Smaller habitat for threatened bird proposed

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday proposed trimming the amount of coastal forest lands designated critical habitat for the marbled murrelet, a threatened species of sea bird that nests in old-growth timber.

Fish and Wildlife said the 254,000 acres that would be removed from the 1996 critical-habitat designation of 3.9 million acres represents a new focus on trying to protect forests most likely to be used by the birds for nesting.

Conservation groups complained that the agency was making it easier to log old-growth timber in the central Coast Range of Oregon, where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has been working on plans to greatly increase timber harvests, and ignoring opportunities to add more critical habitat to improve the bird's chances.

The areas to be removed include lands in Northern California and Southern Oregon, where surveys have not turned up any nesting birds, and parts of Lane and Douglas counties that birds still use, but are more than 35 miles inland, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Joan Jewett.

Based on the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the timber industry, Fish and Wildlife had agreed to take a new look at the critical-habitat designation, which is required by the Endangered Species Act.

Whenever a timber sale is planned in critical habitat on federal land, Fish and Wildlife must be consulted to be sure it will not harm the protected species. Some timber sales on national forests have been stopped when judges found the agency acted improperly allowing logging to go forward.