Home | Shop | Send Us Info | Subscribe | Advertise | Help |

The Fight Continues to Save the Polar Bear...Against the Department of the Interior!

Joseph Raglione
October 23, 2009
Gentle readers of this American Chronicle, it could be a very lonely planet if the only living creatures are Human Beings. Why not protect the other Species? They do make life interesting!

Protect Polar Bear Critical Habitat:

In response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, the federal government has proposed to designate more than 200,000 square miles as critical habitat for threatened polar bears.

While today's proposed critical habitat designation for the polar bear is very good news, we cannot count on the Department of the Interior to do the right thing for the bears. When the species was finally listed as threatened in 2008, the Department of the Interior issued a special rule exempting greenhouse gas emissions from certain provisions of the Endangered Species Act. In May 2009, Obama's new Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar reaffirmed this Bush-era exemption for the fossil-fuels industry. A Center court challenge to the polar bear extinction rule is ongoing.

Secretary Salazar also seems unwilling to say no to the oil industry. Earlier this week he approved oil-company plans for exploratory drilling in the polar bear's habitat in the Beaufort Sea, and he is considering a similar drilling proposal in the Chukchi Sea.

Please take a moment now to write Secretary Ken Salazar and let him know that polar bear critical habitat must be truly protected -- not sacrificed to oil companies.

Subject: Protect Polar Bear Habitat

Your Letter:

I am writing to urge you to protect polar bear critical habitat. While the proposal to designate critical habitat for the polar bear is an important and positive step, your recent approval of oil drilling in polar bear habitat threatens to completely undermine polar bear protection efforts. Please designate all areas used by polar bears on land and ice as critical habitat, and permanently protect these important areas rather than sacrificing them to oil companies. Ken Salazar, Secretary


U.S. Department of the Interior

1849 C Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20240 Fill in your information, then click to submit your letter.

Welcome back!

For your convenience, we have filled out your form with the information you provided previously from postal code H7R1M5.

Click to see and manage your information.

Not human4us@sympatico.ca? Please click here. Thank you!

Email*

Sending your message, please wait ...

Please take action by January 1, 2010.

Fields marked with an asterisk are required.

Polar bear photo (c) Pete Spruance.

In May 2008, following a Center for Biological Diversity petition and lawsuit, the Department of the Interior designated the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, recognizing the threat global warming posed to the species.

Under the Endangered Species Act, critical habitat is supposed to be designated at the same time a species is listed as threatened or endangered, but in practice habitat is rarely designated without litigation. Once it is designated, federal agencies are prohibited from taking any actions that may "adversely modify" it. Species with critical habitat have been found to be more than twice as likely to be recovering, and less than half as likely to be declining, as those without it.

The Center sued the Department of the Interior for failing to protect polar bear critical habitat and ultimately worked out a court settlement that led to today's announcement of proposed designated critical habitat. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Interior has until June 30, 2010 to finalize critical habitat designation for the polar bear.

255 character limit

Get the AddThis ToolbarPrivacyAddThisBookmark & ShareEmailFavoritesPrintDeliciousDiggGoogleMySpaceLiveFacebookStumbleUponTwitterMore... (172)Get the AddThis ToolbarAddThis
Print Email
Bookmark and Share

Joseph Raglione

About Joseph Raglione
Hi! I am the executive director of the World Humanitarian Peace and Ecology Movement. I began as an environmental activist in 1969 and basically, never stopped! I Graduated College in Social Science and registered as a non-profit corporation in 1988 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I am one of a very few non-profit and generic freedom loving journalists left on Earth, and I continue today to study and to understand the problems connected with human activity on this Planet. My affiliates include: GreenPeace, the Nature Conservancy, the Bio-diversity organization, the Sierra Club, the David Suzuky foundation, the WWF, Amnesty International, World Vision, the IUF organization; as well as the wonderful and independant N.A.S.A. scientists studying our Planet's weather systems. Of course NASA also studies the mysteries of the Eternal Universe with satelite generated images and, over the years, have generously allowed me and thousands of our world scientists to study over their shoulder's via the Internet.
In spite of some past U.S. government repression, NASA continues to provide solid evidence of global warming.
NASA has provided me with pictorial evidence of Rainforest deforestation within: Jakarta, Peru, Africa, Brazil and even in Western Canada!
The motivation for such destruction continues to be (often illegally) for: lumber, for bio-fuels, and for Cattle ranching. Today, the perceived future profits for Palm Oil and for Bio-Fuels are prime motivators for environmental destruction. Small crop farming also contributes but that may be changing as farmers learn to protect the Rain-Forest.
With NASA imaging, there is proof that large city heat traps are helping global warming, and with (infrared images)there is proof that several hundred million gas burning vehicles (including ship and airplanes) presently create a hugh quantity of pollution tracks across both Oceans and Sky.
With oil, gas, Coal and Bio-Fuel heated buildings around the world creating C02 emissions, and with Methane release from all animal species...giant Ozone holes have been created and continue to exist above the North and South Poles. Ozone holes allow the Sun to radiate the Ice Caps and to accelerate the Ice melt, which releases more Methane into the atmosphere, which continues to thin out the Ozone. A vicious circle created by human need and also, unhappily, by human greed!
I have been asked to write to the Prime Minister of Japan to ask him to stop the murderous assault on endangered Whales. Every year, thousands of Whales are killed in the Antarctic with GreenPeace volunteers placing themselves between the Whales and the grenade tipped harpoons, and peope like myself, (I did not forget this is my "Bio," putting my old neck on the line attempting to change the situation by writing thousands if not millions of words!
Are words dangerous?
Over three hundred journalists were killed within the last ten years. You tell me if words are dangerous!
As I write these words, the desperate and starving in Darfur are waiting for rescue. I motivated a few kind hearted California Actors to visit the region and to report back. They did! They then created the Darfur coalition and they continue to fight to save the innocent victims trapped in tents in the desert of the Sudan. Darfuri's were attacked and moved from their homes because somebody believes there is Oil under the Sudan desert.
As I write this, a few sick and desperate people in Iraq are wrapping bombs around themselves in order to die in the name of God, and the list of humanitarian disasters continues. I also contribute information to the Reuter's news service. It is time for a change. Please help make it happen!