from the hallowed halls of the
u.s. senate -
The question the Service has to answer is this: Is there clear scientific evidence that the current worldwide polar bear population is in trouble and facing possible extinction in the foreseeable future? As the Service reviews the issue over the next year, I am confident they will conclude, as I have, that listing the polar bear is unwarranted at this time.
In the proposal, the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledges that for 7 of the 19 worldwide polar bear populations--this is very significant. There are 19 populations worldwide for the polar bear. For seven of those populations, the Service has no population trend data of any kind. For more than a third of the known populations out there, we don't have any information. The other data suggests that for an additional five polar bear populations, the number of bears is not declining but is stable. Two more of the bear populations showed a reduced number in the past due to overhunting, but these two populations are now increasing because of new hunting restrictions.
Other sources of data mentioned in a recent Wall Street Journal piece--just this past Tuesday--suggest that ``there are more polar bears in the world now than there were 40 years ago.'' I have to say there are quite a few more, almost twice the number from 40 years ago.
The Service estimates that the polar bear population is 20,000 to 25,000 bears, whereas in the fifties and sixties, the estimates were as low as 5,000 to 10,000 bears, and most of that was due to sport hunting at that time, and most of that has been banned.
A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey study of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations ``may now be near historic highs.''
So if the number of polar bears does not appear to be in decline, then why are we considering listing the species as threatened? Because the Endangered Species Act is broken. It needs to be fixed. We tried to fix it for the past 4 years. We have been unable to reach a consensus.
The ESA allows the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the entire range of polar bears as threatened and thereby extend a wide array of regulatory restrictions to them and their habitat despite the dearth of data and a lack of scientific evidence that polar bears are, indeed, in trouble.
The law also allows for the Fish and Wildlife Service to justify its proposal on a sample from a single population in western Hudson Bay in Canada where the populations have decreased by 259 polar bears in the last 17 years. Stop and think about this. This is the western Hudson Bay in Canada, 1 of 19 sites. This is the one which is the most severe.
The population has decreased by 259 polar bears in the last 17 years; however, the figures that the International Union of Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources says that 234 bears have been killed in the last 5 years alone. If you figure that 234 have been killed in the last 5 years, the total in the last 17 years is 259, you have to assume that more than the 259 were actually shot. Ironically, Canada now is liberalizing a lot of their hunting in that area, and it is going to allow more hunting. This is something they need to address.
At this point, I would like to say that while I support hunting as a general matter, we need to fully understand its impact on the polar bear population before we blame global warming for changes in bear population. I already said we can document pretty well--scientifically it is documented--that the number of bears has actually increased except in areas where hunting is more prevalent.
I think there are a lot of people who want to somehow insert global warming as a crisis in everything and use polar bears for that reason, and we are not going to let that take place.
The Fish and Wildlife Service asserts that the reason for the decline in the western Hudson Bay population is climate change-induced ice melting. To make that assertion, they rely on hypothetical climate change computer models showing massive loss of ice and irreparable damages in the polar bear's habitat. The Service then extrapolates that reasoning to the other 18 populations of polar bears. There are 19 populations, 1 of them is in trouble, but they use that as the model, and they take that and apply that same extrapolation to the other 18 populations of polar bears, making the assumption all bears in these populations will eventually decline and go extinct.
Again, this conclusion is not based on field data but hypothetical modeling, and that is considered perfectly acceptable scientific evidence under the Endangered Species Act.
