Alaska Governor questions polar bear listing
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At a federal hearing, Tina Cunnings, Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin’s point person on polar bears stopped short of saying making polar bears a “threatened” species was a bad idea. She did, however, questioned whether polar bears really need sea ice to survive.
Cunnings, a biologist and a special assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, said polar bears are adaptable to using land for hunting. She acknowledged that ice seals, the polar bears’ preferred food, may be declining, but she stated that the bears are adapting to alternative food sources.
She also testified that an ESA listing would ban importation of polar bear trophy hides. “We are concerned that a listing of polar bears under ESA in the United States may actually be harmful for the conservation of polar bear populations internationally,” she said.
Supporters of the listing suspect the real reason for Palin’s stand has to do with the fear of restrictions the Endangered Species Act may place on the development of a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 states.
If the ESA Listing goes through, supporters want the federal government to declare global warming as the direct cause of harm to polar bear habitat, sea ice. And then to consider limits on utilities and industry producing greenhouse gases in Alaska and throughout the country.
Adaptability questioned
The idea that polar bears can adapt to living on land and on something other than ice seals goes against the opinions of most polar bear researchers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Registry Report.
Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear researcher who was quoted extensively in the report disagreed with Cunnings wholeheartedly. Derocher, who is also the chairman of the Polar Bear Specialist Group for the World Conservation Union, said Friday,”There’s not a credible polar bear biologist in the world who would make that statement.”
Cunnings stated, “Preferred food sources such as some ice seal populations may be declining, but data indicate that the bears are adapting to use alternative food sources, including food sources that may be expanding.”
Derocher countered saying that people with an economic interest in keeping polar bears off the ESA list may be wishfully thinking that polar bears can thrive on land. “That niche is filled,” he said.
“We already have a terrestrial bear in the Arctic and it’s called the grizzly bear,” he said.
“If confined to land, polar bears might eat plants, human garbage, or whale carcasses left behind by hunters. As far as we’re concerned, most of those food sources are not enough to maintain a viable population in the long term,” Derocher said.
“Even if more southerly seals, such as harbor seals, expand their territories north as warming continues, polar bears still need an ice platform to hunt them,” he said.
“We see very little indication that they would have broad-base flexibility to leave their seal diet all together,” he said.
Governor says listing may damage Alaska’s economy
“Listing polar bears under the Endangered Species Act has the potential to damage Alaska’s and the nation’s economy without any benefit to polar bear numbers or their habitat,” Palin wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne two weeks after taking office.
“The driving force in the concern over polar bears,” she said,”is the decline in sea ice. Listing bears as threatened,” she said, “would not cause sea water to freeze.”
