Court won’t reconsider polar bear decision

The federal District Court in Alaska has declined to reconsider its ruling rejecting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of critical habitat for the polar bear.

Following the listing of the bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, in 2010 Fish and Wildlife had designated a critical habitat area amounting to 187,157 square miles, including much of Alaska’s Arctic offshore and a broad swath of land around the Beaufort and Chukchi Sea coasts. A group of organizations, including the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., the State of Alaska and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope appealed the designation in District Court.

The organizations fear that the habitat designation would unnecessarily restrict commercial and subsistence activity in the Arctic.

On Jan. 11 District Court Judge Ralph Beistline issued a ruling placing the habitat designation on remand. Beistline upheld the offshore habitat designation but said that the onshore designation, along the coast and on the coastal barrier islands, was much too broad, with critical habitat features only occupying a tiny proportion of the total land area.

In February the Department of the Interior asked Beistline to reconsider his decision, saying that the court had misunderstood the agency’s specifications of the features that define the onshore critical habitat.

In a court order issued May 15 Beistline denied the request to change his January decision.“While great effort was expended to study the relevant issues, the final decision to designate a land mass larger than many states does appear excessive and is not justified by the record before the court,” Beistline wrote.

—Alan Bailey