The Courier-Mail
Source: AFP/AP
Washington: The US has announced plans to designate more than 500,000sq km in Alaska as critical habitat for polar bears, a key step towards increasing protection for the threatened species.
It could also add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas, as federal law prohibits agencies from taking actions that may adversely affect critical habitat and interfere with polar bear recovery.
The move came one day after the state of Alaska filed a new complaint in its effort to overturn the listing of the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Former governor Sarah Palin filed the suit last year, saying the Interior Department did not respond to the state's concerns in a timely manner.
Detailing the protected habitat, Interior assistant secretary Tom Strickland said yesterday the greatest threat to the polar bear was the melting of Arctic ice caused by climate change.
The area would include barrier islands along Alaska's coast, sea ice habitat and land and rivers near the coast where the bears make their dens.
The US listed the polar bear as a threatened species in May last year, saying climate change had caused a drastic loss of Arctic sea ice which is essential for the survival of the bears.
But although US laws call for a critical habitat to be designated at the same time as a species is declared threatened, wildlife officials under the administration of president George W. Bush held off on naming the habitat area.
The Bush administration also pushed forward with the sale of offshore exploration leases in parts of Alaska where polar bears dwell, insisting that developing oil activities in Alaska would not harm the bears.
By contrast, Mr Strickland said the administration of President Barack Obama "is fully committed to the protection and recovery of the polar bear''.
About 93 per cent of the area proposed for the animal is sea ice, with the remainder made up of barrier islands or land-based dens of snow and ice.
Environmental groups hailed the habitat announcement, but noted that it came in the same week that the Interior Department approved a plan by a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell to drill exploratory wells on two leases in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast.
"If polar bears are to survive in a rapidly melting Arctic, we need to protect their critical habitat, not turn it into a polluted industrial zone,'' said a lawyer with the Arizona-based Centre for Biological Diversity.