Environmental Law

Enviros Strike Back on 'Deficient' Polar Bear Listing

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

Disgruntled environmental groups late Friday filed a flurry of new legal papers seeking to beef up what they characterized as the federal government's "legally deficient" protections for the polar bear announced earlier this week.

The organizations -- the same groups that successfully pressured the Bush administration to list the animal as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act -- filed an updated federal court lawsuit, as well as other documents that could lead to even more legal claims in the future. 

The groups claimed the action by U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne "denied the species ... necessary protections." The documents were all filed in federal court in Oakland, California on Friday and included a letter sent a day earlier to Kempthorne outlining some of the organizations' objections (see text of lawsuit here; see additional notice to court here; see letter to Kempthorne here).  

Kempthorne, while making the polar bear the first mammal to be listed under the endangered species law for climate-related reasons, enraged activists by taking steps to prevent the listing from being used as a general weapon against global warming. One of his actions was to  issue a separate "interim" rule that appeared to be aimed at preventing the listing from interfering with oil and gas development in the Arctic (see Climate Law Update story here; see text of listing here; see special rule here).

That special rule effectively melded the endangered species law with another federal statute, the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Government officials said that latter law contained more stringent standards shielding the animal but environmentalists disagreed and, in Friday's revamped lawsuit, charged that that the rule "reduces the protections the polar bear would otherwise receive." 

In the new court action, the groups challenged the special rule on procedural grounds, and accused the government of failing to properly conduct an environmental study of the action.

The letter to Kempthorne, filed with the court with the other documents, warned they would sue in the future under the endangered species law because the threatened listing fell short of the more protective "endangered" status they claims the bear deserved. They also cited the government's failure to designate "critical habitat" for the animal. They capsulized their concerns in the letter:  

"While the secretary’s recognition that polar bears face extinction because of the threat that global warming poses to its sea-ice habitat is an important first step towards providing meaningful conservation measures for polar bears around the world, the [listing] is legally deficient."

The organizations filing the included the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.  

Interior Department officials could not be reached for comment Friday.

(Photo: Center for Biological Diversity)  

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on May 16, 2008 (boomark / email).