The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that it needs 10 more weeks to decide whether to list polar bears as a threatened or endangered species. The agency’s self-imposed deadline is now June 30; the original deadline was Jan. 9. The USFWS says it needs time to review the legal and policy implications of a listing, but litigious greens suspect the delay may have something to do with the feds’ selloff of drilling leases in polar-bear habitat. Says Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, “These are not questions for attorneys. They’re questions for scientists.”
