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A big loss for polar bears -- with a small silver lining

2010-03-18T18:30:56Z

You may have heard the news, but early this morning we got word that the nations meeting at the Convention on International Trade Endangered Species (CITES) rejected an United States proposal, supported and encouraged by NRDC, that would have ended the international commercial trade in polar bears and strengthened the regulation of polar bear sports hunting.

My colleague Zak Smith is in Doha, Qatar, and has been blogging about our fight for polar bears (you can read his posts here, here, and here).

There’s no doubt about it, the vote was a big loss. Canada alone takes about 300 polar bears for international trade and sports hunting each year—this is an unsustainable and unnecessary stress on the population. And the Canadian populations are particularly important to the fate of the bear. At the end of the day, our loss was the result of the failure of the European Union to vote to protect polar bears. It’s a particularly frustrating outcome, given that both the European Parliament and the European Commission had formally supported increased protections.

But I comfort myself that some good did come out of the process. As the result of the U.S. proposal, Canada significantly cut back on its polar bear quotas, in a (successful, as it turns out) attempt to head off further CITES restrictions. In the Baffin Bay, for example, Canada recently announced that it was going to cut it total quota from 105 bears to 65 bears over the next four years. Over the phase-in period alone, that’s 100 bears that won’t be shot thanks to our efforts. A lot of the credit goes to NRDC’s members and activists who have been incredibly active in making their voice heard to both the Canadian and the U.S. governments.

In the coming days our polar bear team will regroup and figure out the best way to continue the fight. There are still measures that the CITES convention can take to reduce polar bear trade and there are other international agreements and strategies we will be taking a close look at. Stay tuned…this fight is far from over.

Wildlife Roundup: the Good News

2010-02-28T19:48:32Z

February’s summary of all the reasons to have a little hope about wildlife conservation.

If it pans out, this month’s best news of all has got to have been the return of wolves to Colorado. High Country News and other outlets are reporting that a pack of wolves (with pups!) is suspected to be present on the High Lonesome Ranch, a 300 square mile property in the State’s northwest. Wolves, and what may be wolf scat, has been repeatedly sighted and collected by experienced biologists, but officials are awaiting the result of DNA tests before officially welcoming wolves back to the Centennial State.

The lesser horseshoe bat is making a comeback in east Oxfordshire, England. The bat used to be common there but had retreated into western England and Wales. Now scientists believe that the bats are slowly expanding their territory east again. It’s nice to hear some good news about bats, given how grim the news has been of late here in the U.S.
Steelhead trout in California (rainbow trout who migrate between fresh water and the ocean, much like salmon) are returning to fish hatcheries along Mokelumne River in record numbers. Steelhead are protected throughout California under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The Canadian Provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador have committed to the creation of a new national park in the Mealy Mountains. When complete, the park is expected to encompass over 10,000 square kilometers (over 4,000 square miles), making it the largest national park in eastern Canada.
The Conservation Fund secured an easement in a 2,400 acre Wyoming Ranch that will preserve the second-longest pronghorn antelope migration route in North America. The antelope use the route to move between their winter range, in Wyoming’s Green River Basin, and their summer range in Idaho’s Grand Teton Mountains.

Plains bison (or, in Cree, mistah' moostoos) were released into a large enclosure within Grassland’s National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada. The release is part of a plan to return the ecologically important herbivore to the Park, where they have been absent for 120 years.
Fourteen Key Largo wood rats were released in Florida's Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge this month. Only 90 of the wood rats are thought to remain in the Key Largo area. The reintroduction is the result of a successful captive breeding program by the Lowry Park Zoo and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
The Sundaland clouded leopard, which lives in Borneo and was only classified as a separate subspecies a few years ago, has been captured on film for the first time; hopefully the publicity will lead to strong conservation measures for the big cat. Increased photo-capture of other rare cats in India is also being hailed as an “encouraging sign” for felines in the region. Check out the Sundaland clouded leopard below:

See if you can guess what I am now?

2010-02-20T16:37:14Z

Trying to engage with climate skeptics is kind of like being thrown into a cafeteria food fight: lots of noise, frenetic activity, and juvenile behavior. Today’s National Review Online serves up a classic example. Citing a Washington Post article about a study of tree growth, John Miller writes:

But What's It Doing To the Ents?

Global warming is responsible for the tree-trunk obesity epidemic:

“Parker's data, which showed the trunks gradually fattening over time, indicated that many of the trees were growing two to four times faster than expected. That raised questions about climate change's impact on the age-old rhythms of U.S. forests.”

It's also behind the tree-trunk emaciation dilemma:

“In the tropics, however, some studies have seemed to show trees growing more slowly: It might now be too hot for some trees there.”

All in the same article!

That’s it. There is, of course, absolutely nothing inconsistent with the two statements Miller pokes fun at. So what’s his point? Mostly, to take something that seems inconsistent (but isn’t) and present it, without ever explicitly saying so, as a reason to doubt the reality of climate change.

Greg Pollowitz at NRO’s Planet Gore is a perennial offender. Here he is last week:

More Tragic News for Polar Bears

Watts Up With That: Northern Hemisphere Snow Extent Second Highest on Record

Poor little critters are probably suffocating in their dens, what with all this global-warming-induced snow.

All of these comments are, I suppose, meant to be funny, or at least clever. Yet, as Pollowtiz should know, snow fall has precious little to do with polar bear survival. It’s sea ice extent that matters. And when it comes to sea ice, the picture is pretty grim. Ha ha.

Animal House Food Fight from Food Fight App on Vimeo.

Oh. Canada

2010-02-13T19:16:20Z

Sitting in bed last night and watching the Vancouver Olympics' opening ceremonies, I couldn’t help but feel a bit exasperated. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sucker for the Olympics' opening act, and it was a great show. The stagecraft was amazing. But discordant too. That’s because the second third of the ceremony (after all the athletes had entered and a forgettable musical number) was an homage to Canada’s natural wonders. Ice floes were recreated, three dimensional killer whales swam through the stadium, trees grew out of the stage and reached into the sky…all accompanied by nature-loving dancers and musical numbers. Sadly, there’s no video available, but you can see what I’m talking about here.

So, what’s the problem? Well, Canada. Despite its progressive image (the leaf helps, I think), Canada is more like a rapacious petro-State than a responsible environmental actor. Among the lowlights:

Canada continues to allow the widespread and often unsustainable hunting of its marine mammal including, most notably, polar bears. The country’s own Species at Risk Act is of little help, as its process is mired down in politics and often driven by economic considerations rather than sound science. Canada is the only commercial exporter of polar bear parts (rugs, boots, etc.) and is fiercely fighting efforts to end the bear trade.
And those beautiful trees in the opening ceremony? It doesn’t help much that Canada is destroying vast swaths of its boreal forests to extract tar sands oil—a form of heavy crude that’s going to be piped to the Midwest for refining (creating more pollution here). Extraction and processing of tar sands oil releases three times as much global warming gasses as conventional oil.
Speaking of global warming, Canada hasn’t exactly been a responsible actor on that stage, either. Just this month it submitted global warming pollution reduction targets to the international community and became the only developed country to date that has said it will increase its greenhouse gas pollution over 1990 levels.

So when you see that Maple Leaf flying, think twice. Canada has a lot of things to admire (not least among them Neil Young). But natural resource protection? Not so much.

Walden Pond; or, How Global Warming and Invasive Species Can Change Everything

2010-02-10T22:17:38Z

"A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone."

-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods

John Platt has a terrific piece up at Extinction Countdown about the changes that global warming and invasive species have brought Walden Pond, made famous by the transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, whose thought was profoundly influential on America’s environmental movement.

Thoreau famously documented his “experiment” of living sparsely in a small cabin by a pond in Walden. “To be awake is to be alive" he wrote. Thoreau was a keen observer of nature and took detailed notes of the species he observed in the area and their behaviors. This “Concord data set” was begun by Thoreau in 1851 and naturalists have continued to add to it until the present day. In recent years, scientists have used Thoreau’s data to document changes to his little Pond. They ain’t pretty.

Over the last 150 years the mean annual temperature in the Walden area has increased by 2.4°C;
This climate shift has allowed non-native (invasive) species of plants to out-compete their native rivals by flowering earlier;
As a result of the combination of climate change and competition from invasive species, 27 percent of the plant species Thoreau recorded are now locally extinct;

As we’ve discussed here at Switchboard many times, invasive species are a nasty business. Unfortunately, climate change often seems to make it worse.

The President’s Budget: A Mixed Bag on Wildlife Protection

2010-02-02T17:55:00Z

Yesterday, President Obama sent his fiscal year 2011 budget to Congress. From the point of view of environmental policy there’s a lot to like, particularly when it comes to promoting clean energy. (For a good roundup of some of the particulars see Cai Steger’s analysis of the clean energy provisions here and Amy Mall’s take on oil and gas impacts here.)

There are also some good things in the President’s budget aimed at protecting wildlife. Among some of the highlights:

Increased funding for regional science centers to study the impact of global warming on wildlife;
More money to implement actions identified in recovery plans (which are prepared for species protected under the Endangered species Act);
Additional dollars for the Land and Water Conservation Fund; and
Increased money for ecosystem restoration in places like the Chesapeake Bay and the Everglades.

But these positives are somewhat overshadowed by cuts to one of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's most basic functions: identifying and protecting wildlife and plants in need of the Endangered Species Act's safety net.

The President's budget contains a 9.4% cut in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's budget for putting new species on the endangered and threatened species list and a 9.1% cut in the budget for conserving species that are candidates for listing.

This is even the more worrisome considering that, even under the Service's 2010 budget, by its own admission the agency had far less money than needed to meet its Endangered Species Act listing backlog. It’s estimated that clearing the backlog would cost $200 million dollars. Staff levels at the agency have also fallen dangerously low. In 2010, the Conservation Community recommended that the Service be given $32 millions for listing and $15 million for candidate conservation. That’s still not enough, but it’s a third more funding that President Obama has proposed.

Finally, I couldn’t help but be deeply disappointed to see that the President is proposing to cut $1.9 million in research funds for white nose syndrome, a deadly disorder devastating bat populations around the country. As Sylvia noted this fall, these funds were secured by Senators Lautenberg of New Jersey and Leahy of Vermont and are badly needed to help meet an estimated $55 million dollars in research needs over the next five years.

From Pipes to Polar Bears

2010-02-01T17:51:07Z

Today’s Chicago Tribune features a long story by Michael Hawthorne about the metal plating industry and their ongoing practice of dumping pollutants such as perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) into the sewers of major cities like Chicago and Cleveland. The PFCs are then discharged, untreated, into nearby rivers, lakes and streams. PFCs are nasty stuff, and have been linked to a wide variety of health concerns, in both humans and animals. Ok, you’re probably thinking, sounds bad, but what does this have to do with polar bears?

Well, PFCs are one of several “persistent organic pollutants” or “POPs”--which also includes chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chlordanes (CHL), DDT and its metabolites, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs)--that don’t readily degrade in the natural environment. As Hawthorne notes, because POPs are so long lasting, once they are emitted into the air or the water they move around, and a lot of them end up in the Arctic. They also tend to bioaccumulate. That is, concentrations of POPs are higher in animals as one moves up the food chain from, for example, fish, to seals, to things that eat seals. And what eats seals? Polar bears.

A 2005 study showed that levels of one type of PFC--perfluoroalkyls, which are associated with fetal toxicity and other effects in mice and rats--have risen exponentially in polar bears from two disparate locations in the North American Arctic. A more recent study showed this same trend in East Greenlandic polar bears. If these current trends continue, scientists expect the lowest-adverse-effect level detected for rats and monkeys for these chemicals could be reached in East Greenland as soon as 2014.

And its not just polar bears at risk. Studies show that Inuit people in Nunavut, Canada, are exposed to PFC, largely from consumption of traditional food such as seals, beluga whales, and caribou. While exposure levels still appear to be low, these are not compounds that are produced or emitted anywhere near the Canadian Arctic. And, as pointed out above, their levels seem to be increasing.

All of which is a helpful, if chilling, reminder about the old environmental saw: think globally, act locally. When it comes to modern chemistry, what we throw into the sewers of Chicago can very well end up in the stomachs and breast milk of people and animals thousands of miles away.

Wildlife Roundup: the Good News

2010-01-26T21:35:31Z

After a bit of a hiatus, here’s some good news from the close of the ‘aughts and the beginning of the….well, whatevers.

The Brown Pelican flew off of the federal list of endangered species last November, marking final chapter in the comeback of this once-imperiled bird. Seriously, they’re all over the place out there.
Siamese crocodile are one of the most endangered reptiles in the world—only about 250 are thought to exist in the wild. But, recently, the species prospects became a whole lot brighter when genetic testing discovered that 35 of the 69 crocodiles held at Cambodia's Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center were purebred Siamese. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a successful captive breeding operation (Hat tip: Extinction Countdown)
Although I usually restrict these good news post to actual good news—that is, positive on-the-ground conservation stories, as opposed to legal victories and the like—it is worth noting that in the close of 2009 Alaska wildlife enjoyed a pair of very good critical habitat designations from the Obama Administration. First the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed designating over 200,000 square miles of sea ice and coastal denning habitat for the polar bear and, just a few weeks later, the National Marine Fisheries Service proposed designating much of Alaska’s Cook Inlet as critical habitat for the Cook Inlet population of beluga whales.
Efforts to conserve the saiga antelope have yielded success in recent years, according to the RSPB. In order to better understand the species’ migration patters and aid in ongoing conservation efforts, 20 saiga antelope were just released back into Kazakhstan’s grasslands, where the largest herds can still be found. The Society has also launched a new effort to reintroduce endangered insects into parts of the UK.
Wolf sightings have expanded in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. Recently, probable wolf tracks were found in the Cascade Range’s Ochoco Mountains. Scientists are surprised at the increased reports of wolves in the western part of the State, as many had expected wolves to fill up available habitat in eastern Oregon before moving west.
WFPL Radio has a nice story about successful efforts to captively breed and reintroduce endangered mussels to rivers and streams in Kentucky. Over the last couple of years, biologists have learned how to reliably breed the endangered mussel species in tanks.
Peru has announced plans to permanently preserve 350,000 acres of “guano areas”—coastal nesting habitat—to help the country’s bird populations. Among the birds that will benefit from the new protections are the endangered Humboldt Penguin and the Peruvian Diving-petrel.
The new year also began on a positive note for researchers at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, who have learned that a young right whale feared dead may actually be alive. Right whales are one of the most imperiled species of baleen whales. With this species, every calf saved means a ton (ha, ha, get it?).
Finally, this month Tanzania announced that it will expand Tarangire National Park, home to largest concentration of elephants in East Africa, following the completion of negotiations with several local villages.

Wildlife Services: The Most Important Wildlife Agency You’ve Never Heard Of

2009-12-02T22:16:12Z

Most people don't know that the U.S. Government is in the business (and I mean that literally, in some cases) of killing wildlife. In 2008, the U.S. government killed more than 124,000 predators such as coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, foxes and wolves. The animals were shot, caught in traps that strangled them or trapped their legs, asphyxiated by cyanide gas, or--in the case of young pups and cubs--poisoned, shot, or clubbed in their dens.

It was an average year for Wildlife Services, a little-known agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Wildlife Service's predator control program spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, largely at the request of private livestock producers and state governments, on such predator control activities. Unfortunately, most of its victims are killed indiscriminately, without ever having preyed on livestock. They happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and took poisoned bait or wound up in a trap.

If this is the first time you've heard of Wildlife Services, you're not alone.

The agency's work is not broadly advertised.

And unlike most federal agencies, it lacks the transparency to allow taxpayers the chance to assess who their efforts support or whether those efforts are worth a chunk of the USDA's budget and a mounting environmental toll.

You will be hearing a lot more from NRDC about this agency, but let me outline some of our concerns:

Focus on killing predators. The USDA's own statistics show that most livestock losses come from weather, disease, illness, and birthing problems, not predation. In addition, non-lethal methods to avoid and control predator conflicts have been underutilized. Nonetheless, Wildlife Services continues to "preventatively" kill more than 100,000 native carnivores each year, even when the effectiveness of such killing is unproven or, worse yet, proves counterproductive.
Cost. No truly independent cost-benefit analyses of the predator control program have been conducted. Nearly a decade ago, the Government Accountability Office pointed out weaknesses of the studies that have been done and the lack of independent studies. In addition, the actual annual price tag on predator control is not clear. The structure of Wildlife Services' budget tends to obscure the full cost of specific predator control methods to taxpayers.
Unintended consequences. The lethal control methods the program employs have led to dozens of injuries and deaths from aircraft crashes, poisioned pets (and even some people), and the degradation of ecosystems that rely on healthy predator populations to function. In some areas their efforts have led to an increase the reproduction rate of the animals that Wildlife Services is attempting to control.
Who benefits? Wildlife Services responds directly to ranchers who complain about predation (or worry about potential predation), and may allow private associations to pay portions of the salary of their staff. Nor does the agency require private parties to show they've tried to employ non-lethal and effective techniques before the killing begins. Records of which operations are assisted and at what level are not made available to the public. The nature of the relationship between private interests and Wildlife Services operatives should be examined so the public can assess how taxpayer dollars and natural resources are being used.

Don't get me wrong. Some of the work that Wildlife Services does is extremely important. We can't have geese flying around airports. Many invasive species are a true menace to healthy ecosystems and need to be eradicated. And some human-animal conflicts really do require ugly action. Nonetheless, this agency and their actions scream out for reform. And we are starting to push for a change in their predator control programs.

The most important, first step is to bring more transparency to Wildlife Services' practices and spending, in line with other federal programs. In addition, it will be crucial to adopt a more scientific and rational approach to predator control, balancing environmental health and human safety against the demands of a few.

In the meantime, Wildlife Services can immediately make big gains by ending one of its of the most hazardous, cruel, and environmentally harmful killing methods. The program can and should cease the use of two deadly poisons, Compound 1080 and sodium cyanide M-44 devices. NRDC is asking the Department of Agriculture to take this step immediately.

Wildlife Roundup: the Good News

2009-10-30T18:38:58Z

This month’s news about wildlife and wildlife habitat that you can feel good about:

Scotland just announced an ambitious plan to create the Great Trossachs Forest by systematically restoring over 24,000 acres of forest, grassland, and wetland habitat in western Scotland. The project will take two centuries to fully realize (they have to grow new forests in many places) and will encompass Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.

As I previously mentioned, Canada is pursuing a reintroduction effort of black footed ferrets into the Grasslands National Park. The first ferrets in the program were just released.
The larvae of a rare English marsh moth has been recorded in record numbers at the Saltfleetby-Theddlethorpe Dunes National Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, England. Farther south, an armature naturalist recently found a small Ranunculus moth in her Norfolk county garden. The species was believed to be extinct in county, having been last recorded in 1913. The article goes onto to quote Jim Wheeler, “Norfolk recorder of moths” (really? that’s a job?) as saying ““It's been a very good years for moths. Lots of species have appeared that we haven't seen for a while.”
Twenty thousand endangered cutthroat trout, the only species of trout native to the Colorado River, have been released in Utah. The release of the fingerlings into the Colorado is part of ongoing attempts to help recover the fish.
Nepal has expanded protected tiger habitat in its Bardia National Park by 900 square kilometers (about 350 square miles). Nepal also announced that it would beef up of its regulatory and law enforcement efforts aimed at conserving the country’s tiger population.

Scientific American’s John Platt reports that rare birds are doing well in Britain these days, which is consistent with some of the good news we’ve been reporting here for the last several months: “Of the 63 rarest U.K. bird species (those with fewer than 1,000 breeding pairs), nearly 60 percent have seen population increases. They include the osprey, corncrake, avocet, cirl bunting and stone-curlew, all of which have enjoyed the benefits of focused conservation programs.”
Gurney’s pitta, an endangered bird found in Thailand and Myanmar (and once thought to be extinct in the wild) is rebounding. Scientists now believe that there are probably 20,000 breeding pairs of Gourney’s pitta in Myanmar along—double the population previously assessed.

Giving Credit Where It’s Due (And Pointing Out When It’s Not)

2009-10-29T18:13:57Z

As I’ve noted, the last couple of weeks have been good ones for the polar bear, with the Obama Administration proposing both the designation of over 200,000 square miles of critical habitat the bear and increased international restrictions on polar bear trophy hunting and commercial trade. The Administration—and, especially Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar’s team—deserve a lot of credit for these moves. Well, NRDC believes in giving credit where it’s due. So today we are running this print ad in Washington, D.C.:

At the same time, all has not been rosy at the Department of the Interior. While the Secretary has been taking some good steps on polar bears, the Minerals Management Service continues to approve offshore oil and gas exploration in their Alaska habitat.

The Department of the Interior has also pressed forward with stripping Endangered Species Act protections from the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf. That decision allowed Montana and Idaho to open hunting seasons on these still-imperiled animals. The result has been devastating, particularly to some wolf packs who live the border of Yellowstone National Park. NRDC is challenging these actions in court. That means the Obama Administration still has the power to reverse course, agree to relist the wolf, and call off the wolf hunt.

So far, neither Secretary Salazar nor President Obama have evinced much interest revisiting their misguided gray wolf policy. So now we’re raising money to run another ad:

If you want to contribute to help run this ad, you can go here.

Overall, the Obama Administration has been a huge step forward for the environment. From global warming policy, to public health, the Administration has already done a lot of commendable work. But they don’t always make the correct call. When they do the right thing, we’re going to let them know, and say “thanks.” When do do the wrong thing? We’ll be there as well.

Investor’s Business Daily Misleads on Polar Bears

2009-10-27T18:30:14Z

Investor’s Business Daily just published a foolish editorial about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's recent proposal to designate over 200,000 square miles of Alaskan coast and sea ice as “critical habitat” for the State’s beleaguered polar bear population. The editorial doesn’t contain much in the way of actual substance, and what substance it does have is mostly bunk. Here’s a sample:

The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

Wrong. In fact, not even close to being right. The global population of polar bears is thought to number between 20,000 and 25,000 individuals. No scientist of whom I’m aware suggests that this number has increased since 2006, when “An Inconvenient Truth” was released. Way back in 2005, of the 19 recognized polar bear sub-populations, 5 were thought to be declining, only 2 were thought be increasing, and five were thought to be stable. As for the rest, we simply didn’t know. One of those declining populations, by the way, is in the Southern Beaufort Sea, where much of Alaska’s polar bears are located. Today, the situation has only deteriorated.

The editorial also states:

One of the nine critical errors Judge Michael Burton found in Gore's film was the claim that polar bears were drowning while searching for ice melted by global warming. The only drowned polar bears the court said it was aware of were four that died following a storm.

Well, I can’t speak to Judge Burton’s ruling, but as a factual matter this is also wrong. In 2005 scientists did indeed spot four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea during regular transect surveys of the area and following an intense storm. But based on extrapolation from the area surveyed, they estimate that as many as 27 bears could have died. It was the first time in over a quarter-century that such a mass-drowning event had ever been recorded. In 2008 a large number of swimming bears was also reported in the same area. As sea ice continues to retreat farther from land and the distance polar bears need to swim grows, such mass drowning events are projected to increase, not only in the Beaufort Sea, but in other places as well.

If Investor Business Daily wants to editorialize about designating critical habitat for the polar bear, fine. But guys, get your facts straight first.

In An Important Step, U.S. Designates Polar Bear Critical Habitat

2009-10-22T19:01:05Z

It’s been a good couple of weeks for polar bears. First, the Department of the Interior announced that it would propose tighter international regulations of polar bear trophy hunting and trade under international law and, today, the Department of the Interior unveiled a proposal to designate 200,000 square miles of “critical habitat” for the polar bear in Alaska.

According to Thom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife, who announced the designation at a press conference today, about 93% of the areas designated is composed of offshore sea ice. He also said that, if approved, the proposal would be the largest designation of critical habitat in the history of the Endangered Species Act.

The Endangered Species Act requires the designation of critical habitat (defined as those areas essential to a species’ conservation) for all species listed as threatened or endangered. Once designated, the federal government is prohibited from taking any action that could “adversely modify” that habitat. While lawyers have argued endlessly over what, exactly, that phrase means, I think its fair to say that its considered one of the more protective standards the Endangered Species Act has to offer. Indeed, species that have designated critical habitat have been found to be more than twice as likely to be recovering, and less than half as likely to be declining, as those without it.

The implications of a good critical habitat designation in Alaska are profound. As a glance at the map below shows, just protecting known polar bear denning locations in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, could greatly influence oil and gas exploration and drilling there.

The really cool (and valuable) thing about the Endangered Species Act’s critical habitat provisions, though, is that they don’t just protect the bears themselves, but the places those bears need—which includes not only occupied habitat, but essential unoccupied habitat as well. Thus, if you were to look not just at known den sites, but suitable denning habitat in the Refuge, you would get a map that looks more like this:

Nor is it only denning habitat that should be protected. Other habitat (such as offshore sea ice) that supports essential polar bear life functions needs to be designated as well. That’s particularly important to keep in mind because, just this week another federal agency, the Minerals Management Service, approved plans for exploratory oil drilling in the polar bear’s offshore habitat in the Beaufort Sea and is considering a similar drilling proposal in the Chukchi Sea.

On top of that, impacts beyond oil and gas developments, including things like toxic contamination, are also subject to the Endangered Species Act’s critical habitat provisions.

It’s often easy to feel hopeless about the plight of the polar bear--and, it’s true, that if we don't do something about climate change, the bear’s in deep, deep trouble--but today’s announcement is a hopeful reminder that there are still lots of ways we can help the bear and that U.S. law contains many mechanisms that give polar bears a fighting chance.

UPDATE: The full proposed rule is now available here.

BREAKING: The U.S. Takes the Lead in Restricting Polar Bear Hunting and International Trade

2009-10-16T18:27:16Z

Big, big news out of Washington, D.C. today on the topic of polar bear conservation. The United States, responding to NRDC, our allies, and more than 50,000 NRDC members, announced that it would propose placing the polar bear on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Sounds wonky, I know, but it is really the most important step in stopping polar bear hunting around the world. As I explained here, “uplisting” the polar bear (moving it from Appendix II of the Convention to Appendix I) will greatly restrict both the commercial trade in polar bear parts and, potentially, trophy hunting of polar bears.

President Obama, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and, particularly, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar all deserve enormous credit for taking this step, which wasn’t easy and is sure to irritate our friend to the north, Canada.

You see, right now Canada is the only country that allows both the trophy hunting and a commercial trade in polar bear parts. About 300 polar bears are exported in commercial trade every year and, historically, about 100 polar bears are taken by wealthy trophy hunters (it’s not clear how much, if at all, these two numbers overlap). Canada is also where two-thirds of the world’s polar bears can be found. Most importantly, Canada looks like the one area of the world where they may be able to survive in the wild as the Arctic melts. Whatever we can do to protect those populations is central to the species’ long-term survival.

I’ve been waiting for this news for a while. This summer, my colleague Zack Smith and I travelled to Geneva to discuss polar bear conservation with the members of CITES’s Standing Committee and since then we’ve been reaching out with our allies to urge not just the United States, but also Norway, Russia, and the European Union to support increased polar bear protections. Those last three players will be key now. Canada has already said they oppose any increased international protections for polar bear trade and trophy hunts, so the positions of the other polar bear “range” states (Russia, Norway, and Greenland/Denmark) are very important.

Throughout the debate that is sure to follow, however, we need to be mindful that some native villages in the Canadian Arctic derive economic benefits from the polar bear hunt and trade. We need to protect their ongoing subsistence use of polar bears, while urging the international community to provide economic assistance to those communities that will be the hardest-hit.

Throughout it all, NRDC, the Humane Society International, Defenders of Wildlife and the International Fund for Animal Welfare will all be working towards ensuring that polar bears get the protections they need with the next full meeting of the Convention is held, this March in Doha, Qatar.

EPA Decides to Take a New Look at Atrazine

2009-10-07T21:33:39Z

Good news: today the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it will initiate a review of the health and environmental effects of atrazine, one of the most widely used pesticides in the United States.

The review will take about a year and will begin with a comprehensive look at the emerging science about atrazine’s potential human health effects. As an “endocrine disruptor” (meaning that it’s capable of disrupting normal hormonal functions) a host of studies have potentially linked atrazine to a wide variety of health effects from various types of cancer to poor sperm quality in humans. Atrazine can also be devastating to aquatic ecosystems. At extremely small doses, atrazine has been shown to turn frogs into hermaphrodites. It has been linked to sever organ and limb deformities and life-threatening behavioral changes in amphibian species, and it can disrupt fish behavior and the productivity of aquatic plant life.

EPA’s announcement comes just six weeks after NRDC released its report, Poisoning the Well, which brings together EPA data on atrazine contamination in surface waters throughout the Midwest and in drinking water. We show that the standards applied under the Safe Drinking Water Act do little to protect the public against alarmingly high spikes of atrazine in their drinking water and that the surface waters of the Midwest are similarly subject to very high levels of contamination.

NRDC will, of course, be fully engaged in the EPA’ review. It’s high time that the United States seriously consider doing what Europe did years ago: ban the stuff. In the meantime, the Obama Administration (and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson) deserves a lot of credit for having the courage to take this important first step.