From today's Wall Street Journal
Cold Comfort for Polar Bears
By JIM CARLTON
May 16, 2008; Page A7
Visitors to some of the oil fields that fringe Alaska's Beaufort Sea get this rather disturbing warning before venturing out into the Arctic cold: Look carefully under cars in the parking lot and the buildings on stilts. Why? Lurking there may be one of the world's largest land carnivores -- the polar bear, which can actually track a man down.
But who's to protect polar bears against humans? For the past few years, polar bears off the Alaskan coast were observed drowning many miles out at sea. The suspected culprit: fewer ice floes upon which to hunt their favorite meal -- seals --
because of global warming.
The plight of the polar bear, which became a world-wide clarion call to action on global warming, has brought unrelenting pressure on the Bush administration to do something to try to protect the bears, and this week it did.
On Wednesday, Interior Secretary Dick Kempthorne accepted the recommendation of the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, affording it some of the same protected status as other endangered wildlife such as desert tortoises.
Cold Comfort for Polar Bears - WSJ.com