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Environmentalists sue to broaden polar bear decision

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced polar bears would be listed as "threatened," but said he would not allow the Endangered Species Act to be "misused" to regulate global climate change.


Bush must consider greenhouse gas effects, they say.
From the Associated Press
1:38 PM PDT, May 20, 2008
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA -- Conservation groups announced Tuesday they are challenging Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's attempt to limit collateral economic damage from listing polar bears as a threatened species.

The Center for Biological Diversity/, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council will seek court intervention to address what they say in the No. 1 threat to polar bears: greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming and melt Arctic sea ice.
Kempthorne, echoing President Bush, said last week the Endangered Species Act was the wrong tool to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Kempthorne that he would propose "common sense modifications" to make sure the polar bear listing would not set backdoor climate policy outside the normal system of political accountability.

The conservation groups said Kempthorne acted improperly.

"On the one hand, he's acknowledging that global warming is impacting polar bears," said Melanie Duchin of Greenpeace in Alaska. "On the other hand, he's not willing to do anything about it. We're asking the administration to uphold the spirit and intent of the Endangered Species Act."

In court filings Friday that amended their original lawsuit, the conservation groups asked U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, Calif., to reject Kempthorne's administrative actions.

Interior spokesman Shane Wolfe said the department generally does not comment on pending litigation.

"The simple fact is that the Endangered Species Act is not a means to address the global challenges of climate change, which call for a global solution," he said.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, warned that the court action could threaten domestic energy security and development, from offshore leasing to new coal-fired power plants and oil shale development.

"I can guarantee you this is the beginning of an endless series of court challenges and appeals that the national environmental organizations have been planning in their goal of using the polar bear issue for much larger purposes and goals," he said.

Kempthorne, calling the Endangered Species Act one of the most inflexible laws Congress ever passed, said last week he had no choice but to list polar bears as threatened because of overwhelming evidence that the bears' sea ice habitat had dramatically melted and that computer models indicate the trend was likely to continue.

However, Kempthorne said, the listing decision would be accompanied by a rule preventing "unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States."

The law did not allow interventions on greenhouse gas emissions, he said, because no "causal connection" had been demonstrated on individual polar bears from specific power plants, resource projects, government permits or activities in the lower 48 states.

Kassie Siegel, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, called that reasoning "completely ridiculous."

"It's a classic ploy of answering the wrong question,' she said. The issue, she said, is that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming, and therefore harm polar bears.

"The notion that you need to tie the death of any polar bear to any particular carbon dioxide molecule is ridiculous," she said. "They're just making that up."

The law contains two key provisions for protecting listed animals.

One, Section 7, requires all federal agencies to ensure that their regulatory actions do not jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or "result in the destruction or adverse modification" of their critical habitat.

The other, Section 9, applies to anyone from individuals to corporations. It prohibits them from the "taking" of an endangered species. Siegel said courts have routinely interpreted harm to include significant habitat degradation, and that the measure should be applied to proposed offshore oil and gas drilling in planned for polar bear habitat in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska's coasts.

Duchin, of Greenpeace, said most other industrial countries address emissions.

"There are ways to combat global warming and have a strong economy. That's been proven in Europe. It's not one or the other," Duchin said.

Polar bears use sea ice for hunting their primary prey, ringed seals. Advocates for additional protections say they have little chance of adapting to hunting on land. Polar bears also use ice for mating and reaching denning areas.

Kempthorne said federal agencies had made no link between polar bear deaths and oil and gas operations in Alaska, leading him to propose a rule allowing petroleum development to be regulated by the Marine Mammal Protection Act rather than the Endangered Species Act. That also was challenged.

Andrew Wetzler, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Kempthorne's rules would be challenged on procedure because they were implemented without proper public notice, a comment period or environmental review. Wetzler also said the MMPA does not contain requirements for protection of critical habitat, a recovery plan or agency consultation.

"We are confident the rules won't survive court review and that the polar bear will be given the full protection of the Endangered Species Act that it so badly needs," he said.

The groups also claim Kempthorne should have immediately listed polar bears as endangered rather than threatened based on the scientific evidence collected in the listing process. A species is "endangered" if it "is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range." "Threatened" means it's likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future.

A U.S. Geological Survey study generated in response to the listing petition predicted polar bears in Alaska could be wiped out by 2050.

Condor chick at Oregon Zoo gets a crack at life

The baby is in trouble from the start, but with derring-do, drastic action and a mixture of mouse meat, curator and keeper help the bird through a rocky start


Saturday, May 24, 2008KATY MULDOON The Oregonian Staff:


Shawn St. Michael held the California condor egg up to a bright light. Inside, he saw the chick push its scrawny neck against the membrane inside the shell, struggling to hatch.

The egg had looked like trouble from the start, its embryo malpositioned on the yolk. St. Michael, the Oregon Zoo's condor curator, had worried the little bird wouldn't be situated properly to hatch when its time came in early May.

He was right.

By May 5 or 6, he knew he'd have to intervene, but if he did too soon, he remembers thinking, he risked nicking a vessel and the chick could bleed to death. Wait too long, and it would suffocate.

St. Michael had helped birds hatch before: parrots, penguins and three other condors. But this was more special than most. Only about 300 California condors exist, and this chick, if it survived, was the offspring of a male that hadn't reproduced before -- a genetic gem.

St. Michael worked quickly in a garage-turned-veterinary hospital at the zoo's Jonsson Center for Wildlife Conservation in Clackamas County.

Using a sterile needle, he bored a tiny hole through the fist-sized, green-tinged shell to give the chick oxygen. With a hemostat, he carefully snipped away shell fragments until the hole was the size of a pencil eraser.

He remembers lifting the egg off the heating pad where he worked and holding it to his ear. St. Michael heard faint inhalations and exhalations -- whispers of life.

Without human intervention, condor chicks usually hatch about 72 hours after first cracking their shells.

St. Michael placed the egg back in its incubator and waited.
When the time came, with keeper Kelli Walker assisting, St. Michael retrieved the egg. Working at a stainless steel table under a bright light, the heat cranked to about 80 degrees, she held the egg steady while he cut more shell from its wider end. Once the hole was big enough, St. Michael gently lifted the chick's fleshy, bald head and frail body from the egg. Its creamy white feathers, wet and stringy, looked pasted to its torso.

The chick weighed 153 grams, or slightly more than 5 ounces. It was the smallest condor chick the zoo had seen since it joined the effort to breed the endangered species in 2001. Most hatchlings weigh about 183 grams, or about an ounce more.

St. Michael wrapped the new arrival loosely in sterile paper and placed it in a Plexiglas isolette, its thermostat set to about 90 degrees.
Hatching is exhausting, even for the healthiest condor chicks. But typically after a rest, the birds perk up, move around and start looking for food.

This one looked weak and acted lethargic.

St. Michael consulted Mitch Finnegan, the zoo's veterinarian, then hooked the chick to a saline IV drip to ensure it was hydrated. He fed his little charge a mixture of mouse meat and the human nutrition supplement Pedialyte. He X-rayed it to check for internal trouble, then added an antibiotic to the chick's IV.

Still, the chick was too weak to hold up its head.

Without drastic action, St. Michael remembers thinking, the prized chick would die. He'd never given a condor a transfusion, but it was time to try.

The zoo's condor operation sits in a remote meadow surrounded by woods -- a spot that, by design, feels far from civilization. The more that keepers can simulate a wild environment, the better prepared the birds bred there will be able to survive in the wild. Keepers tiptoe around and keep an eye on the condors largely through remote cameras.

Catching an adult condor blood donor, St. Michael figured, wouldn't be easy. If he raised a ruckus, he risked upsetting the three condor pairs already raising chicks. They could end up as casualties.
St. Michael, Walker and Finnegan quietly went to work. Walker baited a holding area with food, then retreated. Through a camera, the three watched a young adult female named Nootka enter the pen and start to eat. They slid the door shut so the bird couldn't escape, then rushed in.

St. Michael slapped a net over the enormous condor, whose wings span more than 9 feet. Walker grabbed the bird's head and held her powerful beak shut. St. Michael clutched her legs and wings to keep them still. Finnegan stabbed a needle into a vein in Nootka's leg and drew a vial of blood.

They slid open the door into the bird's pen. She scampered off.
Nearby in the condor hospital, Finnegan found a tiny vein in the hatchling's neck, inserted a needle and pushed the adult bird's blood into the newborn.

St. Michael slipped a sliver of a tube down the chick's throat and drained gas bloating its gut.

By the next afternoon, the chick, whose gender is still unknown, was alert, moving and hungry.

Keepers fed it, as they will until it fledges at about 4 months old, with a puppet built to look like a condor parent. After that, the real deal -- a mentor condor -- will take over. The mentor will teach the chick, which weighed almost 19 ounces this week, the ways of a world where not only newcomers, but their entire species, struggle to survive.

Katy Muldoon: 503-221-8526; katymuldoon@news.oregonian.com

5 endangered tiger cubs born at Saint Louis Zoo

In this photo provided by the Saint Louis Zoo, five critically endangered Amur tigers are seen Monday, May 19, 2008 at the zoo. The five cubs, two males and three females, were born April 28 and are with their mother "Kalista" in an off-display maternity den at the zoo. (AP Photo/Saint Louis Zoo)





ST. LOUIS (AP) — Five rare tiger cubs have been born at the Saint Louis Zoo.

The zoo says the critically endangered Amur (ah-MOOR') tigers were born April 28 and are in an off-display indoor den.

The zoo says the first-time mother, Kalista, is busy nursing and caring for her babies.

The normal litter size is two or three cubs. The five weigh 4.5 to 7 pounds each.

The species used to be called Siberian tigers. They are at risk because of habitat loss, human encroachment and poaching.

Joy over India tiger cubs births

Fourteen tiger cubs have been spotted in a reserve in north-western India, forestry officials say.

The sightings are a rare piece of good news in the fight to halt the steep decline in tiger numbers in India.

Forestry officials in Ranthambhore National Park in Rajasthan say the cubs are from several mothers and have been seen regularly in recent months.

Ranthambore had just 32 tigers at the last count. India is thought to have 1,500 tigers, half the world's total.

But conservationists say they face extinction unless urgent action is taken to save them.

'Positive development'

Ranthambore has seen tiger numbers fall from 46 in 2004.

The park authorities are currently conducting a new tiger census and up-to-date figures - which will include the new cubs - are expected in June.

RS Shekhawat, deputy field director at Ranthambore, said the sightings of the cubs was "good news for all of us".

"Credit goes to both governments - state and federal, the forest authorities and also local people for this positive development," he told the BBC.

Ranthambore covers 392 sq.km. of dry deciduous forests sprawling over undulating terrain. The BBC's Narayan Bareth in Jaipur says forest officials want more space for the tigers.

"We are contemplating expanding the habitat area for the tiger population because the population is on the rise," Mr Shekhawat said.

Nearly 100 villages surround the park, and the more the tiger population grows the more they are likely to come into conflict with humans.

The Wildlife Trust of India's state co-ordinator, Mahendra Kachhawa, urged the authorities to tighten security at the park.

"You know the park is an easy target for the poachers," he told the BBC.

Tiger taskforce

Rajasthan's state government is under pressure from the Indian government to take steps against poachers.

In 2005 it was reported that tigers had been wiped out at another park in Rajasthan, the Sariska sanctuary. That prompted the setting up of a tiger taskforce in India.

Wildlife experts welcomed the latest news, saying they also had information about sightings of tiger cubs in other reserves.

"Ranthambore is back to its heyday of the 1980s, and the secret of success is in better management and a lot of protection, which was not there earlier," Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI) told Reuters news agency.

"We at least know that tigers don't breed when they are disturbed. A lot of hard work has gone into Ranthambore and the results are just starting to show now."

Ranthambhore is a major tourist attraction, drawing about 200,000 people from India and abroad every year.

"We are so happy the 14 tiger cubs were spotted in the park. It will set an example for the other parks. It will boost the local economy," said Arvind Jain, a local hotelier.

Source: BBC News

US ordered to act on polar bear

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
A judge has told the US government to decide within weeks whether to list polar bears as an endangered species.

The decision was hailed by conservation groups which have been hounding the government on the issue for years.

The federal judge rejected the Bush administration's pleas for a further delay, and ordered it to make and implement its decision by 15 May.

A listing could restrict oil and gas exploration in the US Arctic, and lead to curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Today's decision is a huge victory for the polar bear," said Kassie Siegel, climate program director with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the conservation groups behind the legal challenge.

"By 15 May, the polar bear should receive the protections it deserves under the Endangered Species Act, which is the first step toward saving the polar bear and the entire Arctic ecosystem from global warming."

Static violation

The conservation groups argue that with polar bear numbers declining, there is an urgent need to protect its remaining habitat.

But the government had stalled on making a decision since the original petition went forward in 2005.

At the court, Judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the slow progress put the government in breach of its obligations.

"Defendants have been in violation of the law requiring them to publish the listing determination for nearly 120 days," she concluded
Judge Wilken also denied the government's request for a further delay, and ordered it to forgo the traditional 30-day waiting period between making a decision and implementing it.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service must now decide whether to list the polar bear as endangered, or to put it in a lesser category of risk such as threatened, or to keep it off the list entirely - an option which would immediately lead to further legal action from the conservation coalition.

If it is listed, campaigners will argue that anything that might impinge on the creature's habitat, such as recently announced plans for oil and gas exploration off the Alaskan coast, must either be cancelled or put under much more rigorous scrutiny.

They will also argue that the only way to prevent the Arctic becoming entirely ice-free in summers in the coming decades is to make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Two years ago, scientists compiling the internationally recognised Red List of Threatened Species decided to include polar bears, giving them a listing of Vulnerable to Extinction.

Warming Arctic seas and a marked decline in sea ice during the summer months made it likely, they concluded, that numbers would fall by one third within three generations (45 years).

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

"Back From The Brink"

Golden Lion Tamarin

In the 1970s, there were fewer than 200 of these small monkeys left. Today there are more than 1,200 in the wild and 450 more in zoos. Their recovery is a huge success story. The National Zoo has been at the forefront of the effort to replenish wild
populations with zoo-bred animals.

source:National Zoological Park

Endangered

Maned Wolves

The maned wolf is South America's largest canid and is an endangered animal that is increasingly being threatened by habitat loss. North American zoos have initiated a Species Survival Plan to help boost numbers of the remaining wild populations

source:National Zoological Park