"It's very suspicious," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the 2005 petition to list the polar bear.
"It's our experience that when listing decisions get delayed in Washington, D.C., it's always a bad thing, because Washington, D.C., is where the political interference happens," she added.
Fish and Wildlife director Hall said the lease sale has no bearing on the delay and added that any action related to the lease sale would still have to comply with the Endangered Species Act and other environmental regulations.
Scientific Certainty
In addition, Hall noted, there is no strong scientific uncertainty regarding the U.S. Geological Survey findings that two-thirds of polar bears face a risk of extinction by 2050.
"It's just unfortunately one of those times I'll have to tell you we'll have to miss a deadline in order to provide the quality and product that we believe needs to be provided," he said.
Alaska Governor Sara Palin wrote in a January 5 op-ed for the New York Times that "there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future—the trigger for protection under the Endangered Species Act."
The Center for Biological Diversity's Siegel said all science has a degree of uncertainty but that uncertainty is very low for the polar bear.
Polar bears eat mostly seals and other fatty marine animals that they hunt from sea ice. The bears prefer to hunt from ice that hangs over shallow continental shelf waters, which contain more prey than deeper waters offshore.
But summer sea ice in the polar bears' Arctic habitat is shrinking and retreating farther and farther from the coastline, which crimps the bears' ability to forage efficiently. Some bears are starving to death.
Scientists believe human-caused global warming is contributing to the decline in sea ice habitat.
Saving polar bears, therefore, requires human action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, Siegel noted. But taking such action is a political decision.
"We know what we have to do to save polar bears," she said. "We just have to start doing it."
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