Environmentalists say feds trying to weaken spotted-owl forest plan

A proposed plan released today for restoring the endangered northern spotted owl to health has triggered renewed charges from environmentalists that the Bush administration is again trying to undermine protection of the region's old-growth forests.

The draft recovery plan contemplates two options for reviving the owl's population. One would rely on designated protected areas that would be off-limits to activities such as clear-cutting, mirroring rules that have already existed since the Clinton administration's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

But a second option wouldn't draw boundaries, instead leaving it up to federal land managers to do it. And that drew loud objections from environmentalists who charged the administration was trying to weaken the Forest Plan.

Dominick DellaSalla, a member of the team that advised the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the plan, described the result as "beltway interference" from people in Washington, D.C., and "manipulation of the recovery plan." DellaSalla is on the staff of the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the second option was conceived in response to meetings with a committee of high-level officials in Washington, D.C., but was meant to offer flexibility to respond to changing forest conditions.

"We really need a recovery plan that is dynamic, that can change," said Ren Lohoefener, director of the service's Pacific region.

A timber-industry group is endorsing the idea of giving land managers more leeway to respond to emerging threats such as climate change and competing species such as barred owls.

"We believe the recovery plan must provide land managers with the flexibility to adapt as habitat conditions change across the landscape," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council.

In addition to habitat protections, the recovery plan also calls for more aggressive efforts to prevent incursions of the larger barred owls into spotted-owl habitat. That could include expanded test programs in which barred owls are shot.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com