Bush Calls for Review of Spotted Owl Plan
By Scott Learn, The Oregonian
December 18, 2007

The Bush administration, facing investigations into political interference in environmental decisions, is asking independent scientists to review the science behind a plan that could increase logging in northern spotted owl habitat.

The review, to be announced today, could help the administration defend itself against mounting criticism and lend its strategy more credibility. But it also could undermine a move to revive logging levels that have dropped dramatically.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked Steven Courtney, vice president of the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute in Portland, to lead the review. Courtney, well-respected for his work on spotted owl issues, will control who serves on the scientific panel, said Joan Jewett, an agency spokeswoman.

Courtney's group will review the science on the spotted owl, including the risks posed by barred owls and by loss of habitat to logging and wildfires.

"It's a good-faith effort to establish an independent record of the best available science," Jewett said. "It will be open and transparent."

The move stops short of scrapping the administration's draft plan for the spotted owl, as some critics wanted.

But it comes after peer reviews said the plan understated the importance of old-growth forests to the owl and amid mounting scrutiny of the Bush administration's environmental decisions.

Among other investigations, the Interior Department's inspector general -- at the request of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is looking into possible political interference with spotted owl decisions.

The scientific panel will work through mid-February, Courtney said. In January, it will hold a two-day public session, probably in Portland. The Fish and Wildlife Service wants to issue a final owl recovery plan by April.

Beyond its effect on the spotted owl, the plan is important because it could open the door for increased logging on federal lands, which cover about half of Oregon. Logging has dropped sharply under the Clinton administration's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which set aside millions of acres as older forest reserves.

The potential increase dismays environmentalists, who say it could dramatically boost logging in old-growth forests. But it would be good news for the timber industry and rural counties that depend on federal logging revenue to pay for libraries and some other basic services.

The scrutiny of the Interior Department, which includes the Fish and Wildlife Service, has centered on Julie MacDonald. The former deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife and parks was found to have bullied biologists and altered scientific findings.

MacDonald resigned in May after the inspector general's office said she leaked government information to industry groups trying to undercut Endangered Species Act protections. She quit the day Wyden demanded that Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne address her behavior.

It's unclear how much MacDonald was involved with the new owl recovery plan. Some environmentalists involved with the draft say there was high-level meddling.

A team set up by the Fish and Wildlife Service first drew up an approach that outlined specific conservation areas for the owl. But a Washington, D.C., oversight committee that included Mark Rey, the undersecretary of agriculture, and Lynn Scarlett, the deputy secretary of the interior, sent the plan back, asking for a new option that did not lay out specific areas for the owl.

In October, 23 members of Congress led by U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., asked the administration to scrap the draft recovery plan and start over.

"We're not going to do that," Jewett said. "There has been some good work done."

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