Conservation Groups Challenge Owl Plan
By Jeff Barnard, Associated Press
November 25, 2008

A coalition of conservation groups filed motions Monday to intervene in a timber industry lawsuit over the owl in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Seattle Audubon Society and the others argue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was politically influenced by the Bush administration and violated the Endangered Species Act by ignoring the best available science, both in the plan for saving the owl from extinction and in deciding to reduce protections for old growth forests where the owl lives by 1.6 million acres.

The spotted owl was declared a threatened species in 1990 primarily because of heavy logging in old growth forests. Lawsuits from conservation groups led to the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging on federal lands by more than 80 to protect habitat for the owl, salmon and other species.

The declining log production led to economic pain in the region, particularly in small logging towns, and the Bush administration has been trying since 2000 to relax environmental laws and regulations to boost logging levels, with little success.

The owl recovery plan twice flunked peer reviews by outside scientists who said it contained no scientific basis for allowing more logging of the old growth forests set aside under the Northwest Forest Plan as habitat for the owl. The plan also identified wildfire and the invasion of spotted owl territory by the barred owl as factors in the threatened bird's decline.

Dominick DellaSala of the National Center for Conservation Science & Policy, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, served on a team of scientists who worked on the owl recovery plan before it was taken over by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

He said they were prevented from doing their jobs by a group of Bush administration officials in Washington, who needed an owl recovery plan that would allow logging in old growth forests in order to push through the so-called Whopper, or Western Oregon Plan Revision, which dismantles the Northwest Forest Plan for saving owls and increases logging on federal lands in western Oregon.

Kristen Boyles, an attorney for Earthjustice, the public interest law firm representing the conservation groups, said the owl recovery plan, smaller critical habitat and the Whopper, "are the final pieces to the puzzle the Bush administration has been putting together the last eight years to undo the Northwest Forest Plan and deliver unsustainable amounts of timber to the timber industry."

Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Joan Jewett said she could not comment on pending litigation.

Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the recovery plan was a good one, but leaving so much forest in critical habitat will prevent the logging needed to prevent future wildfires that will destroy even more acres.

"We need the ability to manage the lands to be sure they stay in a more healthy state," Partin said. "We just feel we'll lose more acres of owl critical habitat to fire."

Research shows that spotted owl numbers continue to drop by 4 percent annually as a result of logging, wildfires and an invasion of its habitat by the barred owl, a more aggressive East Coast cousin that migrated across Canada and has been working its way south.

The Bush administration agreed to produce a new spotted owl recovery plan and review the critical habitat designation under terms of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the timber industry.

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.

Groups Go to Court Over Spotted Owl
By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian
November 25, 2008

A large alliance of environmental groups is joining its foes, the timber industry, in opposing a federal blueprint for protecting the northern spotted owl, the threatened Northwest bird that has stood in the way of logging federal lands.

The timber industry argued in a lawsuit filed last month in Washington, D.C., that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to designate too much land as critical habitat for the owl. On Monday, 18 wildlife and conservation groups asked to intervene in the lawsuit, arguing the Fish and Wildlife Service isn't designating enough critical habitat.

The standoff highlights the role of the spotted owl as a key tool in the argument over how much of the Northwest forests should remain easily accessible to logging. Owls favor large, older forests that were a key source of Northwest timber.

While logging on federal land has fallen sharply since the 1990s, owl numbers are still declining. Scientists increasingly believe that's also because of invading barred owls, a more aggressive cousin of the spotted owl that has arrived from the East.

Conservation groups argue that makes protecting owl habitat all the more important.

The 18 groups also argue that a new federal recovery plan for the spotted owl -- closely linked to critical habitat -- isn't based on the best available science and was undermined by political meddling. The groups include Oregon Wild, the Audubon Society of Portland, Sierra Club and the Gifford Pinchot Task Force.

"We think the recovery plan is fatally flawed for its failure to use the best science, the misuse of the science it did use and the political interference that marked the whole process," said Kristen Boyles, an Earthjustice lawyer representing the groups.

They're asking for a court order "to ensure that northern spotted owls and their habitat do not suffer irreparable harm pending resolution of the merits of this action."

The Fish and Wildlife Service revised its critical habitat for the northern spotted owl as part of a deal between the Bush administration and the timber industry to resolve an earlier industry lawsuit. The revision reduced the amount of critical habitat from about 6.9 million acres to 5.3 million acres.

But the American Forest Resource Council, an industry group in Portland, and other timber companies and groups were not satisfied. They argue the remaining critical habitat protections will unnecessarily hamper efforts to thin overgrown forests before they burn up in wildfires, wiping out the owl habitat for decades.

"This is going to do nothing but make the populations go down even more," said Tom Partin, president of the Resource Council.

While logging is not prohibited in critical habitat, it must clear extra procedural hurdles before it can proceed. The Resource Council argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service designated lands as critical habitat even when they do not currently provide good habitat for owls.

While the timber group took issue with critical habitat, it did not challenge the federal owl-recovery plan like the conservation groups did. They contend the recovery plan fails to protect enough habitat and enough owls for the species to recover and that the species will probably continue to decline.

The plan "fails to utilize the best scientific data that require protecting more spotted owl critical habitat at a time when the species is in rapid decline and is facing increased threats," the groups say in court documents.

They also say the plan ignores the scientific underpinnings of the Northwest Forest Plan, a 1994 attempt by the Clinton administration to provide for wildlife while also turning out a reliable timber supply.

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.