But this bold move may just very well be a bad move for the environment she might end up overseeing if McSame McCain and Palin win the election in November.

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The Center for Biological Conservation was the group who filed a petition on February 17, 2005, asking that the polar bear be listed under the ESA. They have followed the landmark decision approving this petition by adding the three seals for consideration as species under threat. The “landmark” aspect of these decisions is that the polar bear was the first animal to be recognized as threatened as a direct result of climate change.

“While the polar bear may be the first Arctic species listed under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming, it will, unfortunately, not be the last,” says Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

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Polar bear populations have been declining over the past few years, attributable, some claim, to man-made global warming. Al Gore helped the plight of the polar bear by including in his award winning An Inconvenient Truth a cartoon of a polar bear swimming, unable to find land. The cartoon was inspired by evidence that some polar bears had drowned – a hitherto unforeseen occurrence.

So it is good news that on Wednesday the Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced that the polar bear has finally been listed as “threatened” under the ESA. However he was certain to ensure in his announcement that the decision should not be “misused” to regulate global climate change.

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Her name means “snowflake.” Since her birth in December, photos and videos from the zoo have been overloading the public with cuteness, stirring up “Flocke fever.”

Still, no one outside the zoo staff had ever seen Flocke in person. This week, she made her first live public appearance.

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Speaking at the Alaska Forum on the Environment, Ignatius Rigo, a University of Washington climatologist, believes that this summer will see the sea-ice pushed in to the North Atlantic Ocean by a combination of global warming and cyclical climate patterns.

According to Rigo, the remnants of the old sea ice that – thanks to their age – are stronger and thicker, are slowly being pushed in to the North Atlantic where they have no chance of surviving. “The buoys are streaming out,” Rigor said, referring to the markers used to monitor the flushing of ice into the North Atlantic.

The ice that is currently covering the Arctic is not the thick kind that could withstand such temperature and climate shifts as are taking place. Where in 1989 at least 80% of the ice in the Arctic was at least 10 years old, today that percent is down to 3.

So, “Have we passed the tipping point?” he asked. “It’s hard to see how the system may come back.”

This obviously presents us with a new shipping route through the area, but the fact that people are viewing this as a plus is just the epitome of why humanity is going to hell in a hand-basket.

When you consider that one of this planet’s most beautiful animals – the polar bear – is at risk of being wiped off the face of our planet thanks to these ice shortages, and people view shipping as a plus, you somewhat have to just shake your head and wonder; how did humanity get to this self-absorbed piousness that pits themselves above anything or anyone else.

Photo Courtesy of wili_hybrid via Flickr

AP via MSNBC - Too late to keep Arctic sea ice from vanishing?

According to a report conducted by the US Geological Survey, released this past Friday, two-thirds of the world’s population of polar bears could simply melt away like their native ice by mid-century.

"There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare of polar bears," said Steve Amstrup, who led the research team.

Their fate could be even more uncertain than we currently know, given the unreliability of computer models to perfectly predict the quickly disappearing ice that used to cover the Arctic Ocean, and subsequently provided the bears with a habitat to which they evolved.

At the moment, polar bears number somewhere close to 16,000, and reside throughout the Arctic in Russia, Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Already, areas such as the Northwest Passage have almost totally disappeared, and experts are predicting anywhere between a 40% to total drop-off of summer ice by 2050.

The reports executive summary concluded that by the mid 21st century, a full two-thirds of the bears population could be gone, with remainders living in Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland.

The polar bear has recently also been the subject of a potential addition to the Endangered Species Act list, thanks to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. Unable to successfully hunt on land – being too acclimatized to hunting in the water and on ice – the polar bear would probably begin to suffer in its cub’s inability to survive past adolescence, and the females unable to successfully reproduce.

First making its way on to the ecological landscape some 40-50,000 years ago, the polar bear has adapted to the icy conditions of the northern icecaps. In that intervening period, earth has not suffered a warming to such an extent that its caps have depreciated as they are now. It is this unaccustomed warming that worries experts.

However, it is not just global warming that is threatening species of animals (though, one may claim that all problems find their basis with humans). The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) and other conservation organizations are refocusing their attention on Congo’s Virunga National Park.

Amidst fierce clashes between Congolese military and local rebels, conservation organizations are worried that the local mountain gorillas are at risk. The ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature) have noted that recent heavy shelling has been drifting dangerously close to gorilla habitats.

With an estimated 700 mountain gorillas remaining in the wild worldwide, and half of that population in Virunga, conservationists have reason to be worried: "The UN announces a truce between warring factions one day and the next we hear it’s been broken," said WWF’s Marc Languy, who is working in the national park. "All we want is return of peace for the security of its people and wildlife."

So whether it is the polar bear, or the mountain gorilla, a common thread runs between the future of both: humans. We are the root cause of the problems; we thus have to be the solution. For more information, head along to WWF.

US Geological Survey Report

ENN - Congo fighting threatens mountain gorillas

WWF (World Wildlife Fund)

More from GO:

Summer Ice to Disappear by 2030?

The expert cinematography of Arctic Tale captures an age-old tragicomedy with a new and unsettling twist. Ardent lovers, defiant youth, unmitigated kindness, and sex jostle with death, solitude, violent battles, and the turbulent upheaval of a mighty and ancient kingdom. The drama unfolds around a polar bear and a walrus—children of rival families in a strange and beautiful world of unicorned whales and a cold sun. What we as an audience do not see until the movie’s end is how intimately we are entwined in the plot.

The film makes no overt mention of global warming until the very end. By sidestepping the link between this phenomenon and mankind, the film smartly avoids the emotional recoil of those who still have difficulty coming to terms with our species’ influence on our environment. Rather than confront the issue from the human perspective, the film simply documents the dramatic effects of warming in the far North. Only after the film closes does the focus again return to the human world with suggestions about how each of us can reduce our impact on the climate.

Except for our role in climate change, the rest of the film is devoid of any human presence. The filmmakers are quite successful at documenting a world that is largely unknown to most people. They share some of the most intimate moments of the film’s protagonists. We are taken beneath the water to see Seela nursing at her mother’s belly and inside of a polar bear’s cave, where Nanu bears cubs of her own. If we judge the movie solely on the merit and skill of its documentary filmmakers, it lives up in every way to the masterpiece, March of the Penguins. Most of the soundtrack also sets a solitary, sentimental, almost indie feeling that is perfect for a film “at the edge of the world.”

However, instead of recreating the epic drama of March of the Penguins, this film was marketed toward a much younger audience. Queen Latifah’s playful, sassy narrating tone resonates with the “cute and cuddly” theme of the movie poster, which was clearly aimed at drawing parents and children. Those who come with the expectations seeing another March of the Penguins or An Inconvenient Truth may be disappointed to find a younger target demographic.

Still, making stories of the natural world accessible to children is perhaps the best way to instill in them the importance of caring about our impact on the environment. The success of theatricals like The Lion King and television stars like Jeff Corwin are hopeful signs that the genre of Nature-Adventure will soon open wide enough to appeal to audiences of all ages and backgrounds. By more regularly glimpsing the natural world, we are able in some sense to remember our part in it.

The magic of the movies is that we leave the theater feeling like the hero or the heroine of the film. As the credits roll and we stand up from our plush, popcorn-scented seats, we take with us the intrepid bravery of Indiana Jones or the humble tenacity of Frida Kahlo. But rarely do we leave the theater feeling like a polar bear or a walrus!

I left the theater on a chill, cloudy Seattle afternoon. The shifting of loose brick under my feet transported me back to the arctic, where thin ice was crumbling beneath thick paws.