Changes in Plan to Protect Owl Raise Concerns About NW Forests
By Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times
April 27, 2007

A proposed new plan released Thursday to protect northern spotted owls includes changes urged by high-level officials in the Bush administration, leading environmentalists to charge that the administration is again threatening Northwest old-growth forests.

"We kind of expected that there would be some pressure to water down the recovery plan and to reduce the level of protection for the owl and for the old-growth forest," said Tim Cullinan, a National Audubon Society biologist who was part of the so-called "recovery team" that put together the proposal.

"But I think we were taken by surprise at the sheer audacity with which the administration tried to interfere in this plan."

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials confirmed the proposed plan was changed after the administration officials reviewed it. But the service defended the resulting proposal Thursday, saying it offers more flexibility while still protecting the owl.

"At no time did any of them, at least to me, tell me they wanted anything less protective or less valuable to the owl," said David Wesley, deputy regional director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "They were just asking, 'Aren't there other creative ways to do this?' "

Timber-industry representatives also said the plan supported greater flexibility and added that science on the owls has changed. Nowadays the biggest problem facing the spotted owl is not logging, they said, but an aggressive, invasive bird called the barred owl.

The new proposals call for hundreds of barred owls to be shot as an experiment to determine the effect on spotted-owl populations.

Environmental battle

This is but the latest in a long history of controversy surrounding the reclusive but emblematic owl with a penchant for nesting in old-growth forests. The spotted owl, protected under the Endangered Species Act, was at the center of fights over logging in the 1980s and early '90s.

That led to the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, a deal brokered by the Clinton administration putting large amounts of the Northwest's remaining federal old-growth forest off-limits to most logging. In all, it covered 24.5 million acres of federal land from the Canadian border to Northern California.

Thursday, after years of legal wrangling, the Fish and Wildlife Service issued its draft proposal for public comment.

It offers two scenarios to guide recovery of the owls over the next 30 years, at an estimated cost of $198 million. Only one option will be picked.

The recovery team — made up of environmentalists, timber-industry representatives and state and federal officials — initially sent only one recommendation to the administration for review at the end of last September.

That proposal mostly mimicked the Northwest Forest Plan already in effect by delineating important owl habitat in Washington, Oregon and Northern California for protection from activities like clear-cut logging.

But the administration officials, including Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey, who is a former timber lobbyist, and Lynn Scarlett, the Interior Department's deputy secretary, sent the plan back to the recovery team.

According to Wesley, the administration group asked for a new, more flexible way to recover the owls that didn't rely on strategies of the past.

In response, the second option was added. It would let locally based federal land-use managers decide which parts of federal forests get protected, though it would set guidelines meant to ensure that enough owl habitat is still set aside.

Ren Lohoefener, director of the Forest Service's Pacific Region, said the strategy would enable officials to adapt to changes to the forest from such influences as fires, windstorms and insect infestations.

"We really need a recovery plan that is dynamic, that can change," he said.

But Dominick DellaSala, of the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy, who served on the team drafting the plan, says the second option could cut total Northwest Forest Plan acreage recommended for owl-habitat protection by more than 800,000 acres, based on a simulation the recovery team conducted in February.

Lohoefener said the second option could result in protection for more forest or less forest, depending on how agencies decide what land to set aside.

New science stirs debate

Meanwhile, timber-industry representatives said the environmentalists are backing a plan based on outdated science. Now the birds are thought to rely on a mix of habitat, not just old growth, say timber officials. And the emerging threats of massive wildfires and aggressive barred owls are more urgent than habitat loss.

"The issue is, do you think you could do a better job of drawing lines — to get more habitat — with 14 years of new information," said Ed Murphy, of Sierra Pacific Industries, who was part of the recovery team.

The timber industry has long complained about the Clinton forest plan, saying the federal government has never made good on assurances that timber companies would still get a billion board feet of lumber from federal Northwest forests every year.

Barred owl poses threat

The new spotted-owl proposal did find agreement on one common enemy — the barred owl. The larger, more aggressive bird originally from the Northeast has been taking over spotted-owl nests and chasing away the rarer birds.

The new proposal calls barred owls — not clear-cutting — the biggest threat facing spotted owls. To beat back the barred owls, the plan calls for shooting them in 18 experimental areas. Up to 576 barred owls could be killed.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.

Spotted Owl Plan in Jeopardy
By Robert McClure, Seattle PI
April 26, 2007

A high-level team of Bush administration appointees in Washington, D.C. -- including a former timber-industry lobbyist -- ordered changes in a plan produced by scientists and other experts to save the Pacific Northwest's spotted owl.

The result, revealed Thursday, could whittle away old-growth forests protected on the owl's behalf.

A save-the-owl plan proposed by a panel of Northwest-based federal and state wildlife officials, environmentalists and timber-industry scientists would set aside specific blocks of old-growth forest to protect the imperiled owls.

But the D.C.-based officials added a second possibility that would not reserve any land for the owls' recovery. They would leave those decisions to the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- agencies that do not specialize in helping imperiled species.

Under the bureaucrats' option, more than 700,000 acres of habitat suitable for the threatened owls could be left unprotected, according to one simulation included in the documents unveiled Thursday.

Records also show that the D.C. group ordered the Northwest panel to "de-emphasize" the landmark Northwest Forest Plan adopted under the Clinton administration to save spotted owls and other species that thrive in old-growth forests.

"We're faced with a document that doesn't measure up to one of the key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, which is that the recovery plan must be based on best available science," said Dominick DellaSala, an environmental scientist tapped by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Northwest-based owl recovery team.

"The political interference in the science derailed the (Northwest) team from meeting that objective," he said. "This administration has manipulated the process."

After the Northwest-based team came up with its proposal for large swaths of protected owl habitat last fall, something unusual happened. Fish and Wildlife assembled a "Washington Oversight Committee."

Records state that the group included Mark Rey, the agriculture undersecretary in charge of the Forest Service who previously served as a timber-industry lobbyist, and Julie McDonald, the deputy assistant Interior secretary trained as a civil engineer who sparked controversy last year by overruling Fish and Wildlife scientists on which species deserve legal protection.

The D.C. bureaucrats' insertion into a process usually handled within Fish and Wildlife is significant because of its importance to owls, whose numbers are dropping faster than scientists expected.

But critics say it's important on a broader scale because it is part of a larger pattern of the Bush administration smacking down advice from scientists and others in the field.

Ren Lohoefener, Pacific regional director for Fish and Wildlife, defended the D.C. officials' involvement, saying the agency seeks ideas from many people inside and outside government. In this case, he said, it would make sense to keep the recovery plan "flexible" so that it could change over time.

"Any recovery plan is a collaborative process," Lohoefener said. "We take new ideas."

Of the Oversight Committee's creation, he said: "Is it usual? Probably not, in that most species don't have this history of interest" by the public and politicians.

Hugh Vickery, a spokesman for the Interior Department, which oversees Fish and Wildlife, said high-level government interest in the owls dates at least to the involvement of President Clinton in the early 1990s. Clinton set in motion the process that produced the Northwest Forest Plan, which has guided owl-recovery efforts ever since.

"All the way down the line, the system is set up so there is political oversight," Vickery said. "That's the way government works. We have a presidential election. We get a whole new crew of political appointees to be our bosses....The political appointees' job is to oversee the agencies."

Fish and Wildlife is designated by the Endangered Species Act as the agency in charge of helping most imperiled species recover. It appoints a "recovery team" to fashion a plan to help a threatened species bounce back.

It is not unusual for Fish and Wildlife brass and the agency's lawyers to change recovery plans. Sometimes their bosses at Interior get involved.

What's quite unusual in this case is that a committee dominated by Bush administration political appointees was convened to pick apart the proposal. They insisted on proposing an alternative recovery plan.

"They basically told us from that point what the recovery plan should look like," said recovery team member Tim Cullinan, a wildlife biologist with Audubon Washington.

Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity, who has clashed with both the Clinton and Bush administrations over endangered-species protections, called the move "really outrageous....Every other plan ... they don't put a whole new bureaucratic team in place to rewrite it."

The newly proposed plan stemmed ultimately from a lawsuit filed by the timber industry, which complained that the owl's status had never been reviewed as required under the Endangered Species Act.

Chris West, vice president of the Portland-based timber-industry group American Forest Resource Council, said the plan backed by the D.C. officials offers a better chance at helping the owls. The reason: It will allow quicker changes to deal with fires, tree diseases and an interloper in the spotted owls' territory known as the barred owl.

"The environmentalists are stuck in the old paradigm that the spotted owls are depending on old-growth," West said. "You can't lock up the old-growth, because ultimately the landscape will change."

Vickery, the Interior spokesman, said that adding the second option to the recovery plan should be viewed positively.

"The idea that we shouldn't have raised the option, shouldn't have given the people the opportunity to talk about it, doesn't make sense to me," Vickery said. "If people have legitimate concerns about that second option, this is the time to raise them."

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, and as defined under the provisions of "fair use", any copyrighted material herein is distributed without profit or payment for non-profit research and for educational use by our membership.