G.W. Says It's OK To "Annoy" Polar Bears While Looking For Oil!

From an email from the Center For American Progress;
www.americanprogressaction.org |


ENVIRONMENT -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION GIVES OIL COMPANIES A PASS TO HARM POLAR BEARS: Last week, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) issued regulations allowing seven oil companies to annoy and potentially harm polar bears while searching for oil and gas in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea. These regulations, which include legal protection for the incidental harm of "small numbers" of polar bears, come despite the Interior Department's decision last month to list polar bears as a threatened species because of habitat loss due to global warming. Even though "vibrations, noises, unusual scents and the presence of industrial equipment can disrupt" polar bears' "quest for prey and their efforts to raise their young in snow dens," the FWS said "oil and gas exploration will have a negligible effect on the bears' population." "The oil and gas industry in operating under the kind of rules they have operated under for 15 years has not been a threat to the species," claimed FWS director H. Dale Hall. Environmentalists, however, are calling the regulations a "blank check" for the oil companies to harass polar bears. Prior to this decision, environmental groups had announced a "plan to sue the federal government for not imposing new regulations on oil development in Alaska's Arctic waters as part of offering protective status to polar bears."