Editorial: Saving our Arctic dwellers

Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006 | 7:04 a.m.

T he Interior Department has announced that the polar bear may be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, a significant move in that such a designation means that an animal or plant is likely to become endangered if steps are not taken to reverse its decline. Nonetheless, the Interior Department sidestepped admitting that global warming is contributing to the bear's decline.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will spend the next year gathering and analyzing data to determine whether the polar bear population's existence is significantly threatened by receding polar ice. A report by the U.S. Geological Survey says melting sea ice has contributed to a 15 percent decline in the survival of cubs and to an overall decline in the size of male cubs.

Sea ice connects polar bears to food sources. Researchers say some bears have drowned while trying to swim to forage areas, to which they once walked atop the ice. Other bears have resorted to eating each other.

Kempthorne acknowledges that the Arctic perennial sea ice - ice that remains at the end of the Arctic summer - has been declining by 9.8 percent per decade since 1978. But he stops short of blaming this decline on global warming, saying that the scientific analysis of climate change "is beyond the scope of the Endangered Species review process."

Interior officials may need a broader approach if polar bears are listed as threatened because their habitat is melting away. At the current rate of decline, NASA scientists predict, the perennial sea ice could completely disappear by the end of the century.

Protecting polar bears would necessitate reversing the damage to their habitat - most likely by ceasing or significantly limiting the actions that are melting the ice. And that means President Bush's reluctance to adequately address global warming and its causes may finally face extinction.