By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration said on Friday it will keep a Bush-era rule that weakens protection for polar bears' icy habitat and plays down links between the threatened status of the species and climate change.
"Seeing the polar bear's habitat melting and an iconic species threatened is an environmental tragedy of the modern age," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a telephone briefing.
"The best course of action for protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act is to wisely implement the current rule, not revoke it at this time," which would cause confusion, Salazar said.
Government scientists would continue to monitor the situation, he said. But that did not mollify environmental groups that opposed the rule.
Polar bears depend on Arctic sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, their main prey. The U.S. Geological Survey said two-thirds of the world's polar bears -- some 16,000 -- could be gone by 2050 if predictions about melting sea ice hold true.
Former President George W. Bush's administration listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act on May 14, 2008, but issued a rule that left global warming off the list of threats the federal government must consider in protecting the bear. This so-called polar bear special rule will be retained.
The rule exempts from government review all activities that occur outside the polar bears' range.
'WE NEED TO ACT'
Officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which administers the Endangered Species Act, acknowledged the overall relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.
But they said in the briefing with Salazar that it is impossible to link a specific source of carbon dioxide pollution -- a coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania or a cement factory in Georgia, for example -- to the condition of a particular polar bear population.
Environmental groups decried the administration's decision.
"Failing to rescind this rule continues the Bush legacy of ignoring global warming science and blocking any meaningful action to protect the polar bear," Melanie Duchin of Greenpeace said by telephone from Anchorage, Alaska.
Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity questioned the Obama team's argument that the Endangered Species Act is not meant to deal with large threats, noting that it was used to limit the use of the pesticide DDT.
Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, also disagreed with the move.
"Monitoring the situation will not tell us more than we know now -- that the polar bear is threatened and we need to act," the California Democrat said in a statement.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said she was pleased with the department's decision to retain the existing rule, "which provides rational measures for the protection of polar bears within their natural range."
Unlike the Bush White House, which opposed any broad, mandatory measures to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that spur climate change, President Barack Obama favors capping these emissions through legislation.
A climate change bill is moving through Congress and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared that climate-warming emissions are a danger to human health, which means the agency has the authority to regulate these emissions as pollutants.
On April 28, Salazar rescinded a different Bush-era rule that exempt oil and gas companies operating in polar bear habitats from special reviews designed to ensure that they were not harming the animals. The Alaska energy industry said the move could slow exploration and production activity in the state.
