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The polar bear is the youngest and largest of the world’s bear species, only matched in mass by the largest of Alaska’s Kodiak grizzlies. It’s also the only completely carnivorous bear, feeding primarily on ringed seals rather than leaves, berries, or bark, and it may be the most hardy mammal in its ability to survive long periods deprived of food and water. Yet this mighty hunter and fierce defender of its young is also among the world’s most vulnerable animals — the polar bear’s might is no match for the greenhouse gas-fueled global warming that’s rapidly melting its sea-ice habitat.
ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT PROFILE
PROTECTION STATUS: Not listed
PETITIONED: 2005
RANGE: In and around the Arctic Ocean with southernmost occurrence at Canada’s James Bay; populations occur within jurisdictions of the United States ( Alaska), Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, and Russia
THREATS: Primarily melting of sea-ice habitat due to intensifying global warming, in combination with other threats including oil and gas development, environmental contaminants such as PCBs, industrial noise and harassment from increased Arctic shipping and other activities, and overhunting in some areas
POPULATION TREND: Most recently, worldwide polar bear abundance was estimated at 20,000 to 25,000 animals, a narrower count than the 20,000 to 40,000 bears estimated in 1981 . It is important to note that, according to the best available science, even stable or increasing polar bear populations are likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.
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SAVING THE POLAR BEAR
The Center has been working on behalf of polar bears since 2001, when we successfully challenged the Bush administration’s suppression of a report implicating its plans for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development for likely violation of an international treaty requiring protection of polar bear habitat. The administration has continued to press for oil and gas drilling in increasingly precious polar bear habitat, however, and the Center has continued to fight those plans. Most recently, we blocked Bush administration designs on drilling in the Beaufort Sea, which threatened to harm polar bears and other marine animals in coastal waters off the Arctic Refuge.
We’ve also been at the forefront of the fight to protect polar bears and their habitat from an even more dire threat: global warming. As greenhouse gas emissions drive human-caused global warming at unprecedented rates, Arctic sea ice — critical to nearly every aspect of polar bear survival — melts earlier and more extensively each decade. The rate of summer sea-ice decline is so dramatic that leading researchers believe the Arctic could be completely devoid of ice in the summer as early as 2030. And even without that vanishing act, scientists predict that global warming will result in a shortening of the polar bear’s hunting season and a decrease in the sea-ice platform from which it stalks its primary prey, ringed seals, as well as a corresponding decrease in winter fat stores and access to maternal denning sites. Indeed, recent cases of polar bear starvation and stranding at sea have already been documented and are likely to become more common as Arctic temperatures continue to rise rapidly.
The Center is leading the charge to save polar bears from extinction by global warming. We authored the 2005 petition calling for the bear’s protection under the Endangered Species Act, and subsequently filed suit with our partners at the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace to force the administration to take action on the petition. When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service still hadn’t issued a final decision on the polar bear in March 2008 — more than three years after our petition was submitted — we filed suit again, and on April 28, a judge ruled in our favor and ordered the Service to issue a final listing decision by May 15. Our full-court-press media campaign for the polar bear has helped shine an international spotlight on the bear’s plight and galvanize public opinion in support of its protection. In addition, as the administration continues its suppression tactics around climate science, we’ve fought in the courts to ensure that the best science on global warming sees the light of day, as well as pushing for more responsible national energy policies and drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
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Contact: Kassie Siegel
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