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ANCHORAGE, Alaska—  Today two conservation groups filed suit against Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne for issuing regulations that would allow unlimited harassment of polar bears and Pacific walrus by oil companies operating in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska. Harassment of polar bears and walrus is prohibited by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, yet the new regulations issued last month exempt oil companies operating in the Chukchi Sea from these restrictions for a period of five years.

“These regulations waiving the protections of the Marine Mammal Protection Act indicate the Department of the Interior is far more concerned with protecting oil-company profits than polar bears,” said Brendan Cummings, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “If polar bears and Pacific walrus are to survive in the face of global warming, we simply cannot allow oil development in the Chukchi Sea.”

The Chukchi Sea is the least touched by industrial development of any area of Alaska's Arctic. The area is home to most of the world's Pacific walrus as well as one of only two polar bear populations in the United States. Offshore oil development directly harms polar bears and Pacific walrus in numerous ways, including disturbance by vessels, aircraft, and drilling platforms, impacts on walrus and the seals that bears prey upon from seismic surveys, and the risk of oil spills. There are no proven technologies for cleaning up an oil spill in the icy waters of the Arctic. A large spill, estimated by the Department of the Interior as having a 40-percent chance of occurring as a result of proposed development in the Chukchi Sea, would be catastrophic for polar bears and Pacific walrus.

“The Chukchi Sea should be protected as critical habitat for polar bears and Pacific walrus, not opened up for oil exploration,” said Whit Sheard, Alaska program director of Pacific Environment. “The risks from offshore oil development to the polar bear, the marine environment, and Arctic communities are simply too great.”