Saving the animals

This AP article is worth looking at just for the picture of the polar bear. They’re so watchable, which is why they make it onto greeting cards and in commercial ads so often.

In fact, they’re being watched by animal protection groups as theire numbers dwindle and now, with this latest act, they’re being protected from killing.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne plans to announce later Wednesday that polar bears should be listed as a “threatened” species on the government list of imperiled species, a department official confirmed Wednesday. The “endangered” category is reserved for species more likely to become extinct.

Such a decision would require all federal agencies to ensure that anything they authorize that might affect polar bears will not jeopardize their survival or the sea ice where they live. That could include oil and gas exploration, commercial shipping or even releases of toxic contaminants or climate-affecting pollution.

When these types of things come up, like federal laws that protect baby sea turtles on beaches, I think about the baby humans who don’t enjoy that kind of protection when they are still preparing to be born. And it seems so unreal that we live this way as a society.

Polar bears, an iconic and cold-dependent animal, are dropping in numbers and weight in the Arctic. In July, the House approved a U.S.-Russia treaty to help protect polar bears from overhunting and other threats to their survival.

Meanwhile, Russia and a number of European countries are not reproducing baby humans at even a replacement level of two children per couple. So whole societies are heading for extinction.

I love animals and nature and appreciate efforts to preserve and protect them. But we should be even more aggressive in our efforts to protect all human life.