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Fish & Wildlife issues polar bear plan Conservation strategy recognizes loss of sea ice as main threat but also involves management of human interactions with the bears ALAN BAILEY Petroleum News
Having in 2008 listed the polar bear as threatened under the terms of the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has now issued a conservation plan for the species. In a Jan. 9 press release announcing publication of the plan, the agency said that the rapid loss of the bears’ sea ice habitat is jeopardizing the future survival of the bears.
“This plan outlines the necessary actions and concrete commitments by the service and by our state, tribal, federal and international partners to protect polar bears in the near term,” said Greg Siekaniec, Alaska regional director for Fish and Wildlife. “But make no mistake. Without decisive action to address Arctic warming, the long-term fate of this species is uncertain.”
Fish and Wildlife, in its plan, says that, although the loss of sea ice as a consequence of global warming is the cause for concern about the polar bear’s future, the agency cannot take direct action to counter this threat. The agency can promote the need to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for rising global temperatures but has no authority to mandate emission reduction actions. However, the agency does see scope for alleviating the bears’ plight by ensuring effective management of interactions between human activities and the bears.
Mixed reception While broadly supported by environmental organizations, the polar bear listing has tended to meet with opposition from those with economic interests in the Arctic. The concern is that protective measures imposed for a species which currently enjoys a substantial population may unnecessarily impede economic activity.
However, the polar bear plan commits to the cooperative management of subsistence hunting of the bears and to the need to minimize the economic impacts of the listing.
In a response to the release of the conservation plan, Alaska’s Division of Wildlife Conservation agreed that the loss of sea ice represents a threat to the polar bears but questioned the listing of the bears, given the bears’ robust population. The state does not believe that Congress intended the ESA to be used in this way, said Bruce Dale, ADWC director.
“We agree with many aspects of the plan, including recognition that the primary threat to polar bears is the loss of sea ice habitat brought on by climate change,” Dale said. “We also support the plan’s goals to maintain sustainable subsistence harvest, appropriately manage human-bear interactions and minimize restrictions to economic development and other activities.”
But with many of the actions specified in the new plan already in place, the conservation benefit to be gained from listing the bears and developing a conservation plan is unclear, the division said.
Six goals The new conservation plan sets out six fundamental goals: securing the long-term, global-scale persistence of the polar bear species; securing this persistence within specific regions that the bears inhabit; securing persistence in the state of Alaska; recognizing the nutritional and cultural needs of Native peoples, including the need for subsistence harvesting of the bears; managing human-bear interactions in the interests of human safety and bear conservation; and achieving polar bear conservation while minimizing restrictions on Arctic activities, including activities directed at economic development.
The plan says that sea-ice loss will not threaten the bears if, either the summer Arctic open-water season does not exceed four months during the next 100 years, or if there is evidence to indicate that the polar bears can adapt to longer open-water seasons. And, although human-caused removals of bears were not identified in the ESA listing as a current threat to the bears, these removals could in the future become a threat to bear populations impacted by sea-ice loss.
Disease; oil and gas activities; spills; and increased Arctic shipping could become concerns but are not currently considered threats to the bears. Consequently, these issues have not been included in the list of criteria for determining whether the polar bears remain threatened. However, actions spelled out in the plan for the protection of the bears do encompass the potential impacts of human activities, including industrial activities, on the bears.
Five actions In general terms, the plan calls for five actions: the limiting of greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere; support for international polar bear conservation efforts; the management of human-bear conflicts; the collaborative management of the subsistence harvest; the protection of bear denning habitat; minimizing oil spill risks; and the conducting of strategic monitoring and research.
In terms of human-bear conflicts, the plan sees a need to measure the effectiveness of conservation efforts by adjusting for the likelihood that diminishing sea ice will lead to an increase in the frequency of human-bear interactions.
In terms of subsistence hunting, the plan envisions subsistence harvesting continuing, even in situations where bear populations are declining, as long as the harvest is responsibly managed in compliance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and as long as the harvest does not itself become a driver of the declining bear population.
And in terms of the economic impacts of polar bear conservation, the plan says that assessments of costs triggered by conservation actions will make it possible to seek conservation solutions that, on the one hand, prevent economic activity undermining conservation efforts while, on the other hand, prevent conservation from needlessly limiting economic development.
A dynamic plan However, given the uncertainties associated with polar bear conservation, Fish and Wildlife sees the conservation plan as a dynamic entity, subject to revision as more data are acquired and uncertainty is reduced. And the agency sees the need for a collaborative approach to plan implementation - one of the provisions of the plan is the creation of a recovery implementation team, composed of representatives from various entities, including Alaska Native communities, state government, federal government, international agencies and private agencies.
A key component of plan implementation will consist of the monitoring of parameters relevant to bear conservation success, such as the measurement of bear population sizes in different regions; the updating of sea ice cover projections; and the tallying of bear mortality from subsistence hunting and defense-of-life incidents.
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