Polar Bears To Get Relief From Big Oil

Playful Polar Bear Cubs, originally uploaded by Vera Le Bail.

The US is going to limit oil development in sensitive polar bear territory.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department will designate within two years protected areas of the Arctic that are considered critical habitat for polar bears and cannot be harmed by oil development as part of a legal settlement with environmental groups on Monday.

The Interior Department formally listed polar bears as threatened in May, but did not create protected areas for them.

Environmental groups said the threatened listing needed to be coupled with habitat designations to protect polar bears from spreading oil development or other industry impacts.

"You can't protect a species without protecting the place where it lives," said Kassie Siegel, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the three groups who sued the Bush administration to secure the designation.

"After global warming, oil development is the biggest threat to polar bears," said Siegel

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