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Interior asks for polar bear rethink Asks court to amend its decision remanding polar bear critical habitat designation; says 90 percent of habitat area still stands Alan Bailey Petroleum News
In the latest twist in an ongoing battle over the question of appropriate protections for Alaska’s polar bears, the U.S. Department of the Interior has asked the federal District Court in Alaska to amend its Jan. 11 ruling rejecting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s designation of the animals’ critical habitat.
“Defendants seek relief based on clear error and manifest injustice,” Interior wrote in its petition to the court, filed on Feb. 11.
Issued in 2010 Fish and Wildlife issued the critical habitat designation in November 2010 following the agency’s 2009 listing of the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The total critical habitat area amounted to 187,157 square miles and included most of Alaska’s Arctic offshore, as well as territory that accounts for much of Alaska’s oil production.
The polar bear listing results from concerns that global-warming-induced melting of Arctic sea ice threatens the bears’ future existence, given the bears’ dependence on sea ice for living and hunting.
But with concerns about the possible impacts of the critical habitat designation on economic activity, several organizations, including the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, the American Petroleum Institute, Arctic Slope Regional Corp., the State of Alaska and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope appealed the designation in the District Court.
Overreach onshore In the court’s Jan. 11 ruling, Judge Ralph Beistline upheld Fish and Wildlife’s specification of offshore sea-ice polar bear critical habitat, but he rejected the agency’s specification of habitat on land along the coast and on offshore barrier islands. Beistline placed the entire critical habitat rule on remand, for rework by the government agency.
In essence, Beistline said that, while the agency had cited polar bear dens and some related components of the Arctic landscape as on-land critical habitat features, those features only occupy about 1 percent of the total land surface. The agency cannot designate all of the land around the coast and on barrier islands as critical habitat when so little of it contains critical habitat features, Beistline said.
Misunderstood In its Feb. 11 petition, Interior said that in rejecting the on-land critical habitat designation the court had misunderstood the agency’s specifications of the features that define the critical habitat areas. For example, the court had interpreted the on-land designation as indicating that essential habitat features consist of access between bear den sites and the coast, and the absence of disturbance from humans and human activities, features that would only occur in a small proportion of the territory.
But the designation in fact referenced all terrain deemed suitable for the digging of bear dens, not just known bear dens, together with access from that land to sea ice, an area that encompasses large swathes of land adjacent the coast, Interior said. Moreover, on the relatively flat coastal plain of the North Slope bears can easily move many miles inland to reach denning sites, the agency said.
96 percent accepted Interior also questioned why the court had remanded and rejected the entire critical habitat designation while also accepting the offshore sea-ice component of the designation, when that offshore component represents about 96 percent of the total critical habitat area. If the court does not accept the designation of the onshore components of the habitat area, the court should give Fish and Wildlife the opportunity to further explain its thinking without meantime rejecting the agency’s entire critical habitat rule, “thereby removing all protection afforded by the designation, including that provided by the sea-ice unit comprising the great majority of the species’ U.S. range,” Interior said.
In a separate petition, also filed on February 11, the Center for Biological Diversity expressed its support for Interior’s position, asking the court to uphold the critical habitat designation. Alternatively the court should allow the designation to remain in effect while under remand, or there should at least be some required completion date for the remand process, the environmental organization said.
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