Give Polar Bears a Stronger Recovery Plan

Instead of throwing polar bears a lifeline, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month proposed a weak recovery plan that allows for a massive 85 percent drop in the polar bear population and accepts a disturbingly high likelihood that the species may go extinct. We need your help to tell the Service this isn't good enough.

While the "recovery" plan recognizes that climate change threatens to wipe out a majority of the world's polar bears, it proposes no meaningful measures to combat this threat. Scientists predict that most bears will likely be gone by 2050 unless there are massive cuts in the greenhouse gas pollution melting their sea-ice home.

To make matters worse, the Obama administration's Interior Department recently permitted Shell's oil rigs to begin drilling in polar bear habitat in Alaska's Chukchi Sea, heightening the risk of oil spills and committing us to more ice-melting pollution.

Take action today -- tell the Service polar bears deserve a strong recovery plan that confronts their key threats, and that oil drilling off Alaska is incompatible with polar bear recovery.
Mary Colligan:

I am writing to urge you and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to seriously reconsider your current recovery plan for polar bears. The potential loss of more than 85 percent of the world's polar bears cannot be considered success. The plan allows a 10 percent probability that polar bears in each of the four ecoregions will go extinct -- this is simply not acceptable, as it puts polar bears' fragile existence at risk.

[Your comment will be added here]

Instead, I urge you to develop a plan that offers meaningful action to combat the key extinction threat to the bear: greenhouse gas pollution. The plan should recommend sufficient, science-based greenhouse gas emission reductions and atmospheric concentrations to ensure the bear's survival and recovery, along with a specific plan for achieving those reductions.

The plan must also identify oil and gas development off Alaska, contaminant exposure and human disturbance as key threats to polar bears, and recommend recovery criteria and actions to reduce those threats. As you well know, oil and gas drilling in polar bear habitat off Alaska heightens the risk of oil spills and is committing us to even more ice-melting greenhouse gas pollution, which the Service should acknowledge as incompatible with polar bear recovery.

In short, as you move to finalize this recovery plan, you must ensure it effectively confronts the key threats to polar bears and leads to healthy populations in Alaska and across the Arctic, as required by the Endangered Species Act.

Sincerely,

[Your name]
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