Alaska wary of listing polar bears as threatened

updated 1:06 p.m. ET March 7, 2007

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Officially, the state of Alaska has not decided whether to back a federal proposal to list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

But speaking at a federal hearing, Gov. Sarah Palin's point person on polar bears stopped just short of saying it was a lousy idea.

Tina Cunnings, a biologist and a special assistant to the commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, questioned whether polar bears really need sea ice to survive. She said polar bears are adaptable to using land for hunting, and though their preferred food, ice seals, may be declining, bears are adapting to alternative food sources as well.

She also testified that a listing in the United States ultimately could harm bears in Canada because Inuit villagers would no longer have an incentive to preserve them for American hunters. 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 another reason for Palin's stand. In a state dependent on the petroleum industry for most of its revenue, and actively trying to spark another economic boom in the form of a natural gas pipeline to the Lower 48 states, the fear of restrictions on development from the Endangered Species Act may outweigh the desire to add more protections for America's polar bears on a warming planet.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been vague about what a recovery plan might entail if polar bears are listed as threatened. But the law requires federal agencies to evaluate their regulatory actions with respect to any threatened species if habitat, in this case, sea ice, is designated as critical.

Listing supporters want the federal government to declare global warming as the direct cause of harm to polar bear habitat, sea ice, and consider limits on utilities and industry producing greenhouse gasses, not only in Alaska but throughout the country.

Cunnings said Friday her department has the same goals as federal authorities — doing what's best for the wildlife.

She said the state is in the preliminary stage of reviewing the science that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used to make its initial determination, and that she based her testimony on the services' own petition posted Jan. 9 in the Federal Register.

Expert doubts adaptability
But the idea that polar bears can adapt to living on land or can thrive on a diet of something other than seals flies in the face of most of the report as well as the opinion of most polar bear researchers.

Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear researcher quoted extensively in the report and chairman of the Polar Bear Specialist Group for the World Conservation Union, called it "absolutely fanciful."

"There's not a credible polar bear biologist in the world who would make that statement," he said Friday.

Cunning's testimony followed the lead of Palin. Two weeks after taking office in December, Alaska's new governor voiced concern for the state's economic health in a letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

"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.

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.

"When a species' habitat, in this case, sea ice, is declining due to climate change, but there are no discrete human activities that can be regulated or modified to effect change, what do you do?" she wrote.

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