WILDERNESS GAINS PROTECTIONS

 ENVIRONMENT

December 24, 2010 | By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times

Restoring a policy abandoned by the George W. Bush administration, the top Interior official on Thursday gave the agency that manages 245 million acres of public land the authority to temporarily protect pristine areas of the West.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who issued the order, called it “a new chapter in terms of how we take care of our Bureau of Land Management lands.”

Salazar’s directive casts aside a Bush policy that was adopted after an out-of-court settlement between then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton and the state of Utah. Under that agreement, the bureau lost its ability to manage pristine areas in order to preserve their wilderness qualities, pending congressional action. The move potentially opened the lands to energy development and mining.

The bureau will now compile an inventory of “wild lands” and, as part of its public planning process, has the authority to keep them off-limits to development. But the classification can be modified, meaning the lands will not have the same permanent protection as congressionally designated wilderness areas.

In a news conference in Denver, Salazar said the Norton settlement was wrong and “should never have happened.” But he also said the new classification would not lock up the areas, adding that “flexibility” was needed in managing them.

Conservation groups, which were highly critical of the Bush administration policy of opening vast swathes of Western land to oil and gas leasing, praised Salazar’s move.”Millions of acres of unprotected, wilderness-quality lands exist on BLM lands across the West,” Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. “Today’s announcement will allow the broad vistas of Colorado’s Vermillion Basin, Utah’s Valley of the Gods and many other unique and irreplaceable landscapes, which provide habitat for wildlife like sage grouse and pronghorn, to be managed to maintain their wildness.”

POLAR BEAR STATUS PITS ENVIRONMENTALISTS VS. ADMINISTRATION

Advocates for the animals want the status listed as ‘endangered,’ but such a move is opposed by powerful industry groups.
December 23, 2010|By Neela Banerjee, Washington Bureau

Reporting from Washington — A dispute about how much the government should protect polar bears has turned into a battleground for environmentalists and some of the country’s most powerful business organizations over the larger question of global warming.

On Wednesday, the Interior Department filed arguments in federal court defending its decision to classify polar bears as “threatened” rather than “endangered” despite widespread shrinkage of the sea ice that forms the bears’ natural habitat.

What makes the issue so sensitive is that, if polar bears received the stricter endangered classification, the Obama administration would be pressured to attack the problem at its source: the petroleum, coal and manufacturing companies that emit the greenhouse gases scientists say are a major factor in climate change. “There is a pronounced push-back from industry because they rightly see that they will have to modify or mitigate their activities to comply with the laws,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Land and Wildlife program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the environmental groups suing to change the polar bear’s status. In early 2009, the Obama administration pledged to revisit several controversial environmental decisions made under George W. Bush — including the polar bear’s status. But months later, Obama’s Interior Department ratified the bears’ “threatened” classification.

Although the Obama administration has moved steadily to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — with a tough reelection campaign ahead in 2012 and a still-wobbly economy — the White House has been trying not to provoke policy battles with the wary business community.

The issue is even more sensitive because tougher emissions rules would be likely to raise prices and could cost jobs.

Scientific data point to a mounting threat to the polar bear, the largest carnivore on land. Typically, polar bears hunt for ringed seals on the sea ice, catching them when they come up for air. But higher temperatures have brought about a rapid decline in summer sea ice, robbing bears of their hunting platforms. The loss of sea ice essentially threatens bears with starvation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature considers the species “decreasing.” A recent paper in the journal Ecology concluded there was a “high probability” that polar bears would disappear in the Beaufort Sea, which is off Alaska, by the end of the century.