New ruling by Biden administration blocks Trump-era proposal to cut 3.4 million-acres of protected birdland
Looking good: Spotted owls got a reprieve this week. Photo by Alan Schmierer/CC
By Jordan Rane, July 28, 2021. If there’s such a thing as symbolically flipping the bird to a symbolic bird, the outgoing Trump administration perfected that gesture in January.
Five days before leaving office the administration called for stripping nearly 3.5 million acres of critical habitat protection for the northern spotted owl. That’s roughly more than a third of the vanishing raptor’s critical nesting grounds, spread across 45 counties-worth of federal timberlands and coastal ranges in Washington, Oregon and California.
Conservationists called the last-minute decree—suddenly upped from about 200,000 acres that had been on the table—“indefensible,” “ridiculous,” “biologically invalid” and, more optimistically, “just one of a bunch of regulatory land mines that would never hold up but will take time for the Biden administration to clear up.”
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Last week, the Biden administration got around to the matter, proposing the reversal of the decision and restoration of over 3 million acres of habitat protections for the iconic spotted owl.
The bird has been an emblem of habitat and old growth forest protection across the Pacific Northwest since receiving vast protections during the Clinton administration.
Good, not great
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently estimated the spotted owl has already lost about 70% of its natural habitat and could go extinct.
Good, Joe. Photo by Larry Jordan/Flickr
In December 2020, it determined the bird should be upgraded from “threatened” to “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act, while holding off on making the change due to what it called staffing and resource constraints.
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In a 57-page Federal Register notice last week, and in a rare self-rebuke, the USFWS proposed to withdraw its January 15 ruling, concluding there was “insufficient rationale and justification” for January’s removal of the owl’s habitat protections. The notice also stated that the agency’s own decision in the matter had “defects and shortcomings” and was “premised on inaccurate assumptions.”
Environmental groups are relieved if not entirely ebullient about the reversal, which still leaves an original agency proposal from last year in effect to cut back protections on 204,797 acres of spotted owl habitat in Oregon.
“It’s like worrying that your bank account was overdrawn by $3.4 million, then being happy it is only $200,000,” Steve Pedery of Oregon Wild told The Hill. “If the administration is going to meet its climate goals, and protect rare species like the owl, it needs to go much further in protecting ancient forests on public lands.”
Columbia Insight contributing editor Jordan Rane is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in CNN.com, Outside, Men’s Journal and the Los Angeles Times.
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