Last month, the Bush administration declared polar bears a threatened species because of global warming.This month, the administration gave permission for companies to “annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas,” the Associated Press reported Saturday. The article reported the Fish and Wildlife Service as having already issued regulations for legal protection of seven oil companies with a provision that only “small numbers” of polar bears and Pacific walruses be harmed in the process.......

Last month, polar bears were given protected status when they were listed as threatened by Dirk Kempthorne, the Interior Secretary.

However, Mr Kempthorne specified that the declining amount of sea ice - which the bears use for mating, denning and hunting - was caused by the warming Arctic climate and not by oil development.

But environmental groups do not agree. With soaring petrol prices now the biggest single economic issue for many Americans, the government has been under intense pressure to free up Alaska for oil exploration.

The state's outer continental shelf was long thought too remote and costly to drill. BP and Shell are among those investing heavily in Alaskan exploration......

Police in Iceland say they fatally shot the first polar bear seen in the country in 20 years after the animal threatened people. Authorities say police in northern Iceland shot the bear Tuesday after determining that the drugs used to sedate the animal were unavailable and that a gun that could be used to fire them was elsewhere in the country....

More than 20 artists have come together to create the latest eco-friendly arrivals at London Zoo.

The Recycled Sculpture Show is the opening event for the Love London festival, designed to promote green initiatives, and features a menagerie of beastly sculptures fashioned from recycled materials.

Included are a great white shark made from discarded hubcaps, a polar bear cub made of plastic bags, a chicken made from broken plates, bugs made of old car parts and a rubber 'Tyreannosaurus'.

“The sculptures really provoke debate about human waste.....

The hordes expected to visit Germany’s latest polar bear cub sensation, Snowflake at the zoo in Nuremberg, didn’t materialize over the holiday weekend, as people were put off by all the hype.

The low attendance figures could be a hard blow for zoo officials, who had reckoned with record attendance based on the crowds that descended on Berlin last year to visit Germany’s original celebrity polar bear cub, Knut. Visitors may have avoided Snowflake, or Flocke in German, because they didn’t want to deal with the crowds expected to come see the baby bear, Nuremberg zoo spokeswoman Nicole Mögel told German news agency DDP. “It could seem a bit daunting,” Mögel told DDP, which reported that she seemed at a loss. Just 30,000 people visited the Nuremberg zoo over the warm and sunny three-day Pentecost holiday weekend. When zoo officials introduced Snowflake to the world – and 430 journalists – five weeks ago, Director Dag Encke said he anticipated up to 25,000 visitors a day..............

BERLIN — Knut the polar bear cub abandoned by his mother was a sensation one year ago, a ball of adorable white fluff that seduced the nation and the world beyond, even landing on the cover of Vanity Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio. But lately, he has been Germany’s problem cub more than its darling.

Aexl Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Knut, much grown-up, in his enclosure at the Berlin Zoo in April. As the bear has grown from a virtual living stuffed animal into a 350-pound adolescent, newspapers here have taken issue with everything from Knut’s weight to his sexuality, with one paper asking if the bear is gay. But the most enduring question is the one posed by animal-protection groups from the very beginning: how being hand-raised by humans would affect him when he grew up. When Knut was nuzzling his handler, Thomas Dörflein, to the delight of an adoring public, the objections of outside experts were brushed aside. His antics weren’t bad for business either, bringing in an estimated $8 million in extra revenues for the Berlin Zoo last year. But times change, cubs grow up and those experts may have been on to something after all. “With Knut, it’s clear that he has imprinted on humans, and when neither his keeper nor visitors are there he cries out,” said Thomas Pietsch, a biologist and expert on wild animals for the animal-welfare group Four Paws in Germany. Peter H. Arras, a zoologist and animal-protection advocate put it more succinctly: “He’s a psychopath addicted to human attention.” That attention has fallen off significantly. Knut is now too large and too strong to play with Mr. Dörflein. And the largest crowds of spectators have moved south. In the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, a new young cub named Flocke, or Snowflake, claimed the crown of cuteness when she was introduced to the public earlier this month. A third cub in Stuttgart, named Wilbär, is being brought up the old-fashioned way, by his mother.......

A combination photo shows polar bear cubs (top to bottom) Knut, Flocke and Wilbaer playing in their zoo enclosures in Berlin December 5, 2007, in Nuremburg April 8, 2008 and in Stuttgart April 16, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

Raw Video: Baby Polar Bear Debuts AssociatedPress - STUTTGART, Germany - German polar bear fans have another star to visit. Stuttgart's Wilhelma zoo presented four-month-old Wilbaer to the public Wednesday - bringing the fluffy cub outdoors alongside his mother, Corinna. Wilbaer's debut came just a week after the Nuremberg zoo presented its female cub, Flocke, who has been hand-raised since her mother was seen tossing the cub around her enclosure in January. No such worries for Wilbaer, who initially stuck close by his mother when he emerged. The cub sniffed at rocks and tentatively stuck his front paws in the water, before eventually following his mother's lead and diving in. Wilbaer was born on Dec. 10, a day before Flocke...... AssociatedPress

SFGate: Day in Pictures San Francisco Chronicle, USA - I see your Flocke and raise you one Wilbaer: