Polar priorities: bears or oil
Fighting for survival?: Delays by the Department of Interior on putting polar bears on the endangered list have made some congressional leaders upset. What do you think about this?Courtesy wikipediaCongressional environmentalists were getting cranky last week as deadlines are coming and going on giving polar bears endangered species protection. At the same time, deadlines are coming to open up some prime polar bear locations to oil exploration.
The Chukchi Sea, home to about a fifth of the world’s polar bears, could be opened to oil and natural gas expeditions next week through the action of one Interior Department division.
Congressional environmentalists, who want to see polar bears be added to the endangered list, claim they were promised that action would happen earlier this month. Now, they claim, the delay is being made to keep the Chukchi open to energy discoveries.
Proponents of global climate change say that melting ice caps in the Arctic are threatening the polar bear population. One study completed this fall predicts that up to two thirds of the polar bear population could be gone by the middle of this century if current warming trends continue.
Interior officials testifying at Congress yesterday said that the delay on adding polar bears to the endangered list is due to a desire to assure that Congress and the public will understand the decision when it is made public.
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An article in today's New York Times argues that the studies which claim that polar bears are in danger are deeply flawed and based on faulty science. Not only are most populations stable -- or even growing -- but scientists have found a polar bear fossil over 100,000 years old -- meaning that this species has survived much warmer climates than today's.
All of nature deserves our care and protection. But designating a species as "endangered" activates a whole suite of rules and regulations that seriously restrict human activity. It is meant only for those species that wouldn't survive without drastic measures. Polar bears are not in such dire straits.
I am worried about polar bears. I was just watching a news segment from the San Diego Zoo and it doesn't sound very hopeful for them.
Dang!
Save em you guys!!
It's so sad becuase the bears are most important what oil. The bears are how persons they have live, they feel, and we need give protection for them.With the tecnology can do another things for not use more oil. But the history about of the bears come to the end.
i wish it was something i could do...i feel so sorry for the plar bears
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