Scientists reject new spotted owl plan

GRANTS PASS, Ore.--The Bush administration's latest plan for saving the
northern spotted owl from extinction while allowing a boost in old growth logging
was better, but still not good enough, according to three leading professional
organizations of wildlife scientists.

The Wildlife Society, the Society for Conservation Biology and the American
Ornithologists Union said in independent peer reviews released Monday that
the final plan adopted in May was better than the draft they flunked a year
ago, but there was still no scientific basis for allowing more logging of
the old growth forests where the threatened bird lives.

"Given that the northern spotted owl has been experiencing about a 4 percent
annual rate of population decline for the last 15 years, any reductions from
current levels of habitat protection cannot be justified," the joint review
by the Society for Conservation Biology and American Ornithologists Union
said.

The reviews estimated the recovery plan still allows for destruction of 20
percent to 56 percent of the spotted owl habitat currently protected.

The spotted owl was declared a threatened species in 1990 due primarily to
heavy logging in the old growth forests where it nests and feeds in
Washington, Oregon and Northern California. Lawsuits from conservation
groups led to a reduction of more than 80 percent in logging on federal
lands.

Working with the timber industry under a lawsuit settlement, the Bush
administration has been trying to increase logging levels, but has
repeatedly been stymied by court rulings.

The owl recovery plan produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is a
key underpinning of plans by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to ramp up
logging in Western Oregon old growth forests, a source of revenue for rural
counties.

Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Joan Jewett acknowledged the service had seen
the reviews, but remained confident that its recovery plan would bring the
owl back to healthy numbers over the next 30 years.

"They are sort of rushing to this assumption of if it hasn't been identified
as an owl conservation area, it isn't going to be providing any habitat area
to the owls, and that simply is not true," she said from Portland.

She added that Fish and Wildlife had worked with BLM and the U.S. Forest
Service to protect high-quality owl habitat outside the areas that are
off-limits to logging. Taking also into consideration conservation efforts
on private and state lands, "we feel like we have a pretty solid broad
network of habitat to work with for the recovery of the owl," she said.

That is the problem, said Dominick DellaSala, a member of the original team
of scientists who worked on the recovery plan and executive director of the
National Center for Conservation Science and Policy in Ashland.

The owl recovery plan gives BLM and the Forest Service too much latitude to
log in owl habitat -- a lack of regulatory control identified as one of the
reasons for listing the owl as a threatened species in the first place, he
said.

Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, the timber
industry group that brought the lawsuit that kicked off the owl recovery
plan, said logging is necessary to thin out owl habitat that is being lost
at an alarming rate to wildfire.

A new threat from the barred owl, a native of the eastern United States that
has pushed spotted owls out of their territory, has led to arguments from
the timber industry that it is no longer necessary to protect so much old
growth if there are no spotted owls living in it.

The Wildlife Society warned that going ahead with this recovery plan would
dismantle the Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994 to protect national
forest habitat for the owl, salmon, and other species, and would likely lead
to a "nightmare" scenario of more species going on the endangered species
list and Fish and Wildlife losing its credibility.

The Society for Conservation Biology and American Ornithologists Union said
the latest recovery plan was an improvement over the last effort, but was
still inadequate for restoring healthy spotted owl populations because it
would allow the loss of more habitat to logging.

After the draft plan was flunked a year ago, Fish and Wildlife redrafted it,
reducing the emphasis on threats from the barred owl and providing for more
habitat protection.