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San Francisco, CA - California environmentalists say it's time to throw the polar bear a lifeline, and that's why three environmental groups have filed a lawsuit in a federal court in San Francisco. They're suing the Bush administration for missing a key deadline that required a decision in January on listing the bears as endangered.
Andrew Wetzler with the Natural Resources Defense Council says polar bears are threatened by global warming and their chances of survival are melting away.
"Every month that the Bush administration delays giving polar bears the protections they so badly need is another month that they are hurtled closer to extinction."
The polar bear situation is the first time global warming has been considered a main factor in a decision to declare a species endangered, and federal officials say that makes the matter even more complex. A report by the U.S. Geological Survey predicts two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by 2050 if climate change continues to melt Arctic sea ice at the current rate.
Critics of listing the bears as endangered say polar bear numbers have gone up in recent decades. Wetzler explains that while polar bear numbers are up since the 1960s, that's only because people have stopped shooting so many of them.
"To say that because we stopped over-hunting polar bears in Russia and Norway and the United States and in some parts of Canada means that they're not threatened by global warming is just, scientifically speaking, nonsense."
