From the Editor: On the Polar Bear Listing Decision

In the following pages, you will find a provocative piece by Armstrong, Green, and Soon, commentaries on this work by Cochran, Goodwin, and Murphy, and a follow-up reply by Armstrong, Green, and Soon. A controversial decision to list or not list the polar bear as an endangered species became even more controversial when the decision took much longer than expected. On May 14, 2008, three years after the filing of the original lawsuit to force consideration of polar bears as endangered, US Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the decision to list the polar bear as threatened, that is, on track to be listed as endangered. Part of the reason given for the delay in reaching a decision was the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence that needed to be considered. Armstrong, Green, and Soon were involved in that evaluation process. On January 30, 2008, lead author Scott Armstrong testified before the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works regarding the authors’ forecasting audit of a set of listing-decision studies under consideration. Shortly thereafter, Scott, who is a contributing editor of Interfaces, approached me about the possibility of Interfaces publishing their audit work. (Scott and his coauthors had sent it to another journal, but were having trouble getting a decision.) They withdrew the paper from consideration by the other journal and submitted it to Interfaces, which accepted it after several efficient rounds of refereeing, Scott encouraged me to solicit commentaries on their work, and Jim Cochran, Paul Goodwin, and Fred Murphy came through in a timely way. Steven Amstrup, Research Wildlife Biologist at the United States Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, is an author of one of the studies that Armstrong, Green, and Soon audited. In March, I invited Dr. Amstrup to submit a rebuttal. His fieldwork responsibilities prevented him from responding in time for this issue, but he has accepted my invitation and has indicated he will submit a rebuttal in the near future. We look forward to his contribution. I encourage you to read these pieces with an open mind and ponder the role, indeed the responsibility, we have as analysts to support good decision making in the public sector.