THE Bush Administration may declare the polar bear a threatened species, amid growing concern that global warming is melting away the Arctic ice sheet.

In a surprise move that delighted environmentalists, the Administration, which is reluctant to accept that global warming is a man-made phenomenon, said yesterday that it had initiated a 60-day study to determine whether polar bears should be deemed engangered because of the drastic reduction of their habitat.

The move came as 85 evangelical leaders, part of President Bush’s political base, called on the White House to impose mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, a stance so far rejected by Washington. The US Fish and Wildlife Service said yesterday that protection of the polar bear might be warranted because of scientific data linking climate change to the animal’s wellbeing. As global temperatures have risen, Arctic ice, on which the world’s 22,000 to 25,000 polar bears hunt for food, has shrunk dramatically. Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said that total Arctic ice cover had melted back to the lowest level in modern records, and that if melting rates continued apace, the summertime Arctic could be ice-free within 80 years.

“Polar bears are on their way toward extinction in the next hundred years or so,” Robert Corell, a senior fellow at the American Meteorological Society, told a conference in Alaska this week. Scientists say that the population of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, Canada, fell by 14 per cent, to 950, between 1994 and 2004.

Without ice, bears cannot hunt for seals and must swim huge distances to find hunting grounds. Experts say that the bears are losing weight as their hunting grounds diminish, making it even harder for them to hunt and reproduce. Moreover, their young have a reduced survival rate.

In northern Canada, according to Dr Corell, females that once averaged 620lb (281kg) are down to 485lb. US government scientists have also said that some bears are drowning during long swims from ice to land. Four drowned bears were seen floating in open water in 2004, apparently from exhaustion while trying to swim as many as 185 miles (298km).

If the US Government lists the polar bear as threatened, all government agencies would have to consider whether their actions were adding to global warming.

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