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Senator Blasts 'Foot-Dragging' on Protecting Polar Bear

Feds delay decision due within 1 year

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(Newser) – Three months after the deadline for declaring whether polar bears are a threatened species, the Interior Department hasn't issued a ruling, and Barbara Boxer wants to know why. The influential senator said yesterday she wants Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to appear before the environment committee and “answer questions about the administration’s continued foot-dragging,” the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports.

With scientists predicting that Alaska's polar bears could be extinct by 2050, Boxer is asking why Interior approved oil lease sales off Alaska's northwest coast before a decision was made about the bears' status under the Endangered Species Act. The department’s inspector general has begun a probe into the delays, and Greenpeace and other environmental groups have filed lawsuits in hopes of forcing a decision.

This undated photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a sow polar bear resting with her cubs on the pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska.
This undated photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a sow polar bear resting with her cubs on the pack ice in the Beaufort Sea in northern Alaska.   (AP Photo/U.S. Fish and Wild Life Service, Steve Amstrup, File)
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne reads a bid at the Minerals Management Service's lease sales for offshore oil and gas exploration sites in the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans, March 19, 2008.
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne reads a bid at the Minerals Management Service's lease sales for offshore oil and gas exploration sites in the Gulf of Mexico in New Orleans, March 19, 2008.   (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
In this photo released by the
In this photo released by the "Tiergarten Nuernberg" zoo in Nuremberg on Monday, March 17, 2008, polar bear cub Flocke is seen attempting to chew on a bone.   (AP Photo/Tiergarten Nuernberg, Ralf Schedlbauer, HO)
Se. Barbara Boxer wants answers about the delay in an Interior Department decision on the status of polar bears (2005 KRT photo Steve Ringman)
Se. Barbara Boxer wants answers about the delay in an Interior Department decision on the status of polar bears (2005 KRT photo Steve Ringman)   (KRT Photos)
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., holds tape which covered correspondence the committee received from the EPA, Jan. 24, 2008.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., holds tape which covered correspondence the committee received from the EPA, Jan. 24, 2008.   (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)
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Dirk Kempthorne Visits Malibu, California 2008   (ocweb (YouTube))
Alaskan Wolf Aerial Gunning (Short Version)   (hectori12 (YouTube))
Polar Bears   (RepMarkey (YouTube))

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