Coos County ready to sue over shorebird

Register-Guard (Eugene, OR), March, 2002

Byline: LARRY BACON The Register-Guard

COQUILLE - Some legal saber-rattling by the Coos County Board of Commissioners regarding the federally protected Western snowy plover has the local environmental community up in arms.

"The snowy plover recovery program could go down the tubes," says Jim Britell of Port Orford, president of the Kalmiopsis Audubon Society.

The commissioners are threatening to file a lawsuit challenging a 1999 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service order that designated critical habitat areas for the small shorebird. Britell is the point man in a campaign by the environmental community to pressure county commissioners not to file the suit.

The commissioners say they intend to move ahead with legal action and believe that they...