Plan would reduce land deemed "critical habitat" for spotted owl

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to remove the "critical habitat" designation from 1.5 million acres of Northwest forests now protected for the northern spotted owl, an action that could ease logging restrictions on those lands.

Fish and Wildlife officials insist the new plan reflects improved understanding of the owls' use of federal forests, as well as better mapping and other research. As a result, they say that the owl can be adequately protected with less critical habitat.

Environmentalists say the plan would renew old conflicts over logging on federal land.

"This could set up a train wreck that the next administration is going to inherit," said Dominick DellaSala, director of the National Center for Conservation and Policy and a member of the spotted-owl recovery team.

The owl, long a symbol of the decline of the timber industry, was declared a threatened species in 1990. Some 6.9 million acres were designated as critical habitat.

Researchers over the past decade have noted that while old-growth forests have increased, owl numbers have continued to decline, and that the owl faces a major threat from a cousin, the barred owl, that has been invading its territory.

In Washington, the new plan would mean the loss of about 400,000 acres of Washington federal lands from the special designation. The cuts would include all the federal forests on Fort Lewis, — which has no nesting owls — and some land in southwest Washington, northwest Washington, the Olympic Peninsula and along the eastern flanks of the Cascades.

The biggest reductions — about 1.2 million acres — would be in Oregon, where the Bureau of Land Management is proposing to increase logging.

Since taking office in 2000, the Bush administration has been working to boost timber production in the Northwest, but it has been largely stymied by court rulings.

The proposal is the result of a new draft recovery plan that designates areas critical to the owl's recovery and calls for killing some barred owls.

"This is not an effort to get out the [timber] cut," said Joan Jewett, a Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman in Portland. "This is an effort to identify where forest areas are most important to the conservation and recovery of the spotted owl."

Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, said the group believes the critical-habitat areas should be even smaller. "The greatest threat is the barred owl, not the loss of mature forest habitat."