More flak for spotted owl - Clippings - Brief Article

American Forests, Spring, 2003 by Mary Woodsen

The federal government has agreed to review Endangered Species Act protections for the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet to settle lawsuits brought by the timber industry.

Under agreements filed in federal court in Eugene, Oregon, in February, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will consider new information in reviewing the birds' threatened species status. Their declining populations triggered sharp cutbacks in logging on national forests throughout the 1990s.

The agency will also do a new analysis of the economic impacts of designating millions of acres of federal land as critical habitat for the two birds. New critical habitat proposals for the owl will be done by December 2005 and for the marbled murrelet by August 2006.

The Endangered Species Act requires that listed species' status be reviewed every five years. The timber industry lawsuits argue that no scheduled evaluations have been performed since the owl was listed in 1990 and the murrelet in 1992. The lawsuits also charge that economic impact studies that accompanied the critical habitat designations were insufficient.

Unlike a settlement reached last year in a lawsuit over Pacific salmon, the government agreed to leave the critical habitat designations in force while the economic impacts were redone. New scientific information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suggests the spotted owl is not entirely dependent on old-growth forest for habitat and faces a significant threat from interbreeding with the barred owl.