A listing could restrict oil and gas exploration in the US Arctic, and lead to curbs on greenhouse gas emissions.

Kassie Siegel, climate program director with the Center for Biological Diversity said it was a huge victory for the polar bear.

“By 15 May, the polar bear should receive the protections it deserves under the Endangered Species Act, which is the first step toward saving the polar bear and the entire Arctic ecosystem from global warming.”

You never know, the judge may have struck a blow that will save the world!

brian, there’s a distinction between adaptation and survival.

True, wilful. According to Wiki the polar bear can still breed with the brown bear and produce fertile offspring. Some speculate that we might have interbred with Neanderthals while we were in the process of wiping them out. It’s hardly survival!

Some relevant quotes:

Polar bears still have a vestigial hibernation induction trigger in their blood, but they do not hibernate in the winter as the brown bear does. Only female polar bears enter a dormant state (referred to as “denning”) during pregnancy, though their body temperature does not decrease during this period as it would for a typical mammal in hibernation.

When the ice floes break up in the fall, ending the possibility of hunting, each pregnant female digs a maternity den consisting of a narrow entrance tunnel leading to one to three chambers.[58] Most maternity dens are in snowdrifts, but may also be made underground in permafrost if it is not sufficiently cold yet for snow.

So on that basis an extended period of summer ice free habitat is going to adversely affect the females chance of storing enough fat for the breeding cycle.

The global polar bear population, estimated to be 22,000-25,000 bears, is relatively stable.[91] However, in 2006, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) upgraded the polar bear from a species of least concern to a vulnerable species[92] It cited a “suspected population reduction of >30% within three generations (45 years)”, due primarily to global warming.[4] Other risks to the polar bear include pollution in the form of toxic contaminants, conflicts with shipping, stresses from recreational polar-bear watching, and oil and gas exploration and development.[4] The IUCN also cited a “potential risk of over-harvest” through legal and illegal hunting.

The U.S. Geological Survey predicts two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, based on moderate projections for the shrinking of summer sea ice caused by global warming.[43] The bears would disappear from Europe, Asia, and Alaska, and be depleted from the Arctic archipelago of Canada and areas off the northern Greenland coast. By 2080, they would disappear from Greenland entirely and from the northern Canadian coast, leaving only dwindling numbers in the interior Arctic archipelago. (Emphasis added)

Concerns over the future survival of the species led to the development of national regulations on polar bear hunting, beginning in the mid-1950s.[72] In 1973, the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed by all five nations whose territory is inhabited by polar bears. Also known as the Oslo Agreement, it was a rare case of international cooperation during the Cold War.

About 500 bears are killed per year by humans across Canada,[79] a rate believed by scientists to be unsustainable for some areas, notably Baffin Bay.

There’s more, of course, but that’s some of it in case the site disappears again. But clearly the IUCNs recommendations do need to be enacted within the relevant countries.

Adaptation is a partial response to normal climate change, but not to this one.

If they can sit there and feed on seals in the winter their prospects are improved immeasurably, as the joint pretty well ices over each winter, even now. The temperature would need to rise quite significantly to eliminate winter ice.

Thanks, TFA. But wouldn’t any IUCN determinations have to be adopted by nation states to have any effect? I can’t help thinking that other interests come into play. You can imagine, for example, trophy hunters lobbying to prevent the listing of the polar bear, supported perhaps by Inuit who do well out of providing paid help.

I can’t get my mind around the notion of kids growing up with the dream of some day killing a large polar bear!

Clearly, they’ll also clash with human settlements, moving north as ice recedes, and that usually doesn’t work out too well!

If climate change is a contributing factor to a population decline, I’d expect it would already be factored in to any IUCN deliberations.

Another is that they are slower than most of the species they like to eat. Hence the trick of waiting for seals to come up for air in holes in the ice.

The question, I suspect, is whether the females can gain enough body weight to breed consistently and whether the young bears can get enough food to grow to be independent hunters.

Because they are cute I’m sure there will always be a zoo population, although there are complications. For months young Knut appeared on the front page of the online Der Spiegel. But the upshot is the the little bugger didn’t know he was a bear, became a psychopathic publicity seeker and now has to be given the boot.

Bill, these Arizona student notes suggest that the temperature was perhaps 1-2C warmer in 3000-5000 BC. It was also 1-2C warmer in the last interglacial, the Eemian.

Wikipedia has a quite extensive entry on polar bears. It’s quite pessimistic about the long term prospects, given continues global warming.

Ottawa could clearly do better on global warming as it’s possibly the most recalcitrant country of the Kyoto signatories. But specifically on polar bears it’s hard to see what they could do beyond preventing hunting.

Just how is Ottawa going to legislate to stop ice melting anyway? King Canute wouldn’t have thought he could.

frankly I’m surprised we’ve got any polar bears left, due to fisheries exploitation.