Polar bears, or as Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) prefers to call them, "the pawn in a much larger game of chess," are back in the news this week. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service missed a deadline earlier this month on whether to declare the polar bear threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

That wouldn't normally be big news, except that the delay appears to be suspiciously coordinated with a Minerals Management Service plan to open a large area of Alaska's Chukchi Sea to oil and gas leases on Feb. 6. It turns out about 20 percent of polar bears depend on Chukchi Sea ice for hunting.

Yesterday on Capitol Hill, FWS director Dale Hall faced some pointed questions at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, where officials accused Hall and the Interior Department of stonewalling to make it easier for oil companies to obtain leases.

Committee chairman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) asked Hall why his agency "is dragging its feet" while the Interior Department "is moving quickly ... to allow new oil activities in one of the biological hearts of the polar bear's habitat."

Hall made no promises, saying only that agency would have a recommendation "in the very near future." MMS officials said they plan to proceed as scheduled with the lease sales next week.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the minority members of the Senate EPW Committee -- led by Inhofe -- countered yesterday's hearing with the release of a report that attempts to debunk polar bear extinction fears.