the Chukchi Sea, a primary habitat and hunting ground for the polar bear.

The lease sale is scheduled for Feb. 6, exactly 30 days after the Fish and Wildlife Service announcement that it will take another month to decide on the polar bear.

When asked whether the polar bear decision could possibly impact the lease sale, Hall suggested the ruling wouldn’t have much of an impact, saying future lessees in the Chukchi Sea will already have to comply with several other environmental standards, including the Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Environmental Policy Act.

Should the Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately decide to list the polar bear as a threatened species, the ruling would take 30 days to go into effect, at which time the agency would begin a “recovery-planning process” to help bring the animal off the list again. That process usually takes several years, Hall said.

While a ruling to list the polar bear as threatened could delay the lease sale, it probably won’t because MMS began considering the possibility back in 2006, said agency spokesman Gary Strasburg.

“At this stage, I have no reason to believe that the sale will be affected by the announcement, but to say that it absolutely won’t happen would be speculating,” Strasburg said.

The MMS decision to proceed with the lease sale despite the USGS scientific data led the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming to schedule a hearing on “the future of the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act and the recent decision by the Interior Department to open up polar bear habitats in Alaska to new oil drilling.”

Following news of the Fish and Wildlife Service delay Jan. 7, Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the select committee, said, “The Bush administration is once again putting the oil cart before the polar bear. On the one hand, the Interior department is dragging its feet on protecting the polar bear, while opening up new oil and gas drilling in sensitive polar bear habitats on the other.”

North Slope Borough questions lease sale

The North Slope Borough sent out a statement Jan. 4 countering a news report suggesting the borough approved the lease sale.

“With all the changes happening out in the Chukchi Sea, I don’t think we should be adding to the problem with offshore oil exploration,” Borough Mayor Edward Itta said in the statement.

Itta also worried seismic activity or a possible oil spill in the Chukchi Sea would harm bowhead whales used in subsistence hunts. The North Slope Borough cited the same reason last year for opposing offshore drilling by Shell in the Beaufort Sea.






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