Polar bears listed as U.S. threatened species

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Polar bears were listed on Wednesday as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because their sea ice habitat is melting away.

However, this new protection does not aim to reduce climate change -- which environmentalists see as the cause of the bears' disappearing habitat -- or Arctic drilling for the fossil fuels that spur the climate-warming greenhouse effect.

In announcing the government's decision one day ahead of a court-ordered deadline, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne acknowledged that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the global warming that is damaging the polar bears' habitat.

However, he stressed that the threatened status could not properly be used to regulate greenhouse emissions.

"While the legal standards under the Endangered Species Act compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting," he said at a briefing.

"Any real solution requires action by all major economies for it to be effective," Kempthorne said. He also noted he was taking administrative and regulatory action to ensure this decision is not "abused to make global warming policies."

The proper forum for combating climate change is among the world's major economies, Kempthorne said. The Bush administration has convened the world's worst greenhouse polluting nations in a series of international meetings.

Polar bears live only in the Arctic and depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals. The U.S. Geological Survey said two-thirds of the world's polar bears -- some 16,000 -- could be gone by 2050 if predictions about melting sea ice hold true.