The Bush administration on Wednesday designated the polar bear as threatened with extinction, making the big arctic bruin, whose fate clings to shrinking sea ice, the first creature added to the endangered-species list primarily because of global warming.
The designation invokes federal protections under the Endangered Species Act, the United States’ most powerful environmental law, which requires designation of critical habitat to be protected as well as the formation of a strategy to assist the bear population’s recovery.
The decision came only after a U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., forced the Bush administration’s hand by imposing a deadline today for the decision that should have been completed by Jan. 9.
It was the first time in more than two years that the Interior Department extended protections to another species under the Endangered Species Act — the longest hiatus of new listings by the department since President Nixon signed the law in 1973.
Pressure has been mounting from inside and outside the government.
Various congressional committees have held hearings to nudge the administration to protect the bear and complained about delays on the decision. Meanwhile, the government marched ahead Feb. 6 to open offshore oil fields to exploratory drilling in prime polar-bear habitat.
The court’s deadline evolved from a lawsuit seeking a court order to force the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to comply with the legal deadline for the decision and another suit challenging the offshore leases. And then the Interior Department’s inspector general opened an investigation into allegations that the decision had been detained by “inappropriate political influence.”
