Washington - Under the pressure of a court-ordered deadline, the United States Wednesday classified the polar bear as a threatened species because of global warming and rapidly melting Arctic ice. In the surprise decision, US Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne said the move was prompted by the prospect that the polar bear could become endangered - the most serious category of danger which means a species faces extinction - within 45 years.
But Kempthorne also warned that he would make sure the decision would not be used as a back door to regulate US policy on climate change, saying it would be carried out in such a way "to protect the polar bear while preventing unintended harm to society and the economy of the United States."
"The sea ice is vital to the polar bear's survival," Kempthorne said. "The polar bears' sea ice habitat has drastically melted."
He said that computer projections, which he hoped would turn out wrong, currently anticipated further rapid melting around the Arctic polar cap.
The Bush administration was ordered by a federal court earlier this year to make the decision by Thursday about whether the animal was protected under the 1973 Endangered Species Act because of impacts on its environment from the warming climate.
The court order resulted from a suit brought by a coalition of environmental groups, including Greenpeace, the Centre for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resources Defense Council. The coalition, acting as a polar bear lobby in Washington, had been pushing Kempthorne's department since 2005 for protection.
The polar-bear lobby found support from within the lower ranks of the department including US Geological Survey data, which showed how global warming was threatening critical hunting habitat. Without sea ice and ice floes, the bears were getting exhausted and drowning during long swims to find seals and other prey.
But in the end, it was a political decision, and Kempthorne had been expected to toe the line of President George W Bush, who only recently conceded there was a connection between carbon emissions and global warming and who opposes mandated controls on greenhouse gasses.
The decision to list the polar bear as threatened in effect means the US government has acknowledged the potential for destruction of ecology and wildlife by the warming trend.
Kempthorne emphasized that listing the polar bear as threatened was the best way to enforce the legal standards set forth in the 1973 protection law, which he called one of the "least flexible" on the books.
In remarks that may have disappointed environmental groups, Kempthorne declared that the Endangered Species Act would not be "misused to regulate climate change" or strangle drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic region.
The rules would be fashioned in such a way to "ensure protection of the polar bear bear while allowing us to continue to develop our natural resources in the Arctic region in an environmentally-sound way," Kempthorne said.
"There is a right way and a wrong way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said the secretary, adding that the American people "deserve the benefit" of public discourse.
"Discussions of such far-reaching impacts should not be left up to unelected officials and judges," Kempthorne said, in effect kicking the decision back to Congress.
Kempthorne also said the decision would not affect any "power plants, government permits," oil drilling or other activities in the "lower 48 states" of the US.
The polar bear, fighting tooth and nail to maintain a slippery toehold, is the so-called canary in the mine - a symbol of alarm among environmentalists and scientists about the planet's rapidly increasing temperature.
Last year, a UN panel of thousands of global experts agreed in more drastic terms than ever that unless the world reduces emissions of carbon dioxide under a strict schedule, there would be huge social and environmental upheavals.
Kempthorne noted that the polar bear has in fact made somewhat of a comeback since the early 1960s, when it was numbered at 12,000 individuals. There are currently an estimated 25,000 polar bears living in the circumpolar region that includes Canada and Russia, scientists agree.
