Fed up with the Fish and Wildlife Service’s constant failure to meet deadlines and make a decision on whether polar bears should be listed as endangered or not, the Center for Biological Diversity, together with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace decided to sue the Bush administration for all the delays.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco and comes three years after the Fish and Wildlife Service was asked to consider the polar bears' situation. After missing the initial deadline, they were granted an extra year to go on with the research and make a decision, they failed again.

As conservation organizations constantly argue a decision needs to made now, before it is too late, it appears that the Fish and Wildlife Service is taking its time: “The bottom line is the Fish and Wildlife Service has been twiddling its thumbs as the polar bear habitat has been melting,” said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Endangered Species Program, Bloomberg reports. “They have repeatedly missed deadlines they are more than capable of meeting.”

Under the same ESA (Endangered Species Act), federal officials have made a decision however on the wolverines, which is not to list them as endangered, despite warnings that there are only 600 of them left in the United States. The explanation for such a decision: most of the wolverines left live outside U.S.’s borders (same case with polar bears) and there is no reason to take on other countries’ responsibilities.

This is also a decision conservation organizations have threatened to challenge in court. Moreover, it seems as if the Fish and Wildlife Service has adopted a whole new policy regarding the protection of certain species. Never before have they passed the responsibility to other countries, and environmental groups won’t let things remain this way under the Bush administration.