A month ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the Northern Spotted Owl, a reclusive, inky-eyed inhabitant of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, meets the definition of an endangered species. The bird has lost more than 70 percent of its population since the FWS listed it as threatened in 1990. It faces a real threat of extinction.
Nonetheless, the agency said the bird鈥檚 listing to endangered because doing so 鈥渋s precluded by higher priority actions.鈥 That decision angered conservation groups, who of shirking its duty.
Now those groups say the Trump administration is rubbing salt in the wound with a final rule published on Wednesday that removes nearly 3.5 million acres from the Northern Spotted Owl鈥檚 designated critical habitat, an Endangered Species Act term for areas deemed essential for a species to recover. Further fueling the outcry is the new rule鈥檚 dramatic expansion of a much more modest 200,000-acre cut proposed in August鈥攁 change made at the discretion of Interior Secretary David Bernhardt with no chance for the public to comment.
鈥淭he owl should be endangered because it鈥檚 in danger of going extinct in the near term, and yet we have this decision from the Fish and Wildlife Service, driven by political appointees, that says: Nope, we鈥檙e gonna get rid of protected habitat,鈥 says Susan Jane Brown, a staff attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really heartbreaking, frankly. This kind of callous action is just offensive.鈥
Endangered Species Act expert Patrick Parenteau, a Vermont Law School professor, said in an email, 鈥淚've never seen that dramatic a cut in critical habitat and never for a species that warrants up listing from threatened to endangered.鈥
The Northern Spotted Owl is the largest of three subspecies鈥攁long with the California Spotted Owl and the federally threatened Mexican Spotted Owl鈥攁nd lives in Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, though in the Canadian province. Habitat loss driven primarily by timber harvesting led to the bird鈥檚 threatened listing and put it at the center of intense fights in the 1990s that pitted loggers against environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest. Today the bird faces additional threats from increasingly devastating wildfires in its forest habitat and competition from Barred Owls, an eastern species that has expanded its range into the Northern Spotted Owl鈥檚 home turf. Safeguarding its habitat is vital to helping it evade and survive these threats, experts say.
Timber companies, chafing at restrictions on logging, have repeatedly challenged critical habitat designations for the owl, including a 2012 rule that set aside 9.5 million acres of forest. That lawsuit remained tied up in the courts until last April, when the FWS with the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association for the timber industry, requiring it to re-evaluate designated habitat.
The outcome of that process was a FWS proposal in August to remove some 200,000 acres of critical habitat in Oregon. But timber companies said the proposal didn鈥檛 go far enough. In formal comments on the plan, the American Forest Resource Council argued that the FWS a total of 2.7 million acres.
The goes further still, stripping more than one-third of the Northern Spotted Owl鈥檚 critical habitat in California, Oregon, and Washington. Brown says she鈥檚 heard from multiple contacts in federal agencies that the increase from 200,000 acres to 3.5 million acres came at the direction of Bernhardt and another Interior official, who 鈥減ut the screws鈥 to agency staff to give timber companies greater access. She says government biologists have described to her the reduction in protected habitat as an 鈥渆xtinction action鈥 for the bird.
The massive reduction in protected acreage is 鈥渜uite a dramatic place to find ourselves without scientific or economic analyses to back it up,鈥 says Trina Bayard, director of bird conservation for . 鈥淚t鈥檚 profoundly disturbing to see this reckless decision being made by the administration that will very likely put additional pressure on the species.鈥 Protections for the Northern Spotted Owl also preserve its old-growth forest home鈥檚 ability to soak up climate-warming carbon, Bayard notes, and benefit forest birds that share its habitat, such as Varied Thrush, Pacific Slope Flycatcher, and Hermit Warbler.
The FWS declined to answer questions about concerns that the new rule could push the Northern Spotted Owl toward extinction and instead sent 约炮视频 a statement from FWS Director Aurelia Skipwith: 鈥淭he Trump Administration and the Service are committed to recovering all imperiled species, and the northern spotted owl is no exception. These commonsense revisions ensure we are continuing to recover the northern spotted owl while being a good neighbor to rural communities within the critical habitat.鈥
To explain the more than 15-fold increase in removed acreage, the rule refers to the Interior secretary鈥檚 authority, via the Endangered Species Act, to exclude areas from critical habitat if the benefits of doing so outweigh the benefits of including it. But that discretion has limits; the law prohibits exclusions if they will cause the extinction of a species and requires that they be rooted in the best available science. 鈥淭his decision blows past those limits like few decisions I have seen from this administration, which is saying something,鈥 Brown says. 鈥淪aying, 鈥業 have the discretion to push it into extinction鈥 does not pass the laugh test.鈥
Brown says she doesn鈥檛 see how a judge would allow such a sweeping action by the secretary without public comment, and her group will sue to reverse it. The incoming Biden administration is also likely to scrap the rule since it doesn鈥檛 take effect for 60 days, she says. But doing so will require the FWS to write a replacement rule, which takes time鈥攕omething of which the Northern Spotted Owl has little to spare.