BillCosby

This honorable local advocacy group is looking out for our interest/welfare..... It is these lazy freeloading bears working working our system that is the reel problem here........ The sooner their put in their place the better..........

& they need to start deporting them gawd damn Canadian bears sneaking over the boarder & corrupting the local Alaskans........ Next they will want to keep them around as pets or something.........

A Sacramento law firm known for its conservative advocacy is poised to join the political melee over the fate of the polar bear, vowing Wednesday to sue the government if global warming is cited as a threat to the species.

The Pacific Legal Foundation's warning comes in response to a much-anticipated decision next week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on whether to protect Alaskan polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. The service faces a court-ordered deadline of May 15 for that ruling.

At issue is growing debate over how aggressively government should act to protect wildlife threatened by climate change. In the case of the polar bear, neither side disputes that the Arctic is changing. But they disagree about the effect on polar bears.

A similar issue was decided last month when the California Fish and Game Commission rejected a petition to protect the American pika in response to threats posed by climate change. Lots of evidence shows that the pika's high Sierra habitat will shrink as temperatures warm. But a decline in the pika's numbers has not yet been documented in California as a result.

Reed Hopper, a foundation attorney, claimed polar bears are thriving and already adequately protected.

"This listing of the polar bear really isn't about the polar bear," he said. "This is a political ploy on the part of activist groups to try to hijack global warming policy from the hands of Congress and to put it into the hands of the courts."

Kassie Siegel, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said it is "untrue and reprehensible" to claim that polar bears are thriving.

Siegel's group first petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect Alaskan polar bears under the Endangered Species Act in February 2005.

After some delays, the agency published an initial ruling in January 2007 that the species should be classified as "threatened." This was based on observed and projected loss of sea ice in the Arctic, and the absence of any regulations to control this threat.

Sea ice is habitat for polar bears. They use it as a platform to hunt seals, for transportation and for resting. Without it, biologists believe, the bears will go extinct.

The past few years have seen a surprisingly rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic, particularly along the Alaskan shore. Climatologists call this one of the more dramatic illustrations of the ongoing effects of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

After more delays, the wildlife service missed a 12-month deadline to finalize its polar bear ruling, and Siegel's group sued. A federal judge in Oakland ruled April 28 that the delays violated the law, and ordered a decision by May 15, one week from today.

Siegel denied Hopper's charge that activists aim to move greenhouse gas regulation into the courts. But they do want to see emissions regulated, she said.

"For the polar bear, the primary overwhelming threat is global warming," Siegel said. "What we're saying is that federal agencies, when they are approving major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, also need to look at the cumulative impact of those emissions on the polar bear when it's listed, and they need to take steps to reduce those emissions."

Siegel acknowledged the bears have rebounded since the 1960s, when unregulated hunting largely ended. But the population is waning again because of climate change, she said.

Researchers have documented declines in five of the 19 Arctic polar bear groups, largely southernmost populations, such as those on Alaska's Beaufort Sea, where global warming's effects have been greatest. The declines are expected to spread northward with climate change.

Pacific Legal Foundation's Hopper said the polar bear is already protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, a 1972 federal law, and a variety of international hunting laws.

These laws do little to prevent disruptions to the bear's habitat, whether from climate change or direct effects from Arctic oil exploration. Siegel said the Endangered Species Act would fill these gaps, which have already been documented as threats.

Research has shown, for instance, that bear breeding and foraging is disrupted by oil development on Alaska's Arctic coast.

Whatever decision emerges, more legal action is a virtual certainty.

If the polar bear is listed under the Endangered Species Act and climate change isn't included as a threat, Siegel said her group probably will sue. If climate change is mentioned, Hopper's group promises to sue.

"We may challenge it even if it doesn't mention global warming," Hopper said.

And the Arctic will keep changing.

On Monday, leading polar bear researcher Steven Amstrup told Alaska Public Radio that a vast area of open water has appeared this spring along the Arctic shore, creating an ice-free zone that extends beyond the horizon.

He and other researchers, based in Kaktovik, normally dart polar bears from aircraft in order to tag and monitor them. The open water is now so vast that they can no longer fly to the nearest body of sea ice to search for bears. It lies beyond the range of their aircraft.

A biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Amstrup also said very few polar bear yearlings have been seen this spring. Out of 57 Beaufort Sea polar bears they've encountered, only one was a yearling, suggesting many others didn't survive the winter.

"This is the first time in my 28 years of working up here that we've seen anything like this," Amstrup said.

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

GurnBlanston

And I thought Republicans hated Tort Lawyers.

BillCosby

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror

Jonesy

If animals were humans, what kind of criminal would you be?