Friday, March 1, 2013, Juneau, Alaska – The representative whose district includes territory where polar bears roam and the Co-Chairs of the Alaska House Resources Committee offered comment today on the Appeals Court of the District of Columbia’s ruling affirming the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
“We, the people of the Arctic, have led the way on conservation and protection of the polar bear, so for Fish & Wildlife to come in without talking to us in northern Alaska, and make this decision is extremely frustrating,” Representative Ben Nageak, D-Barrow, said. Nageak, the former North Slope Borough mayor, has worked on polar bear sustainability and management since the 1990s, including with Canadian Inuit neighbors. “We’ve done things in regards to polar bear protection, like harvest quotas and monitoring, that weren’t mandated by the government. Our people value the polar bear and our cultural heritage is one of reverence for the animals we share our lands with.
“Now? Now, I hear the Fish & Wildlife Service is acting with impunity – and the courts are letting them get away with it,” Nageak said. “From the get-go, they didn’t engage with us or have a meaningful dialogue. They, who live so far away from the polar bear and only possibly see them at zoos or on television, are now free to tell us, who live with and walk on the same land as them every day, that they know best. Federal over-reach is a fair term for this, and so is federal impudence. The Fish & Wildlife Service should be more concerned with today’s reality of shrinking sea ice and contact between vessels and marine life in the Arctic, instead of taking our rights away based on speculation. Shame on them.”
“How can you predict the future? You can make projections, or make assumptions, but you’re just as likely to be proven wrong as you are to be proven right,” Representative Eric Feige, R-Chickaloon, said. “So why are we making such a huge decision now based primarily off of some unknown future? If the polar bear are so threatened, then why do we kill 10-percent of the ones we dart and tag for scientific and management purposes?”
“Under this ruling the ESA’s reach is not limited only to what is affecting endangered species today, but is extended on a speculative basis to what might happen decades, or even half a century, into the future,” Representative Dan Saddler, R-JBER/Eagle River, said. “Such continued evidence of federal over-reach across the decades to stifle economic activity on the North Slope should send a chill down the spine of any Alaskan who hopes for a long-term prosperous future for our state.”
