Feds give more time for owl recovery plan comments

Federal biologists are giving the public another month to say what they think about a new approach to saving the northern spotted owl from extinction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday extended the deadline for comments on its draft spotted owl recovery plan to Dec. 15.

The owl's need for old growth forests has long put it at the center of legal and political battles over logging in the Northwest.

The timber industry and members of Congress asked for an even longer extension. They said the draft proposed significant changes to the 2008 plan, including a consideration for the first time of private lands in saving the owl from extinction.

"What's the rush," Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said in a statement. "It's as if they are trying to hide fatal flaws in the plan."

The timber industry and conservation groups both said they wanted to see details about a system of habitat reserves that would be created to protect owl habitat.

"It's unclear whether they will actually have reserves for the owl, or something similar to what was rejected previously by scientific peer review," said Dominic DellaSala, president of the Geos Institute, a conservation group. "Right now we're still waiting for what's behind the curtain."

Paul Hansen, Oregon state director of Fish and Wildlife, said habitat reserves will be addressed in the next phase - designating critical habitat. For that reason a 30-day extension was deemed appropriate.

The Obama administration voluntarily asked a federal court last year to send back the 2008 recovery and habitat plans, after it determined both were "legally erroneous." Lawyers for the Department of Interior made the request after reviewing records, including an inspector general's report finding potential political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald.

The spotted owl was declared a threatened species in 1990 primarily because of heavy logging in old growth forests. Lawsuits from conservation groups led to a reduction of more than 80 percent in logging on federal lands, causing economic pain in many logging towns.

The Bush administration agreed to produce a new spotted owl recovery plan and review the critical habitat designation plan under terms of the settlement of a lawsuit brought by the timber industry.

Conservation groups, including the Seattle Audubon Society, Oregon Wild and others, sued last year to undo the plan, arguing that U.S. Fish and Wildlife ignored the best available science and was influenced by the Bush administration.