newsminer.com

ANCHORAGE -- Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's declaration that polar bears are a threatened species was a frustrating exercise for the mayor of Alaska's northernmost borough.

Kempthorne said the dramatic loss of polar bear habitat, sea ice, was due to forces outside the state. But North Slope Borough Mayor Edward S. Itta fears the effects of the listing will be felt by subsistence hunters and fishermen.

"The problem is that polar bears are not endangered by human activity in the Arctic, and the ESA listing only restricts activities up here," he said. "So it quite possibly will interfere with our Inupiat subsistence hunting and fishing, which does not get at the problem but does impact us."

Despite assurances from Kempthorne, Alaskans say fallout from the listing decision is likely to affect their lives with consequences unintended by the Interior secretary.

Conservation groups vow to use the listing and provisions of the Endangered Species Act to protect polar bears.

"Anything that improperly reduces protection of the polar bear, we're going to challenge it, and we're going to challenge it as soon as we can," said Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Kempthorne said the decision will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting. Itta fears his constituents will get caught in the crossfire.

His borough is larger than Minnesota and stretches across the coastline of both the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to Alaska's two polar bear populations.

Itta said he knows that Arctic sea ice retreat could jeopardize Alaska's polar bear population but he questioned whether an ESA listing will do anything to protect polar bears or slow the disappearance of the ice pack, which shrank to record lows last summer.

"My fear is that this will lull many Americans into believing that now we're protecting the bears," he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, it has the potential to restrict activities for hunters, he said.

"The Endangered Species Act is a very big hammer, and it could easily land on us even if the agencies don't want it to," he said.

Kempthorne made the listing announcement with assurances of what the listing would not do.

Echoing President Bush, Kempthorne said the ESA will not set U.S. climate change policy.

"We will propose commons sense modifications to the existing regulation to provide greater certainty that this listing will not set backdoor climate policy outside our normal system of political accountability," Kempthorne said.

The listing would not, Kempthorne said, interfere with promising Alaska offshore petroleum drilling because the industry already is regulated by the even more restricted Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The listing also will not disturb subsistence hunting, Kempthorne said, because subsistence take has not contributed to the threat.

Alaska's Republican congressional delegation said Kempthorne may be engaging in wishful thinking.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the listing decision opens a Pandora's Box that the administration will be unable to close.

Sen. Ted Stevens said the issue will be whether courts accept Kempthorne's legal interpretations. Conservation groups that sued for a polar bear listing are ready to use it to harass the petroleum industry, he said.

"These people know what they're doing," Stevens said. "They've got another tool to stay in court."

Kempthorne's positive steps included more study, pledges to work with local authorities on co-management of bears and proposals to work cooperatively with Canada and possibly Russia.

Siegel, an attorney and the primary author of the listing petition, said polar bears are entitled to protection from their No. 1 threat, loss of habitat due to greenhouse gas emissions, despite what Kempthorne said.

"The law says what the law says, not what the Bush administration wishes it says, and we'll now enforce the law," she said.

The law directs all federal agencies to consult with the management agency, in this case the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to make sure actions the agencies authorize are not likely to jeopardize the animal or destroy its habitat.

"We will ask federal agencies to look at the impacts of their emissions on polar bears and analyze ways to reduce those emissions to protect polar bears. If they don't do that, we can challenge that," she said.

Kempthorne said it's up to Congress and the global community to address greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Siegel said ignoring the primary threat is like handing out parachutes and sewing them shut. Her group has no intention of backing down.

"This administration has done everything they can to attack and gut our environmental safeguards. What they're saying is, they're going to keep doing that, and we're going to keep fighting back."