May 2008

POLAR DISORDER The Edge of Extinction

Last summer, the Arctic lost more sea ice than ever before—nearly a half-million square miles, the size of Texas and California combined—devastating the polar bear’s frozen habitat. Yet, in February, despite a huge outcry, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proceeded with a $2.66 billion oil-and-gas-drilling-lease sale that some of his own scientists believe will further doom the U.S. polar bear. Visiting the Alaskan town of Kaktovik, the author reports on this new crisis. by MICHAEL SHNAYERSON

There’s one place, and one place only, to see polar bears in America.

You have to travel to the country’s northernmost point, the very apex of Alaska’s North Slope, to the permafrost shores that stretch out on either side from the Inupiat town of Kaktovik.

Kaktovik, population 300, is brutally cold most of the year, and to a newcomer it seems pretty bleak: a hodgepodge of wind- whipped cottages and Quonset huts on little Barter Island, set A polar bear atop summer ice fl oating in the Beaufort Sea, off the coastal plain of Alas- against the Beaufort Sea. The ka’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The bears depend on the ice as hunting ground for polar bears like it, though. In the baby seals. Photographs by Steven Kazlowski/lefteyepro.com. early-autumn dusk, they rise out of the Arctic water like spectral their only meal in sight, those cute The bone pile is the aftermath of fi gures, soft white smudges nearly white creatures, also the world’s Kaktovik’s annual whale hunt. undetectable on the gray horizon. largest land predators, would tear Bowheads are offi cially endangered, Stealthily, in utter silence, they you apart in an instant. But by the but Inupiat are allowed, in deference advance from three sides onto time I arrived, in mid-September, to their native traditions, to take a beachlike peninsula just past they’d been dining for days on prey a limited number. The Kaktovik Kaktovik’s gravel airstrip. If already dead: the stinking remains hunters take their quota of three, they were hungry, and you were of bowhead-whale carcasses. haul them in to this shallow shore, then carve up and cart off a winter’s ice, were about to get a far ruder worth of meat. That’s when the surprise. bears move in. They were about to be On my fi rst night, I sat in an old Bushwhacked. panel van near the bone pile with M. A. Sanjayan, 41-year-old Bear Necessities Sri Lankan–born lead scientist For years, the warning signs had of the Nature Conservancy, and been piling up. Polar bears are several others, the van’s headlights Arctic creatures, spending most of illuminating fi rst one, then 3, then their year on ice off the northern 20 bears as they materialized out coasts of Canada and the U.S., of the gathering dark. On all fours Greenland, Scandinavia, and the bears looked roly-poly and Russia. As temperatures in the adorable. Huggable. Most appeared Arctic warmed at three times the to be females: smaller, at an average global average, evidence mounted 450 pounds, than males, which can that the ice was receding. The bears’ reach 1,500 pounds. Padding around very habitat was melting away. The the bone pile, they gave no sign of consequences were dramatic. their awesome power to regard any creature they see as prey. Males can exceed nine feet. Of the world’s 19 distinct polar- bear populations (with an estimated For some time we watched the bears moment she stared at me intently, total of 22,000), the one most feast in the headlights’ glow—a emotionlessly, sizing me up. This carefully studied is in Canada’s thrilling sight, but a sad one, too. was no whimsical creature in a western Hudson Bay. Instead of By this time, the bears should have Coca-Cola ad. This was the ruler of hunting from the ice in late spring been readying to go back on the sea the Arctic, with not a scintilla of fear and early summer, scooping up ice, hunting for seals. But each year in her gaze. Her paws were almost newly weaned ringed-seal pups like now, after Alaska’s brief and partial as big as snowshoes because, like so many hors d’oeuvres, the bears summer thaw, the ice off Kaktovik snowshoes, they help keep the bear found the Hudson Bay ice melting re-forms later and later. The bears from pushing through fragile ice as all too soon. Many lost signifi cant aren’t natural land animals; without she walks. body mass when forced to swim too the bone pile, they might starve as Polar bears, when they stand up, I early to shore and stay ashore too they prowl the shore like shipwreck long. Females bore one cub instead survivors into late October or even was reminded, are about twice as large as when they’re on all fours. of three. Some starving polar bears November, waiting for the ice to engaged in cannibalism. East of appear. This female was perhaps six feet tall; males can easily exceed nine Kaktovik, U.S. scientists reported Eventually, even the sight of two feet. If she had wanted to, our four polar bears drowned. Polar dozen foraging polar bears gets a curious new friend could easily bears are among the world’s best bit eye-glazing—like one of those have pushed the van over on its marine-mammal swimmers. They classic eight-hour, single-shot side, smashed the windshield, aren’t supposed to drown. But even Andy Warhol movies. And so I was and scooped us out. Our only real polar bears can’t swim indefi nitely. dozing off when a loud thump, right protection was her lack of hunger. For those four, the ice edge had by my head, abruptly woke me. receded too far. Those close encounters would occur There, gazing at me from a distance at least once a night that week. To Kassie Siegel, 34, the growing of three inches, was a female polar Getting Kaktovicked, we came to stack of reports was a call to arms. bear on her hind legs, her huge front call it. But the bears, who fi nally An environmental lawyer for pads on the window, her giant claws picked the whale bones clean and the California-based Center for clicking against the glass. For a long started back out on the re-formed Biological Diversity, Siegel drew up a petition in early 2005 demanding that the Bush administration consider listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (E.S.A.). Siegel is a former Alaskan-river-rafting guide whose girlish voice and tendency to giggle belie a grim determination to paddle her way through the roughest rapids. She’d worked at the Center with her signifi cant other, Brendan Cummings, also an environmental lawyer, since the two were a secret couple in the late 1990s. “It was Brendan’s idea to take up the case for the polar bear when we did,” Siegel explains. The case would soon make her a national fi gure, while Cummings stayed in the background. “Poor Brendan, he’s The Inupiat town of Kaktovik. By Brad Markel/Aurora. a saint,” Siegel says with a sigh. “I get credit for so many of his ideas, steadfastly denied the reality of be helped without taking measures but I’m just the workhorse.” global warming would be forced by to curb global warming was a law not only to acknowledge it but conundrum left for another day. Predictably for an administration to act on it. that regards the E.S.A. as an Through the fi rst half of 2007, irksome impediment to commerce, A year later, in December Steve Amstrup of the United States the petition was ignored. “That 2006, Interior Secretary Dirk Geological Survey led a team really backfi red on them,” Siegel Kempthorne stood before reporters of government and independent says. By law, the government’s to announce the results of an initial scientists conducting nine failure to respond to a listing court-ordered polar-bear study by separate polar-bear studies to help petition within 90 days opens the the department’s U.S. Fish and Kempthorne reach his fi nal decision. door for the petitioner to go to court. Wildlife Service. Yes, he conceded, Amstrup is a lanky, blond-haired In December 2005, Siegel, along the study had shown the bear to be wildlife biologist regarded as one with Greenpeace and the Natural threatened. Not endangered yet, but of the world’s leading experts on Resources Defense Council, fi led threatened. So Kempthorne was polar bears. Often stern and formal a lawsuit. The battle for the polar issuing a formal proposal to list it. in public, very straight-arrow, he’d bear had just begun. Now more studies would have to be had a tendency to declare that oil done. In a year—January 9, 2008, and gas drilling posed no threat The enviros had an ulterior motive, to be exact—Kempthorne would to polar bears. Other polar-bear though it was hardly secret. Under declare whether the polar bear was, scientists had viewed him warily. the E.S.A., any species listed either in fact, threatened. But then he’d come out with a blunt as threatened or, more direly, as paper on polar-bear cannibalism endangered must be protected in A listing would acknowledge that startled even his colleagues. every way possible from what’s the “threat of receding sea ice,” When Siegel had submitted her pushing it toward extinction. Kempthorne said at the time. But petition, she’d been astonished to Virtually every scientist who it wouldn’t address why the ice hear him praise it. studied melting Arctic sea ice had was receding. “That analysis,” the two words for the cause: global secretary said blithely, “is beyond The upshot of the nine studies, warming. By listing the polar the scope of the Endangered Amstrup declared, was that the polar bear, an administration that had Species Act.” How the bears could bear as a species was threatened. Even under moderate conditions, distinction. They live happily on All told, though, Inupiat in the U.S. he said, two-thirds of the world’s the ice caps of both. and Inuit in Canada kill perhaps 50 22,000 polar bears would be gone bears each year. Some 200 more are by midcentury if warming trends In a seeming case of hunted by Inuit in Greenland, with went unchecked. Alaska’s polar- miscommunication between two arguably even more hunted illegally bear population would vanish Interior agencies, M.M.S. had in Russia. Worldwide total of bears completely. scheduled its lease sale for February killed each year: at least 500. 6, 2008—a month after Fish and As the studies appeared, the summer Wildlife’s court-ordered fi nal How could this be, with a species of 2007 came to an end—and with E.S.A. decision on the polar bear so besieged? Bjorn Lomborg, who it the greatest depletion of Arctic was due. But if the polar bear were bills himself as a climate-change summer ice ever recorded: nearly a to be listed as threatened on January realist, asks that question at the half-million square miles, the size 9, how could the government, in start of his latest book, Cool It, of Texas and California combined. good conscience, proceed with a in which he makes the case that Scientists from the National Oceanic lease sale that directly affected the global-warming rhetoric is way and Atmospheric Administration Alaskan polar-bear habitat? overblown. The polar bear is his had estimated that summer ice Exhibit No. 1. might vanish altogether by 2040. The Numbers Game The world’s polar-bear population, Now some scientists wondered if During my stay in Kaktovik, a plane it might be gone as soon as 2012. Lomborg points out, has more circled down to the gravel airstrip than quadrupled in the last 40 “As the sea ice goes,” Amstrup said once a day. When it did, the town bluntly, “so goes the polar bear.” years, from about 5,000 to 22,000, came to life, half a dozen old trucks through stricter hunting regulations. By law, Kempthorne had to follow rattling out to pick up passengers (Credit for that goes to the 1973 the science—and so, presumably, and supplies. Otherwise Kaktovik International Agreement on the grant the polar bear its listing. But seemed deserted. In the biting cold, Conservation of Polar Bears, which the former governor of Idaho, who not many of its residents stroll the banned the odious practice of by the fall of 2007 had served 18 permafrost streets for pleasure. aerial polar-bear hunting. So-called months in his new post without Around each house, though, lay sportsmen in helicopters would placing a single plant or animal signs of a vigorous subsistence life: hover over hapless groups of bears on the Endangered Species List, handmade wooden sleds, kayaks, on the ice and blast away.) Now had another priority to guard in the rusting snowmobiles kept for spare more bears are seen on land than Arctic: Chukchi Sea Lease Sale parts, musk-ox and reindeer horns, ever. As a result, more and more 193. and hunks of fresh, black whale are hunted by indigenous peoples and, in Canada, by any U.S. trophy The sale, conducted by Interior’s meat. Over at Inupiat wilderness guide Robert Thompson’s house— hunter willing to pay the roughly Minerals Management Service $40,000 cost of a trip. (M.M.S.), would open up 29 like the others, built on metal stilts million acres of Chukchi Sea to keep it steady above the heaving So, says Lomborg, the evidence for bottom—where 15 billion barrels permafrost—I saw a more startling dwindling bear populations is shaky of oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of sight: a polar-bear skull. at best. And if we’re so concerned natural gas were thought to lie—to Indigenous people, it turns out, about preserving them, why not ban oil and gas drilling. No drilling had are allowed to hunt polar bears as hunting outright? Wouldn’t that be ever been done in the U.S. side of they always have, in Canada as more productive than spending the Chukchi, which lies between in the U.S., at any time of year. trillions on a Kyoto-like treaty to Alaska and Russia. In Kaktovik, Thompson, a compact fellow of make tiny reductions in fossil-fuel when you scan the horizon to your 61 with the deep lineaments that emissions that would have almost right, you see the Beaufort Sea. To come from a life spent outside, told no effect on bear populations for the left is the Chukchi. Alaska’s me that in a year the whole village years? polar bears, though, make no such might kill at most a bear or two. less than candid with the Inupiat about their plans. “They do have a requirement to meet with us, but they don’t seem to have a requirement to tell us the truth.” Anyway, he adds, “the ocean’s been doing just fi ne for thousands of years without them.” But the oil industry is still popular with many of Thompson’s neighbors, and on my walks around town, I soon saw why.

The oil industry built Kaktovik’s power plant and supplies electricity for free. It spent $98 million to install 98 fl ush toilets. It built the fi re station and supplied the fi re engine. A bear scans the Chukchi Sea, off Point Barrow. The town’s public school has a handsome new library, courtesy of It’s a powerful argument, one number of bears, much less on the oil money, and classroom space for that’s gotten the handsome 43- climate change that’s melting their at least double the entire student year-old Dane with blond ringlets world. body of 67. One way or another, a lot of media attention. But it’s most of the town’s public works— also an argument that’s been hotly Thompson is both a hunter and and jobs—fl ow from oil. debated. The population spike, an environmentalist. The greatest observes leading Canadian polar- global and local threat to the So far, Kaktovik has gotten all bear biologist Ian Stirling, ended polar bears of Kaktovik, he says, of oil’s benefi ts and none of its some time ago. By building his is the oil-and-gas industry. It’s ills, which is why polar bears still case on it, Lomborg seems to the greatest threat to all living gather on its shore, 100 miles east ignore all recent studies that show creatures, including man, in this of Prudhoe Bay’s ghastly hellscape polar-bear populations diminishing still-gorgeous stretch of the North of fl aring oil wells, drill pads, due to vanishing sea ice. “Lomborg Slope. Kaktovik’s backdrop is the pipelines, and production plants. is downright irresponsible,” says pristine Arctic National Wildlife More and more, it reminded me Stirling, “in not considering sea ice.” Refuge, with its magnifi cent, of a 1983 movie, Local Hero. (Lomborg says he does consider snow-covered, 9,000-foot-high Writer-director Bill Forsyth’s story sea ice with regard to polar-bear Brooks Range, where musk ox is of a young, ambitious Texas oil population.) More polar bears on and reindeer, beavers and grizzlies, executive sent to a Scottish coastal land, says Robert Thompson, the live in America’s last untouched village. The executive (played by Inupiat hunter and guide, is a sign wilderness. Almost every year now, Peter Riegert) has a secret mission: of bears in trouble, not of a booming the industry pushes Congress to to buy up every property in the population. And bear-hunting in open anwr to drilling, usually losing village so that his company can both the U.S. and Canada, Stirling by a mere vote or two. Offshore are more easily exploit the offshore notes, is based on sustainable yield. the Arctic waters where the polar oil it found there. Little by little, Which means that the number of bear is but the top of an entire food the executive succumbs to the bears killed by hunters each year chain of aquatic life at risk. For village’s charms and eccentric cannot exceed the number of cubs at least a decade, the industry has characters, and ends up trying to that replace those bears. The quota wanted to drill there too. talk his company chairman (Burt Lancaster) into saving it instead. is adjusted annually. So a ban on Thompson was passionately sustainable hunting would have opposed to offshore drilling, and Like the fi ctional town of Ferness, virtually no effect on the overall felt the oil companies had been Kaktovik has its share of quirky characters. At the Waldo Arms, a striking not to mention. But Smith have fulfi lled his mission.” rambling assemblage of modular waved them off. “I mean, sure there oil-fi eld-camp buildings that serves was a risk,” he said of his “tag” with Smith’s story seemed an adventure as an inn and social center for the the female. “But you get in your car yarn far from any experience I town, I met manager Art Smith, a and drive to work, it’s a risk. This is would ever have. And yet the very 54-year-old hippie with long silver my risk, and it’s the risk I choose to next day, the human being whose locks who left his life in the lower defi ne my life.” blind side a polar bear crept up on 48 more than a decade ago. Now he was me. For his bear communing, Smith spends hours in the snow, not just Close Encounters photographing polar bears but, he stays on or close to shore. Following feels, communicating with them. bears out to their winter-ice home I was out by the bone pile with M. A. “I’ve gotten close to them in a way would be not only dangerous, he Sanjayan, the Nature Conservancy that’s not supposed to happen,” he pointed out, but a violation of the lead scientist, and two Smiths: Art explained, “but it has.” Marine Mammal Protection Act. and a British documentary-maker Only Inuit—and scientists—can named James (no relation), who Smith lives in a one-bedroom do that. When the ice is shore fast had hired Art for the week as his cottage so packed with video again, though, he does drive a short cameraman to help him fi lm the equipment there’s hardly anywhere distance out on a snowmobile or Kaktovik bears. This would be the to sit down. Aside from food and in a truck to photograph bears that last part of a series called Expedition rent, the equipment is about all haven’t yet lumbered off toward the Alaska for the Discovery Channel he’s spent money on in the last few Arctic horizon. Not long ago, he (scheduled to start airing April 20). years. On a big, high-defi nition nearly lost his life that way. Sanjayan is one of the hosts of the screen, he played footage of polar series. This was his last “stand- bears no more than a few feet from “Sometimes you run into a transient bear from a different population,” up,” in which he would sum up the his camera. With one female bear, plight of the Kaktovik bears against he seemed to be playing tag. Smith recounted. “And that bear won’t have the history of interaction a backdrop of Arctic sea and sky. “Not literally,” he hastened to add. with humans that the Kaktovik bears Usually, the bears spend September “Figuratively. She would come so have.” Smith was fi lming a group of days lolling about on a barrier island far up the bank, and I’d tell her, bears in one direction when another half a mile from shore. Through ‘O.K., don’t come any closer,’ bear, perhaps a transient, crept up binoculars, we could count more and she’d respect that. Then I’d from behind. The bear was low than a dozen of them out there. be shooting, and she would do the to the ground. “If they’re stalking Still, as a precaution, James Smith same to me. So I’d back up, she’d game, the last thing they do is stand asked me to be on the lookout. come back, then she’d back off— up because it gives them away,” it was this thing that went on for Smith explained. “They’ll put their For some time I kept a careful vigil, about an hour and a half.” chest down and cover their noses. turning around every 30 seconds or If they’re stalking you, they’re on a so to check all three sides of the On the screen, the bear rolls around slow steady gait, just coming in on bone-pile peninsula. But Sanjayan on her back in the snow, her feet up a beeline.” was so eloquent that I found myself in the air. “It’s so rare in nature that drawn in to what he was saying. you get to observe large predators Smith just happened to turn around. “Not till I came up here did I feel that have moved above hunger,” The bear had come in low on his in my heart what I understood in Smith said. “You see their real blind side. “They know how to my brain as a scientist,” he said to behavior.” do that,” he said. The bear wasn’t the camera. “Namely, that some of baring his teeth. He was huffi ng these cubs we’ve seen may be the The similarities to Timothy and growling, his mouth wide open. Treadwell, the ill-fated grizzly- last generation of polar bears on Smith knew the signals. Once he American soil.” bear-lover whose story was told in made eye contact with the bear, it a 2004 Vanity Fair article by Ned disengaged. “But had I not turned When the shot was done, James Zeman, and in Werner Herzog’s around,” he admitted, “he would Smith turned toward me. A look of 2005 fi lm Grizzly Man, were too panic swept his face. Behind us, not edged back toward him. The largest To Stirling, who has spent a lifetime more than 30 feet away, was a polar polar bear growled and clicked his studying polar bears out on the ice, bear. Quite a large one, heading our teeth as he advanced. The grizzly their most astonishing attribute, way. Down low, just as Art Smith gave no ground. unique in the animal kingdom, is had described. the way they can hibernate at any Now the grizzly and the polar bear time of year. A brown bear that The bear paused, debating whether started cuffi ng each other. Not trying goes without food for 10 days in to go for the bone pile or us. to infl ict injury—just posturing. the summer will starve to death. Sanjayan had assumed the grizzly “Not so with a polar bear,” Stirling We stood still, our hearts racing. would retreat: the polar bear was Sanjayan had mentioned that the explained. “If a polar bear hasn’t bigger, after all. But it was the polar fed on anything for that long— best defense against an advancing bear that fi nally withdrew. bear is to look as “big” as possible. even in summer—its metabolism Stand straight, put your arms up, Later, Ian Stirling, the Canadian switches, and it goes into a walking and if the bear keeps advancing, polar-bear expert, confi rmed that hibernative state.” It’s a brilliant way start shouting. At that moment I a sighting of a grizzly and a polar to conserve energy and survive in don’t think I could have raised my bear together was extremely rare. one of the world’s most forbidding arms. I was frozen to the spot. He wasn’t surprised, though, to climates. hear the polar bear had blinked As we watched the satiated grizzly The bear looked at us. We looked fi rst. Grizzlies, he observed, are back. Fortunately, the bone pile fall asleep by the bone pile, and the land animals in open country. Flight polar bears cautiously return, it was was closer to him than we were. isn’t necessarily a viable choice. Perhaps to the bear, it also smelled tempting to imagine that, rather Instead, they have to fi ght. “So than go extinct, the polar bear better. He turned toward it, away they have to be highly aggressive,” from us, and the moment was past. might merge back into the brown Stirling explained. “Whereas the bear’s lineage. Stirling rejects that That seemed adventure enough polar bear’s whole strategy is to theory out of hand. Polar bears are for one Vanity Fair assignment. conserve energy in all phases of too big, he notes, thanks to their But that night, late, we were back life. So avoidance of confl ict is diet of seal and salmon. They could at the bone pile for an even more their predominant strategy.” never adjust back to a brown bear’s dramatic sight. As a dozen or more The standoff had another, more partial diet of roots and berries. polar bears fed at the diminishing profound implication. Scientists Either the polar bear with all its bowhead carcasses, a pair of bright agree that polar bears evolved from amazing adaptations survives as it eyes shone in the darkness. As soon grizzly bears—almost yesterday, in is—or it doesn’t. as they appeared, the polar bears evolutionary time, about 200,000 scattered. That night, like the grizzly, we years ago. In a fraction of that all fell asleep, our breath fogging “What the hell?” Sanjayan short time, polar bears adapted to the windows of the van. Until … exclaimed. He reached for a pair of a radically different environment— thwack! We awoke startled to see night-vision goggles and switched open Arctic sea ice—with another polar bear with its paws on them on. There in the reddish astounding ecological prowess. our window. This one was clearly glow was a huge grizzly bear, so Their white hair is translucent, the a male, much larger than the one fat that its stomach dragged along better to channel precious heat to who’d checked us out the fi rst the ground. “That’s so bizarre,” their black, insulating skin. Their night. Sanjayan whispered. “Grizzlies sense of smell is exquisite, the aren’t supposed to be on fl at coastal better to sniff seals at their breathing Art Smith fumbled for the car keys. plains. They aren’t supposed to be holes under the ice. Those paws Somehow they’d fallen out of the anywhere near polar bears, either.” that distribute their weight on the ignition onto the fl oor of the van. ice also serve as battering rams, For a long 10 seconds, he searched For a while the grizzly fed alone at punching through the hard snow of for them while the world’s largest the bone pile. Then, slowly, one or seal lairs to snatch pups before they carnivore put his face up to the two of the larger male polar bears escape. driver’s side window, looking in. Rode had just fi nished one of the nine studies that her political superiors in Washington were presumably pondering as they inched toward a fi nal decision on whether to list the polar bear as threatened. Hers was on polar-bear body mass.

“It was primarily with younger males that we saw declines over time,” Rode explained. “Between 1982 and 2006, on average the mass of sub-adult males declined 2.2 kilos [4.9 pounds] a year. To me, that’s a lot.

“The striking thing,” she added, “is that the majority of signifi cant A scavenging cub feasts on a bowhead-whale carcass on Barter Island. trends from the nine reports are negative.”

Finally, we heard the reassuring Rode is part of the Anchorage- Rode was careful to say that it was sound of the motor starting up. based Polar Bear Management up to her agency’s overseers—and The bear, with a seeming touch of Team under the direction of their superiors at Interior—to set regret, got back down on all fours F.W.S.’s Scott S. Schliebe. She policy from the research that she and watched us drive away. advises locals on how to deal and her colleagues had done. She with the bears—though, as she Mad Scientists couldn’t discuss internal politics points out, she’s an adviser, not an about the pending decision, or how ‘I defi nitely believe that is a enforcer. Mainly she’s a scientist, Lease Sale 193 might affect it. dangerous situation,” said Karyn working with counterparts from the Rode, a 34-year-old wildlife U.S. Geological Survey (U.S.G.S.), But other Interior scientists, it biologist for U.S. Fish and who’ve kept a remarkable 30-year turned out, could—and did. record of the Southern Beaufort Wildlife whom I found the next All through 2007, as Rode and day at F.W.S.’s Kaktovik outpost, Sea bears, of which the Kaktovik group is a subset. her colleagues from U.S. Fish and a house on stilts in town. Rode Wildlife and the U.S. Geological was taken aback to hear about By marking the bears with special Survey were doing studies that our night encounters with bears lip tattoos, U.S.G.S. scientists showed how threatened the polar slapping their forepaws against the have determined that there are bear is, managers at both F.W.S. and windows. “I defi nitely believe that approximately 1,526 bears in the Interior’s Minerals Management a bear could smash the window and Southern Beaufort population. Service were reaching a very drag you out,” she said, though she Back in 1986, using slightly less different conclusion: that offshore had never heard of a bear doing precise measures, a study concluded oil-and-gas drilling in the Chukchi that at the Kaktovik bone pile, nor that there were 1,800 bears in that Sea off Alaska would pose no major of bears pushing cars on their sides. population. The scientists can’t threat to polar bears that live on the The Kaktovik bears, she added, say statistically that the population Chukchi’s sea ice. have no reason to prey on humans, dropped by 15 percent, but the satiated as they are by the whale lower, more recent estimate and Now all they had to do, as Kassie remains. “But the wrong bear and declines in survival rate and body Siegel saw it, was make sure that the wrong time can do anything— size have led to the conclusion that Lease Sale 193 occurred before the and, certainly, being on the ground the population is likely shrinking. polar-bear-designation decision. within 30 feet is dangerous.” Shane Wolfe, a spokesman for the extracting was deemed too high. counters Wolfe. “However, there Interior, fl atly disputes this version Then up, up, up went the price of comes a time when a decision has of events. “Lease Sale 193 was oil. Suddenly, drilling there looked to be made. Not everyone may originally scheduled for June 2007,” more economically feasible. agree with [it].”) he notes, “but M.M.S. delayed the sale to complete its environmental But, the scientist says, there was One of the biologists’ biggest analysis in cooperation with the concern among the agency’s concerns, not just for polar bears [F.W.S.].” managers that staff scientists would but for all marine life in the drag out their studies of species they Chukchi, was a major oil spill. Wolfe says the timing was not believed were affected. That might They needed to know exactly what only coincidental but irrelevant. delay the sale. A six- or eight-month the oil companies were planning, so Whether or not the polar bear was delay could be tolerated, but if the they could reach some conclusions declared “threatened,” Lease Sale scientists took much more time about how likely a spill would be, 193 would move ahead. After all, than that, the lease sale might not how destructive it would be, and Wolfe observes, other threatened be held before the next presidential what the oil companies would do to species live in the lease area, election. A new administration contain it. starting with a duck called the might have a different view of spectacled eider. Yet “the agencies offshore drilling in the Chukchi Shell Game were able to add conditions to the Sea. So, the scientist says, critical Experience shows that getting lease sale to mitigate any impacts details about the oil companies’ accurate environmental assessments to this already listed species.” potential operations in the Chukchi before lease sales happen is a good Conditions would be added as somehow failed to reach staff idea. After Shell won drilling needed to protect the polar bear scientists. “It was so important to rights in the Beaufort Sea in 2005, too. And the F.W.S., Wolfe notes, know how many drill rigs we’re according to a government scientist had already determined that oil- assuming, how many seismic boats, familiar with the matter, the M.M.S. and-gas development worldwide how many miles of pipeline— scientists never got the information is not a threat to the survival of the they all have huge effects on the they needed from Shell to do their species. analysis,” explained the scientist, analysis. An e-mail written by who believes the information was former M.M.S. biologist James But from four current and former understated. (Wolfe says, “Our M.M.S. scientists a more nuanced Wilder and leaked to the Internet environmental analyses encompass claimed, “Despite repeated requests story emerged—of an agency the total spectrum of possibilities culture that all too often has failed over the last many weeks that polar … in our evaluation of a geographic bear issues be addressed by Shell to take heed of its experts’ concerns area such as the Chukchi.”) about offshore Arctic drilling. The … Shell has completely ignored scientists insisted on speaking off The scientist says their fi ndings polar bears.” the record, to protect them from were then distorted. “This was The scientist familiar with the what they felt would be certain a wrenching issue for a lot of Beaufort project says it was not retaliation by their superiors. For analysts,” one M.M.S. scientist necessarily Shell’s fault that the starters, one pointed out that all the recalls. “They were trying to get a scientists didn’t get what they oil-and-gas drilling done to date in true sense of the trade-offs, and get requested. “M.M.S. had full the Arctic has been either onshore that information out to the American authority to get full information or very close to shore. That’s not people. And then things would just from Shell about their plans,” this where polar bears live. get changed by geologists, for the source says. A Shell spokesperson most part, who had no business Two years before, one scientist claims, “Any information we’ve modifying a single word that an been asked to provide to MMS, explained, the M.M.S. had told anthropologist or fi sheries biologist the oil-and-gas industry it would we’ve provided. There’s no wrote. They hadn’t read any of outstanding information. I’m hold Lease Sale 193 by mid-2007. the literature.” (“We encourage Initially, there had been little interest confi dent we’ve complied with all debate and discussion, particularly regulatory guidelines.” in the Chukchi, because the cost of between scientists and managers,” But “if Shell did respond, [M.M.S. clean,” Stirling explains. “That gets probably low. “That 33 to 51 percent offi cials] never provided it” to the in their kidneys and they die.” was per facility. If they have several staff biologists who were preparing facilities, you have more chance.” the report, says the scientist. It seems What would the oil companies do To him, the implications are both unlikely that the problem was a lack if a spill occurred? Recovery plans stark and appalling. “If the federal of communication between Shell wouldn’t be required until after the government is permitting an action and Interior offi cials. Gale Norton, lease sale, when the winning bidders which they reasonably expect Dirk Kempthorne’s predecessor as move to the next stage of planning. to lead to a major spill, isn’t the secretary of the department, now But the M.M.S. acknowledged government knowingly permitting works for Shell as a general counsel that the Chukchi Sea’s broken-ice an illegal act? Because it’s against for its unconventional-resources conditions would make any spill the law in the U.S. to deliberately operations. Cam Toohey, Interior’s response diffi cult. “Considering spill oil.” special assistant to the secretary, is the distances involved and the now Shell’s Alaska government- vagaries of the weather along the As the impact statement for Lease and-external-affairs manager. Paul Chukchi Sea coast,” its impact Sale 193 moved forward, some Stang, formerly a Leasing and statement observed, “personnel M.M.S. scientists tried to get their Environment supervisor, is now a and equipment based in Prudhoe edited work restored to what they’d consultant who has worked with Bay may be unable to respond to written. “When people would keep Shell. (Interior’s Shane Wolfe oil spills in the Chukchi Sea in a pushing, they’d get punished,” says responds with a very narrow timely and effi cient manner.” one M.M.S. scientist. “Yelled at.” defi nition of potential confl icts Scientists from one team were told Even that somber assessment, says not to share their work with other of interest, stating that former Rick Steiner, marine-conservation federal employees are banned teams or even talk to them. The professor at the University of most stubborn of the analysts found from “representing any outside Alaska, glosses the truth. entity back before the government themselves put “in a box,” as one on a particular matter involving “In broken-sea-ice conditions, put it: isolated from the others, their specifi c parties that the employee there’s simply no way for a work ignored, their performance was personally and substantially skimming operation to be evaluations downgraded. involved in while employed by the effective,” Steiner says. “And the One by one, some of the M.M.S. government.”) So perhaps it’s no oil travels under sea ice—10 times scientists in the Alaska offi ce quit, surprise that polar bears and their faster and farther than had been or transferred to other, less stressful scientist advocates were left out of previously suggested. And you just government agencies. the loop. can’t recover it. Some will freeze under the ice; when the ice travels, But Lease Sale 193 kept moving In its fi nal Environmental Impact the oil travels with it. When the ice along toward its February 6 sale Statement for Lease Sale 193, the melts, it releases the oil and the date. If the timing was, as Shane M.M.S. did admit that the impact spill radiates out.” Wolfe declared, incidental to that of an oil spill on polar bears in the of Fish and Wildlife’s January 9 Chukchi poses a “major concern.” Interior’s Shane Wolfe says, “The decision date for the polar bear, how technology does exist and is Ian Stirling, the Canadian polar- was one to explain what happened continually being developed for next? bear expert, expresses those cleaning oil spills in the various concerns succinctly. “Basically conditions present in the Chukchi Going, Going, Gone any bear that fi nds itself swimming Sea.” in oil will die,” he says. The bears The week before Fish and Wildlife will ingest oil directly; when they The issue of oil-spill technology was legally bound to issue its polar- haul themselves up onto ice, they’ll is clearly a crucial one, since the bear decision, Kassie Siegel did a lot ingest more by licking their fur to M.M.S. projects that the chances of walking in the California desert. try to clean themselves. “If they get of a large oil spill occurring in the She lives just outside Joshua Tree even a small amount of oil on them Chukchi are between 33 and 51 National Park, and likes to write they lick it—bears are extremely percent. Steiner says those odds are in her head, as she puts it, while she marches along. That week, she Management Service. Luthi is Markey nodded. “Mr. Luthi? Would wrote and re-wrote a 60-day-notice a Wyoming native who in the you object if Secretary Kempthorne letter—the letter she’d send if Fish 1980s served as an intern to then decided to allow Mr. Hall to and Wildlife missed its January 9, congressman Dick Cheney. He make his decision fi rst before you 2008, deadline. had become a state representative, announce your decision?” then retired to private law practice, All December the agency had been when President Bush called on “Certainly the secretary is my boss. ominously silent: not a good sign. him in early 2007 to be deputy That would be his decision If he But then, that weekend, Siegel saw director of Fish and Wildlife. Just should do so, if new information her fi rst Phainopepla of the year: months later, he was named the were available and he should make a black bird of the desert once new director of the M.M.S. Luthi such a decision … “ common where she lives, now quite felt he understood both agencies’ rare. It gave her a sense of hope. “Well, there is new information needs, and was looking out for available,” Markey observed, “and On Monday morning, January 7, them. “We wouldn’t be proceeding that is that Mr. Hall is not going to that hope was dashed. In a terse with this sale,” he told Markey, “if be able to make his decision [before press release, F.W.S. announced a we weren’t comfortable that we yours] unless something happens delay of up to one month, likely had enough knowledge to … see that once again keeps the order in putting it after the scheduled date that the polar bear is protected.” place that had been decided upon.” for Lease Sale 193. The delay was Kassie Siegel, sitting with two a statutory violation; to Siegel, it All Kempthorne had to do, Markey other advocates at an adjacent suggested, “is say, ‘Let’s use was, on its face, illegal. She fi led table, marveled that Luthi could her 60-day-notice letter. common sense. Let us ensure that say that, given the 33 to 51 percent we understand that extinction is On January 17, with the clock odds of a major spill. That man, forever, and we must make that ticking on Lease Sale 193, she thought, is simply lying to the decision fi rst before we send the oil Congressman Edward Markey American public. (“The lease sale and gas industry out into the critical (Democrat, Massachusetts) itself does not grant carte blanche habitat to break up the polar bear’s convened a subcommittee hearing to the industry,” responds Shane ice.’??” to learn why F.W.S. had missed Wolfe. “In order for a project its deadline and why Lease Sale [resulting from the sale] to be But Kempthorne viewed his 193 couldn’t be reset to follow the approved, the company must have decision in another way. On polar-bear decision, whenever it an Oil Spill Response Plan and Wednesday, February 6, a crowd came. must demonstrate the capability to of oil-and-gas men, government carry [it] out.”) offi cials, and journalists fi lled a Dale Hall, a career Fish and library auditorium in Anchorage, Wildlife employee who had been Markey, a dour fi gure with a fi ne Alaska, and bids on hundreds of sea made director in 2005, looked Boston accent, listened as a few blocks in the Chukchi were read. very much as if he’d rather be of his colleagues challenged the fi shing than trying to explain an two directors. Then he asked a Like onlookers at an auction of inexplicable delay. Some 600,000 question that cut to the chase. “Mr. rare paintings, the crowd began to public comments had come in on Hall, would you mind if Secretary “ooh” and “aah” as eight-fi gure bids the polar-bear-designation question, Kempthorne made a decision were announced. The most heated he offered. All those had to be read which postponed the decision on competition was between Shell and considered. That took time. the leasing of the Chukchi leases and ConocoPhillips—one Shell bid “It’s not just making the decision,” until you made your decision [on topped out at $105,304,581. Both Hall said. “It’s making it clear and the polar bear]?” “It wouldn’t companies had run seismic surveys why.” impact what I’m doing at all,” Hall in the Chukchi. They seemed to said. “So it would be his decision, know where the richest reserves To Hall’s right sat Randall and whatever he wants to do is fi ne lay. Luthi, director of the Minerals with me.” Luthi was there at the sale to preside, By then the polar bears of Kaktovik junior-high level: young people and to celebrate when the sale set were out on winter ice, happily just assume it’s all over, the bear is an all-time record for oil-and-gas- oblivious to the world’s coldest gone. But it’s not, and we mustn’t lease sales in Alaska: $2.66 billion. weather—and its politics—as they lose hope,” he says. He told the crowd that many steps sniffed for seals near the ice edge had been taken to protect the polar over the continental shelf. Not Despite the gloomy predictions of bear and its habitat: “Through these many people have seen them in severe population loss worldwide reviews, we assessed the potential repose: they tend to run at the sight by 2050, and of no more polar direct, indirect, and cumulative of Inuit hunters on snowmobiles, bears in Alaska, Stirling argues, effects of the lease sale on marine or scientists in helicopters hovering even the worst-case studies show mammals, including polar bears.” overhead to anesthetize them in ice remaining in the northwest order to tag them. But Ian Stirling, Canadian Arctic islands and in Early February came and went the Canadian biologist, has. He has northern Greenland in winter. without a polar-bear decision from probably seen more polar bears on “That’s the best hope for polar Interior. No new decision date was sea ice, for longer periods of time, bears,” he says. “So we do have mentioned. than almost anyone else. some time before we look at the possibility of extinction.” On March 10, Kassie Siegel For weeks at a time each winter, made good on the threat in her Stirling and colleagues observe But not much. 60-day-notice letter. Together them through high-powered with Greenpeace and the Natural Michael Shnayerson is a Vanity telescopes from a pair of cliff- Fair contributing editor. Resources Defense Council, the top cabins on Devon Island, in Center for Biological Diversity the Canadian high Arctic. “You fi led suit against the Department of observe an animal that’s not only the Interior for missing its deadline beautiful and impressive in its on the polar-bear decision. Already, size,” he says, “but you get a sense the Center and other groups had of how exquisitely polar bears have fi led a separate suit against the adapted to survive in one of the government in regard to Lease most rigorous environments in the Sale 193. Their claim is that the world. We often think of them as environmental analysis done for the living in a harsh environment, but lease sale was sorely inadequate. to a bear it’s not harsh at all. It’s As this story went to press, I e- home, and a comfortable home at mailed Interior spokesman Shane that.” Wolfe to ask if he could give me a That home is now changing, and date for when the department would so threatened are the bears, Stirling decide, at last, if the polar bear is notes, that it’s easy to assume their indeed threatened. “We expect a extinction is a fait accompli. “I’ve decision very soon,” he replied. been absolutely stunned by the