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SCI Files Lawsuit to Reverse ESA Listing of Polar Bears

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Outstanding! Polar bear numbers in Alaska have actually increased over what they were years ago, and they got listed based on junk science -- the first species to get listed not because its numbers were declining, but because a theory suggests that environmental change might cause their numbers to go down in the future. That's not what the ESA was designed to do.

Here's an eyewitness account. I was up in Barrow over Memorial Day, and the sea ice extended a couple miles out from the shore. There were seal skins stretched in front of houses all over town. The ice has been in and out all summer. Our local paper a day or two ago ran a picture of a polar bear wandering onto Barrow High School's football field. Earlier this summer a polar bear was in Ft Yukon -- well south of the Brooks range and hundreds of miles from the ocean. The media would have you believe that the bears can't survive without ice, and that the ice goes out in the spring and doesn't come back until fall -- both untrue.

The politics around the listing aren't driven by declining bear populations, because the numbers don't support it. They're driven by environmentalists wanting to stop oil development.