Boxer hammers Bush on environment, again

Boxer hammers Bush on environment, again

by Matthew Hay Brown


A delay in the decision on whether polar bears need to be protected from global warming has given Sen. Barbara Boxer another opportunity to blast the Bush administration on the environment.

“The Bush administration has failed to do what is necessary and once again they must be taken to court before they will act,” the California Democrat, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said today.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was supposed to make a recommendation to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne on whether polar bears should be protected under the Endangered Species Act because climate change threatens their habitat by Wednesday.

In a statement today, officials said they still needed a few more weeks.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working diligently to reach a final decision on the proposal to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act,” the agency said. “We expect to provide a final recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior and finalize the decision within the next month.”

Officials said new information supplied by the U.S. Geological Survey contributed to the delay. The USGS reported in September that thinning sea ice would lead to the deaths of two-thirds of the world’s polar bear population – including all those find in Alaska – by 2050.

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the public will see and recognize the problem, however . . .