Northwest Logging Plans Slashed

The Associated Press

Thursday 06 March 2008

Sea bird protection trumps timber.

Grants Pass, Oregon - Going against Bush administration efforts to increase Northwest logging, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday dropped plans to slash protections for old growth forests used as nesting trees by a threatened sea bird.

The agency reversed its proposal to cut by 94% the 3.9 million acres of critical habitat set side in 1996 to help the marbled murrelet, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act. It cited uncertainties over plans to ramp up logging on federal lands in Western Oregon, according to a notice in the Federal Register.

Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the public interest law firm Earthjustice, said the decision marked the continued unraveling of efforts by Bush administration appointees to shrink Endangered Species Act protections for fish and wildlife to help the timber industry and other interest groups.

"I don't know what is going on in the agency, but this is the scientists winning out over the politicos, for sure," Boyles said from Seattle.

The size of a robin, the marbled murrelet spends most of its life at sea, but flies as much as 50 miles inland to lay a single egg in a mossy depression of the branch of a large tree. Surveys indicate its numbers are declining from Alaska to California.

The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994 by the federal government to comply with federal court rulings, cut logging on national forests in Washington, Oregon and Northern California by more than 80% to protect habitat for threatened species such as the marbled murrelet, the northern spotted owl and salmon.

Two years later, Fish and Wildlife designated 3.9 million acres of forest, mostly federally owned, as critical habitat for the bird, as required by the Endangered Species Act.

But as part of a 2002 settlement of a lawsuit brought by the timber industry, the Bush administration agreed to review protections for the murrelet and other species that depend on old growth forests.

The deadline for a decision on marbled murrelet critical habitat was March 1.

The proposal that came out in 2006 argued that all but a fraction of the marbled murrelet's critical habitat could be eliminated because the forests were already protected by the Northwest Forest Plan.

Since then, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has proposed jettisoning the Northwest Forest Plan to greatly increase logging on its lands in Western Oregon, which includes forests used by marbled murrelets.

"That's created uncertainty, too much uncertainty for us to make a final decision right now," Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Joan Jewett said from Portland. "We may decide to revise critical habitat later."

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, agreed the decision was "prudent" in light of BLM's logging plans, but argued that the marbled murrelet in Washington, Oregon and California should not be listed as a threatened species because the bulk of the population lives off Canada and Alaska.

He added that declining populations are more due to declining food supplies in the ocean than a lack of nesting habitat on land.

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