After months of closed-door discussions and public silence, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne has made it official: Polar Bears are actually endangered. No doubt, the right wing and global warming deniers are being thrown into spasmodic fits, but this represents the political success of an orchestrated pressure campaign from environmental and wildlife groups.
In truth, this process began a couple of centuries ago, as man first entered the Iron Age. Scientists tell us that's when we first began altering the planet's climate with extraordinary amount of carbon dioxide production.
However, for our purposes, this drama really started to take off in recent years, with a notable event being Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", which brought the polar bear's peril to the public's attention. The public concern brought political pressure on a reluctant government that was besieged by lawsuits aimed at forcing a decision on the polar bear's status. This is the first new listing of an endangered species in Hempthorne's tenure.
Litigation forced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to begin studying a possible listing of polar bears as an endangered species in December 2006. The Interior Dep't. missed a court-ordered deadline to issue a decision by January 9th. Following that, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works,asked Kempthorne to appear at a committee hearing to explain the delay. Hempthorne declined the invitation. So, it was back to the courts, where U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered the Interior Dept. to act by May 15.
Forced by conservation groups' court orders and intense political pressure, the Interior Dep't. has finally acknowledged the obvious. The rapidly disappearing habitat of the polar bears, caused by global climate changes, poses the threat of extinction for this much beloved species.
This was, as noted, the first time, in Hempthorne's two years, that the Interior Dep't. has decided to list a species as "threatened." This has significant legal and economic consequences. Still, the larger question is whether this reversal will lead to other listings, recognizing that climate change poses a threat to untold numbers of species.