Judge Gives Feds 16 Days to Decide on Polar Bears

Behold the power of a federal judge:

A federal judge has ordered the Interior Department to decide within 16 days whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species because of global warming.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken agreed with conservation groups that the department missed a Jan. 9 deadline for a decision. She rejected a government request for a further delay and ordered it to act by May 15.

“Defendants have been in violation of the law requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days,” the judge, based in Oakland, Calif., wrote in a decision issued late Monday. “Other than the general complexity of finalizing the rule, Defendants offer no specific facts that would justify the delay, much less further delay.”

As I noted in “Polar Bears are a Prop, Not An Endangered Species”:

According to the February 7, 2005 Edinburgh Scotsman ( http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=143012005), “The world’s polar bear population is on the increase despite global warming.

“According to new research,” the Scotsman reports, “the numbers of the giant predator have grown by between 15 and 25 per cent over the last decade.

“We’re seeing an increase in bears that’s really unprecedented, and in places where we’re seeing a decrease in the population it’s from hunting, not from climate change,” Canadian polar bear expert Mitch Taylor told the Scotsman. (Source.)

Yesterday, another report was issued that said polar bears are not threatened with extinction:

“Based on the best available information at hand, there was insufficient reason to think that the polar bear was at imminent risk of extinction,” the panel’s chairman, Jeff Hutchings, explained.

“That’s not to say that it’s not in trouble. A special concern species is a species at risk in Canada and requires legislative action.”

The report noted that polar bears currently face a double threat, both from hunting and the melting of ice.