Bush administration finalizes rule; blocks crucial polar bear protections

In the latest in a series of parting shots at our imperiled wildlife, officials in the Bush/Cheney Administration today announced that they will deny America’s vanishing polar bears desperately needed protections under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Polar bears are already drowning and starving to death as the sea ice they need to survive disappears. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey say that polar bears could disappear from Alaska within the next 50 years.
The decision by the outgoing Bush/Cheney Administration effectively limits new protections for polar bears from harmful oil and gas drilling in their Alaska home. It also expressly prohibits using the Endangered Species Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet and driving polar bears to extinction in America.Listing polar bears as threatened should help protect polar bear habitat from threats such as oil and gas development, which the Bush administration is aggressively pursuing in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska and has even proposed in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which provides the primary land denning habitat for the species. Instead, the administration has made it clear with its 4(d) rule that the ESA will not provide any additional protections from these and other harmful activities than those that already exist under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), and will provide no protection whatsoever against emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing the rise in global temperatures that directly threaten the polar bear. Please read whole story and help if you can.