By Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild Guide
Well, it is certainly hard to top a blog post on lighting lake farts on fire, but I’m going to try. While I wish I
Polar Bears on Barter Island
were up in AK playing with fire I’m not — instead I’m sitting behind a desk thinking about polar bears. I’m not just thinking about the last two Septembers when I joined fellow guide Dave Shaw watching the bears around Barter Island, but I’m also thinking about how their future is being decided right now by scientists and policy wonks in Washington DC. One of the great things about working for Arctic Wild is the conservation ethic that the company has, all of the guides are encouraged to learn about and talk about the threats posed to these special places we visit and we are encouraged to advocate for their protection. This is where you all come in. Right now the Department of the Interior is taking comment on a proposal to designate critical habitat for polar bears across the arctic – from the eastern edge of the Arctic Refuge all the way to Pt. Barrow. The Department of Interior needs to hear from you.
A little background: The polar bear depends on the frozen Arctic ocean to travel and hunt. Over the past
Polar Bear in the Beaufort Sea Critical Habitat Area
few decades amount of ice that covers the ocean has diminished by almost half. Scientists have said that by the middle of this century the Arctic might be ice free in summer – this would be devastating to polar bears. In 2005 conservation groups petitioned the Bush Administration to protect the bears by listing them under the Endangered Species Act. Not surprisingly the Bush Administration declined to do so. This prompted two lawsuits before, in May 2008, the bear was finally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In 2009, thanks to a huge outpouring of public comments the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed the protection for more than 128 million acres of the species’ habitat: the largest critical habitat proposal in Endangered Species Act history.
To make sure that the USFWS follows through on their proposed critical habitat they need to hear from people across the country that care about the future of these bears. Please take a minute to click over to the Sierra Club Take Action page and send in a comment
If you have any questions or want to know of other ways you can help protect America’s arctic please drop me an email dan.ritzman –at-sierraclub.org
