Zoo Urges Bush to save Polar Bears

Brookfield Zoo's three polar bears are popular attractions -- massive beasts which, tossing toys and buckets into their exhibit pool, sometimes act like kids at the beach.

But, zoo president Stuart Strahl said Wednesday, "We do not want zoos to be the only place where people can see polar bears."

A report by government scientists is predicting that two-thirds of the world's 22,000 polar bears -- and all of those in Alaska -- will disappear by 2050, mostly due to arctic ice cap melting caused by global warming.

As Brookfield's bears frolicked behind them, Strahl and National Resources Defense Council official Andrew Wetzler urged the Bush administration to classify polar bears as a "threatened" species. That designation would require the government to develop a survival plan, including ways to address overall global warming and greenhouse gasses, said Wetzler.

Under legal pressure by the council and other environmental groups, the Interior Department has agreed to consider the designation and is expected to rule in January.

Brookfield's bears were born in captivity but wild polar bears this summer saw a record reduction in their sea ice habitat. Over the last 30 years, sea ice on the Arctic Ocean has shrunk by more than 1 million square miles, or about 17 times the size of Illinois, according to the NRDC.

"If we don't take action now, our generation, and our children's generation, will be the last generations to see polar bears in the wild,'' said Wetzler.

Some say that putting the bears under the Endangered Species Act would be premature. "The listing of a currently healthy species based entirely on highly speculative and uncertain climate and ice [forecasts] . . . would be unprecedented," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin wrote in a letter to the Interior Department.

Alaska officials also say oil and gas operations, current conservation plans and bear hunting for food by native Alaskans also could be threatened under the proposed polar bear designation.