Defenders Magazine
Get Defenders Headlines
Get the latest wildlife conservation news and information... right when we post it online.
Defenders Magazine
Defenders in Action: Defenders Fights Sarah Palin, Safari Club to Protect Polar Bears
With polar bears already on the brink because of climate change, Defenders of Wildlife and other conservation groups in October intervened in a federal district court case to ensure the animals receive the full protections they need to survive.
Listing polar bears under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA)—action the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) took in May—should help protect bear habitat from threats such as oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska. But fossil-fuel extraction is exactly the reason why Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has actively opposed the listing. In April, she wrote the Secretary of the Interior urging him not to list the bear on the grounds that it might hurt the state's oil- and gas-dependent economy. After the bear was granted protection, Palin filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the listing—prompting Defenders to move to intervene in the case in October.
Defenders has also intervened in a separate lawsuit to challenge the service's decision to include a provision in the final listing rule that negates the usual protections provided by the ESA. The administration has made it clear that the ESA will not provide any additional protections than those that already exist under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (MMPA) and will provide no protection whatsoever against emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing the rise in global temperatures that directly threaten the polar bear. FWS also failed to give the public any notice or opportunity to comment before enacting the rule. "This rule makes a mockery of the Endangered Species Act and of the public comment process," says Defenders' President Rodger Schlickeisen.
On another front, Defenders in June intervened in a federal lawsuit filed by Safari Club International, a sports-hunting group that wants to import polar bear "trophies" from Canada, and has objected to the bear's protected status because it has effectively ended the commercial trade in polar bears.
"It is unfortunate that the Safari Club, which describes itself as a wildlife conservation organization, has brought this misguided lawsuit," says Defenders' attorney Brian Segee. "The practice of importing polar bears killed in Canada into the United States shouldn't have ever been permitted in the first place and now clearly must be ended in light of the dire threat that global warming poses to the species and its habitat."
Although the MMPA prohibits sport hunting of polar bears in Alaska and bars the import of most marine mammal products from other countries, the Safari Club and other trophy-hunting groups punched a loophole through the law in 1994 that allowed American hunters to import polar bear trophies from Canada. Since then, more than 900 polar bear heads and hides have been imported into the United States by wealthy trophy hunters—until the bear received federal protection.
Please visit www.defenders.org/polarbears to learn more about Defenders' work to protect polar bears.
