{"id":18623,"date":"2017-01-09T21:31:35","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T05:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/polar-bear-plan-doesnt-seek-direct-action-on-climate-change\/"},"modified":"2017-01-09T21:31:35","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T05:31:35","slug":"polar-bear-plan-doesnt-seek-direct-action-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/polar-bear-plan-doesnt-seek-direct-action-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar bear plan doesn’t seek direct action on climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE<\/strong> \u2014 Five years ago, in a meeting room in Alaska, two dozen federal wildlife biologists joined other experts to begin formulating a recovery plan for polar bears because the animals\u2019 primary habitat, sea ice, was melting beneath their feet in summer.<\/p>\n

The planning came with a caveat: It was beyond their control, members said, to recommend rules addressing climate warming \u2014 the main threat to the animals \u2014 because the agency that oversees polar bears, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, had no jurisdiction over greenhouse gas emissions linked to the warming.<\/p>\n

The agency on Monday released the final polar bear recovery plan, which includes provisions for tertiary threats, such as oil spills and excessive hunting. However, it does not push for any action to cut greenhouse gas emissions and bluntly acknowledges the likely outcome for polar bears.<\/p>\n

\u201cShort of action that effectively addresses the primary cause of diminishing sea ice, it is unlikely that polar bears will be recovered,\u201d the plan states.<\/p>\n

Jenifer Kohout, co-chair of the recovery team, said telling the story of the polar bear\u2019s plight and the connection to climate warming is the main thrust of the plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to recover polar bears, we believe that we have to address the climate change problem over the long-term,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The recovery plan notes positive signs such as emission goals for individual countries expressed in the Paris climate agreement. However, reduction of emissions in the U.S. is in question under a Trump administration that has vowed to revitalize the coal industry and suggested the country should withdraw from global climate accords.<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s population of polar bears is currently estimated at 22,000 to 31,000.<\/p>\n

Two of the 19 subpopulations \u2014 the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska\u2019s north coast and Canada\u2019s Western Hudson Bay \u2014 are in decline because of sea ice loss.<\/p>\n

Shaye Wolf, climate science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the petition to list polar bears as endangered in 2005, said it was commendable that the plan acknowledges polar bears\u2019 dismal future.<\/p>\n

However, the crucial step of cutting large-scale greenhouse gas pollution should have been included in criteria for recovery, she said.<\/p>\n

The Fish and Wildlife Service may not regulate emissions, Wolf said, but it consults with other agency that do, such as the Environmental Protection Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cA recovery plan should lay out the steps that the Fish and Wildlife Service and other agencies should take to allow a species to recover,\u201d she said. \u201cThat includes, in this case, rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and it should be the cornerstone of this recovery plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polar bears use sea ice for breeding and hunting. They can go for months without eating but in late spring gorge on ice seals, especially ringed seals, when those animals give birth in snow caves dug on sea ice. Ringed seals themselves were declared threatened in December 2012 because of sea ice loss brought on by climate warming.<\/p>\n

Polar bears were listed as endangered in 2008 by Dirk Kempthorne, the Interior secretary under then-President George W. Bush, amid the alarming loss of summer sea ice in recent decades and climate models indicating the trend would continue.<\/p>\n

In the announcement, however, Kempthorne said the Endangered Species Act would not be used to regulate the nation\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

While drafting the polar bear recovery plan, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said it differed from other recovery plans that could link specific harmful actions to a threatened species, such as manure from a dairy farm entering a stream and killing endangered trout.<\/p>\n

Kohout said there continues to be no clear connection to establish that a pollution source in Pennsylvania or elsewhere is the direct cause of ice loss in the Arctic.<\/p>\n

Wolf called that argument outdated. Federal scientists, she said, estimate each metric ton of carbon dioxide emission results in a loss of 3 cubic meters of September Arctic sea ice. The average American emits 16.4 metric tons of CO2 per year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can make our direct link to CO2 emissions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 Five years ago, in a meeting room in Alaska, two dozen federal wildlife biologists joined other experts to begin formulating a recovery plan for polar bears because the animals\u2019 primary habitat, sea ice, was melting beneath their feet in summer. The planning came with a caveat: It was beyond their control, members said, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":18624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18623"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}