naco.org
US Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams
Under the terms of the Endangered Species Act the Emperor penguin, native to Antarctica, will be listed as a "threatened species". It's not because the large, flightless birds are being hunted to extinction or their habitat is being covered with suburban apartment complexes or semi-conductor fabs.
The move is being made because the Antarctic environment is particularly sensitive to Anthropogenic Global Warming. The current estimated population of the birds is given as being over 600,000 individuals but on the basis of climate projections their numbers may decrease by as much as 47% by 2050.
While it's about 9000 miles from the USF&W offices in DC to the nearest emperor penguin, the Endangered Species Act authorizes the agency to ban commercial transactions anywhere involving the bird and supply some funds for its conservation in foreign jurisdictions. The listing may also raise awareness in the public of the dangers it's facing. School children will be able to worry about the fate of animals they are unlikely to ever see except on the Discovery Channel.
According to scientist Susan J. Crockford's blog, Polar Bear Science, "China has thwarted an attempt by members of the Antarctic Treaty organization to enact special protection status for the Emperor penguin, which would have generated a ‘Species Action Plan’. Apparently, such a proposal required a consensus of all parties and China wouldn’t go along."
The relatively cost-free virtue signalling of the US EPA is, of course, another example of predicting the future on the basis of unreliable computer modelling. No one is likely now, or in the foreseeable future, to physically assist in a big penguin's survival.
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