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Published on Saturday, March 8, 2008 by the Associated Press

Delay in Bush Administration Polar Bear

Policy Stirs Probe
by H. Josef Hebert

The Interior Department’s inspector general has begun a preliminary investigation

into why the department has delayed for nearly two months a decision on listing the
polar bear as threatened because of the loss of Arctic sea ice.
A recommendation to Interior
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne was
to have been made in early
January by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service on whether to
declare the bear threatened. But
when the deadline came, the
agency said it needed another
month, a timetable that also was
not met.
A spokesman for the
department’s inspector general’s
office said a case had been
opened in response to a letter
from several environmental
groups. He said the preliminary
inquiry would determine whether
a full-fledged investigation is
warranted.
“The letter had specific allegations … (so) we started an initial inquiry,” said Kris
Kolesnik, associate inspector general for external affairs. “If the initial inquiry
produces something that warrants us to take further action, that’s when we open an
investigation.”
Scientists have said the bear is under a growing threat because of the significant loss
of Arctic sea ice due to global warming.
The Interior Department in early 2007 proposed listing the bear as threatened under
the Endangered Species Act, triggering a year of scientific review. By law a
recommendation was to have been made by the Fish and Wildlife Service by Jan. 9, a
year after the initial action.
The letter to Inspector General Earl Devaney, signed by six environmental groups,
alleges that Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall violated the agency’s scientific code
of conduct and the Endangered Species Act in delaying the decision after all of the
scientific data had already been developed and sent to Washington before Christmas.
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The code is aimed at preventing inappropriate political influence as the agency

administers the Endangered Species Act. The code came into being because of
another inspector general’s report that detailed widespread political interference on
species protection decisions that led to the resignation of a senior Interior
Department official in May.
Hall has told members of Congress that the delay on the polar bear decision was
needed to make sure the decision was in a form easily understood. He has strongly
denied any political interference in the decision. He said the agency’s
recommendation, when given to Kempthorne, would be based “on the science in
front of us.”
The decision on whether to list the polar bear for protection under the Endangered
Species Act is one of the most complex - and possibly far reaching - actions facing
the department. For the first time an endangered species decision would link an
animal’s protection to the impacts of global warming.
In September a series of reports from the U.S. Geological Survey predicted that as
much as two-thirds of the polar bear population could disappear by mid-century
because of the loss of sea ice attributed to climate change.
Hall has said analyzing those studies and subsequent public comments has
contributed to the delay in making a decision.
Environmentalists have argued that politics is involved. They cite the decision to
proceed with an auction for oil and gas leases in early February in the Alaska’s
Chukchi Sea. The sea ice in those waters provides a key habitat for polar bears.
“They delayed (the bear decision) to get them beyond the Chukchi Sea leasing. And
here we are on March 7, another 30 days and nothing has happened,” said Jamie
Rappaport Clark, executive vice president of Defenders of Wildlife and a former head
of the Fish and Wildlife Service in the Clinton administration.
“We certainly have something much more than science going on,” said Clark, who
was among those who signed the letter to the inspector general’s office.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who held a hearing in January on the polar bear listing,
said “this internal investigation is needed and long overdue.
“Given this administration’s closeness with the oil industry, its history of politicizing
scientific decisions … I am wary of the integrity of this process,” Markey said in a
statement.