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THE LUST FOR PROFIT THAT MAY DOOM THESE CUBS

Polar Bear cubs under threat

Thursday February 28,2008

By John Ingham

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A MOTHER’S love, they say, is the most powerful force on earth. But it may not be enough to save these babies.

The polar bear cubs snuggling up to their mother after emerging from their den in the frozen wastes of Alaska are enduring a rapidly vanishing wilderness.

Global warming means they have woken weeks earlier than normal from their winter slumber, while the ice around them retreats each year.

But now one of nature’s most fearsome predators has a new enemy – in Washington DC.

The US Government stands accused of putting profit before the environment after shelving plans to list polar bears as a threatened species, a move which would give them greater protection in the wild.

Meanwhile, it is auctioning nearly 30million acres of prime polar bear habitat in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, earmarked for oil and gas drilling.

Not only does the threat of oil spills and other pollution put the bears’ existence under threat – along with walruses, whales, seals and migratory birds – but giving them extra protection could make giving the go-ahead to oil and gas exploration much more difficult.

Already it is feared that summer sea ice in the Arctic could disappear altogether by 2080 with the first ice-free summer just over 30 years away.

Conservation group WWF say Arctic sea ice is melting earlier in the spring and forming later in the autumn. And with a study predicting the bear population could shrink by two-thirds by 2050, these pictures could soon be all that is left of these beautiful beasts.

THE LUST FOR PROFIT THAT MAY DOOM THESE CUBS

28.02.08, 2:41pm

And Al Gore was given given a Nobel Price prize.

What hypocricy!

How Green we are!

• Posted by: jacky • Report Comment

THE LUST FOR PROFIT THAT MAY DOOM THESE CUBS

28.02.08, 2:03pm

Well this story doesn't surprise me one little iota....
it is the 'American Way'
Kill or Trample over anyone or anything that gets in the way of Power, Money, or Oil !!!

• Posted by: TheBolshyOne • Report Comment