Groups sue to protect northern spotted owl
On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Information Center joined other environmental groups in suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to properly protect the northern spotted owl.
EPIC and other groups, such as the Western Environmental Law Center and Klamath Forest Alliance, filed a complaint in federal district court stating that the service is failing to meet crucial deadlines to get the the northern spotted owl categorized as endangered rather than threatened under the Endangered Species Act, according to a news release from the groups.
“The northern spotted owl is in what one researcher called an ‘extinction vortex,’ ” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of Arcata-based EPIC. “It is in rapid decline across its entire range and unless we take immediate actions to try to change that rate of decline, it’s going to go extinct within our lifetime.”
Wildlife advocates petitioned
“We’re at an inflection point for these iconic birds: with urgent action they can recover, but without it they could be wiped off the face of the Earth.” — Western Environmental Law Center program director, Susan Jane Brown
the service to increase the owl's protection in 2012, Wheeler said. The service has 90 days to review its the merits of a petition after receiving it, but it took the service three years to review the northern spotted owl's petition, he said.
“In 2015, we got a ‘may be warranted' finding,” Wheeler said.
Then the service has 12 months to determine whether a species is legally threatened or endangered, but Wheeler said that has yet to be done five years later.
“We just ran out of patience,” Wheeler said, “and the owl's running out of time, so we filed a lawsuit to force the agency to comply with the law and complete the listing process.”
The Endangered Species Act requires the service to review all species that are listed as threatened or endangered at least once every five years to ensure they have adequate protection, but that review hasn't happened yet for the northern spotted owl.
Nearly a decade has passed since the last northern spotted owl status review, the press release states.
“The word for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service's approach to northern spotted owl recovery is ‘negligent,'” Susan Jane Brown, wildlands program director with the Western Environmental Law Center, said in a statement. “We're at an inflection point for these iconic birds: with urgent action they can recover, but without it they could be wiped off the face of the Earth. Nine years of dithering from our wildlife managers is unjustifiable.”
Changes to federal land management was supposed to significantly cut habitat loss resulting from timber harvesting, Wheeler said, but that was undercut by the migration of the invasive barred owl into the northern spotted owl's habitat.
“The barred owl came and really kicked the northern spotted owl when it was down,” Wheeler said, resulting in the owl being functionally extinct in British Columbia and nearly extinct in Washington.
At this point, Wheeler said, “We're going to need massive intervention to save the owl.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was unavailable for comment by publication time.