Obama team retains Bush polar bear policy GLOBAL WARMING

The Obama administration has decided to keep a Bush-era policy on polar bears - declining to crack down on greenhouse-gas polluters on the grounds that their emissions are helping shrink the bears' habitat on Arctic sea ice, officials announced Friday.

The problem of climate change is so big, and so complicated, that it would essentially overwhelm the bureaucracy created to protect threatened and endangered species, officials said.

As a result, according to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the bears will continue to be listed as "threatened." But the government will not use the 1973 Endangered Species Act to attack the main problem that threatens them.

"The Endangered Species Act is not the appropriate tool for us to deal with what is a global issue," Salazar said in a conference call with reporters. Instead, he said, the Obama administration would continue to push for a cap on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions through legislation.

The polar bear, which environmental groups have made the furry face of climate change, presents a kind of problem that will come up again. Scientists say climate change is affecting animals all over the world, altering their habitats underneath them or slowly shifting ecosystems out of sync.

But, federal officials said, the Endangered Species Act was written for a different kind of threat. In cases where an animal is threatened by logging, trapping or land development, it is used to identify - and punish - individual actions that harm them.

That framework cannot be applied to climate change, they said, because the sources of that problem are global.

"Can we actually link an effect to any listed species to an incremental increase in greenhouse gases that would come out of any particular smokestack?" said Rick Sayers, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At this point, he said, the answer is no.

Friday's decision was criticized by environmental groups: John Kostyack, of Defenders of Wildlife, conceded that it would have been difficult to tackle a massive problem like greenhouse gases through the endangered species bureaucracy. But he said that should not be a reason formally to let polluters off the hook.

Each smokestack is "just like buying another pack of cigarettes," Kostyack said. "You're adding to the risk of the species."

Scientists say that while the bear population has more than doubled since the 1960s - 25,000 of the mammals can be found across the Arctic region from Alaska to Greenland - as many as 15,000 could be lost in the coming decades because of the loss of Arctic sea ice, a key element of its habitat.

Reaction to Salazar's decision Friday was sharply divided.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hailed the decision as a "clear victory for Alaska" because it removes the link between bear protection and climate change and should help North Slope oil and gas development. Both of Alaska's senators and its only House member also praised the decision and rejected claims that the bear won't be protected.

But environmentalists and some of their leading advocates in Congress were disappointed.

"The polar bear is threatened, and we need to act," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the environment panel, adding that she disagreed with Salazar's decision not to revoke the Bush regulation.