Judge orders decision on polar bear listing

A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with a lawsuit filed by environmental groups in March after the department missed a Jan. 9 deadline for a decision.

“Defendants have been in violation of the law (Endangered Species Act) requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days,” the judge, based in Oakland, Calif., wrote in a decision issued late April 28. “Other than the general complexity of finalizing the rule, defendants offer no specific facts that would justify the delay, much less further delay.”

A spokesman for the Interior Department said April 29 the decision was being reviewed and legal options evaluated.

The ruling is a victory for environmental groups that claim the Bush administration has delayed a polar bear decision to avoid addressing global warming and to avoid roadblocks to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast to oil company bidders.

A decision to list polar bears due to global warming could have consequences beyond Alaska. Opponents fear it would subject new power plants and other development projects to federal review if they generate greenhouse gasses that add to warming in the Arctic.

Interior said it needed until June 30 to complete a legal and policy review of the proposed listing.

In response to a petition filed in 2005 by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed in December 2006 that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of the loss of their primary habitat, Arctic sea ice.

Summer sea ice shrank last year to a record low, about 1.65 million square miles in September, nearly 40 percent less ice than the long-term average between 1979 and 2000. Some climate models have predicted the Arctic will be free of summer sea ice by 2030, and polar bears wiped out by 2050.

—The Associated Press