Appeals Court Upholds Polar Bear’s Endangered Species Act Protections

RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online

The US government and the polar bear won an important court ruling on Friday, as an appeals court deemed that the Bush administration had acted reasonably when they decided to list the Arctic mammal as a “threatened” species under the Endangered Species Act due to the effects of climate change.

According to Brent Kendall of the Wall Street Journal, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a 36 page ruling which upheld the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) 2008 decision.

The agency opted to grant the polar bear protection on the basis that it could become endangered in the foreseeable future due to the impact of global warming on its sea-ice habitat. Opponents had argued that the FWS’s decision formed them to impose “far-ranging and possibly costly protections for a species that remains fairly abundant in many regions of the Arctic,” Los Angeles Times writer Kim Murphy said.

“There are still about 25,000 polar bears around the world, many of them in relatively healthy populations, but scientists fear that climate change is rapidly affecting their ability to sustain those numbers after the next half-century,” Murphy explained.

Continued:  http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112795277/polar-bears-retain-endangered-species-act-protection-030313/