Regulation: The Interior Department ruled Wednesday that the polar bear will be protected as a threatened species. Why special treatment for an animal whose population has more than doubled over the last 50 years?

Because it's politically correct. The polar bear has become such a beloved icon that even a pro-development Republican secretary of the Interior can't muster the courage to say no to the forces of environmentalism.

The polar bear is more than just a cuddly looking beast that roams the Arctic region. It's a wishbone in the fight between misanthropic activists determined to send the developed world back a few centuries and those who wish to see human development go forward.

These beautiful creatures have become pawns in the environmentalists' campaign to block oil and gas exploration and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and beyond.

To be fair, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision was forced. In late April, a federal judge in Oakland gave the department until May 15 to decide if the polar bear should fall under protection of the Endangered Species Act. The court was acting on a suit filed by environmental groups that were trying to compel a ruling.

Though bullied by the court, Kempthorne still had a choice. He just made the wrong — and an unnecessary — one. The polar bear is already under the shield of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act and its population is at a historic high.

Oh, you thought its numbers were shrinking? Forget the maudlin media wailing about global warming leading to the extinction of the polar bear because man-made global warming will melt its habitat.

Its numbers are actually growing. There might be as many as 25,000, and probably no fewer than 22,000, today while 50 years ago, there were somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000.

Three years ago, Mitch Taylor, director of wildlife research for the government of the Canadian territory Nunavut, told the Edinburgh Scotsman that the growing polar bear population increase is "really unprecedented, and in places where we're seeing a decrease in the population, it's from hunting, not from climate change."

"Never before has a thriving species been listed under the Endangered Species Act, nor should it," said Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation that plans to sue the government over the listing.

Hopper also notes another reason the listing was unwarranted: The polar bear has already survived two global warming eras that were as hot or hotter than the anticipated coming climate change.

Perhaps the administration made the ruling because it felt that it just couldn't compete with the hype campaign being waged by environmental groups and their allies in the media.

That famous photo of those stranded polar bears drifting out to sea on a melting ice floe is hard to overcome — even after it was learned that the photo was taken in August, when fringe ice routinely melts in the Arctic, and a witness said the bears were "not in danger at all" and "are still alive and having fun."

Never mind the facts. The goal is to scare the public, to assert with confidence that two-thirds of the world's polar bear population will be gone by 2050 — which would, incidently, return it to the level it was a half century ago, an age that was much cooler than the extreme heat that's been projected (by questionable models) for the middle of this century.

We close by citing the observation of the one person who can bring clarity to a debate that has been almost shut down because those who dare question the environmentalists' orthodoxy are routinely shouted down:

"No evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions" of climate change, Canadian biologist Taylor wrote in a report for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Polar bears have persisted through many similar climate cycles."

Man is far better off helping himself than trying to help animals that aren't in danger.   Source

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