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The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a challenge to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to designate 187,000 square miles of Alaska’s coast and waters a critical habitat for the threatened polar bear.
Oil and gas trade associations, several Alaska Native corporations and villages, and the state of Alaska claimed the habitat designation was unjustifiably large. They also claimed the designation would do nothing to help conserve the polar bear.
“Polar bears are threatened by projected loss of sea ice habitat due to climate change, not on-the-ground activities in the Arctic,” the groups wrote in their petition to the court. “Polar bears and their habitat are already properly managed under the [Marine Mammal Protection Act].”
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case leaves in place a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling upholding the designation.
The court gave no explanation for its decision not to hear the cases.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on The Extinction Chronicles.
Good! Puzzling circular logic – habitat and ice is threatened by climate change because of on-the-ground human activities in the Arctic! Probably the only time they ever tried to use climate change to their advantage. And we all know that an Act can be circumvented – just look at what’s happened with the Wild Horses and Burros Act, and the Migratory Bird Act, and I’ll bet the Marine Mammal Act too for all of the military testing that goes on, and off-shore oil and wind.