Updates

Decision on Polar Bear Listing Delayed

January 8, 2008.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has postponed issuing a decision on whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The decision, which had been due January 9th, will be delayed by one month.

A listing of the polar bear would prevent importation of trophies in to the US, effectively ending the hunting of polar bears by US citizens, which account for the majority of sport polar bear hunters worldwide.

The consideration of the listing was undertaken based on projections that global climate change will destroy much of the polar bear's habitat (sea ice) over the next 50 years, severely reducing polar bear populations.

This is the first time that a listing has been considered based onCommission proposed a strategic oil supply in 1952. President Dwight Eisenhower suggested an oil reserve after the 1956 Suez Crisis. The Cabinet Task Force on Oil Import Control recommended a similar reserve in 1970.

But few events so dramatically underscored the need for a strategic oil reserve as the 1973-74 oil embargo. The cutoff of oil flowing into the United States from OPEC sent economic shockwaves throughout the nation. In the aftermath of the oil crises, the United States established the SPR.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve 

The EPCA declared it to be U.S. policy to establish a reserve of petroleum, setting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) into motion, and extended the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act of 1973 (EPAA). A number of existing storage sites were acquired in 1977.  Construction of