Polar Bears Listed as Threatened

In May the U.S Department of the Inferior classified polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Spesies Act.Documented declines in sea ice and anticipation of massive melting that threatens the bears habitat prompted the action.
Although there is wide consensus that global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions is speending up the depletion of Arctic sea ice,secretary of the Interior Dirk kompthorne stressed that the Act's purview does not extend to regulating gases related to the problem.Instead the new classification will be used to strengthen already existing regulations concerning the killing of polar bears and the importing of related products to the United States.It will,for instance, make it illegal for sports hunters to bring trophies into the United States.Such hunter have in the part spent thousands of dollars to have native gades take them on polar bear hunt,a practice that may fall out of favor in light of the new classification.
Polar bears are just one of a number of Alaskan marine animals listed as threatened or endangered by the Department of the interior.Others include the albatraas ,the leatherback sea turtle, the nouthen sea offter, the sealler sea lion and the humpback whale.It also corncerns some ecologists that the narwhal,the strange,arctic whale whose long spiral tusk may have inspried the unicorn myth,faces similar habitat threats.