Canadian panel: Climate change is threat to polar bears

In Ottawa, Baird said the government will begin consulting environmentalists, scientists and wildlife managers on how to proceed after he receives the committee's report in August. But a management plan wouldn't be required until 2014 a date by which some scientists believe the Arctic could be completely free of summer sea ice.

If the polar bear had been placed in the "threatened" status, Canada would have required prohibitions like bans on hunting and destruction of habitat for the country's estimated 15,500 polar bears, roughly two-thirds of the global population.

The Canadian discussion on the polar bear's status mirrors a similar debate in the United States, where the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is deciding whether to declare the animals endangered.

Last September, the US Geological Survey said that two-thirds of the world's polar bears could be gone by mid-century if predictions of melting sea ice hold true.

The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada examined 31 various species and concluded the ferruginous hawk was upgraded to threatened from special concern, while two populations of the eastern foxsnake in Ontario are now considered endangered.