| | |  Editorials | Environmental 
Group: Feds Fail to Protect Mexican Spotted Owl
 Susan Montoya Bryan - Associated Press
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June 25, 2010
Albuquerque, N.M. — An environmental group is suing the U.S. Forest Service, claiming the agency has violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to uphold protections won more than a decade ago for the Mexican spotted owl in the Southwest.
WildEarth Guardian's lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in Tucson, Ariz., asks the court to keep the Forest Service from approving or implementing any permits or projects on national forests in Arizona and New Mexico that would negatively impact the owl until the agency prepares a biological assessment and consults with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The group claims the federal government has ignored its responsibility to track the owl's numbers throughout the two states and that the Forest Service continues to approve logging, grazing and other activities on the region's 11 forests that could potentially harm the bird.
"They aren't managing the way they said they would, and we need to know that the owl is doing OK," said Bryan Bird, the director of WildEarth Guardians' wild places program.
Forest Service spokeswoman Cathie Schmidlin said Thursday the agency's Southwest regional office had not seen the lawsuit so she would not be able to comment.
The Mexican spotted owl was first listed as a threatened species in 1993. More than 8 million acres in four Western states — Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado — have been set aside by the Fish and Wildlife Service as critical habitat for the bird.
Most of the owls are found on national forest lands, from steep wooded canyons to dense forests.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has said the biggest threat to the bird is destruction and modification of its nesting habitat.
Bird said environmentalists are concerned about the owl, which he described as a key species for Southwest forests. He pointed to the most recent studies by federal biologists that show the owl's numbers have not increased since being listed nearly 20 years ago. In New Mexico, biologists estimate the population is declining about 6 percent annually.
The lawsuit contends the Forest Service is planning, authorizing and implementing projects that are inconsistent with guidelines and standards established over the years to protect the owl. The lawsuit cites a fuel reduction project in the Lincoln National Forest in southern New Mexico, a restoration project on the Coronado National Forest in Arizona that calls for timber harvesting and grazing on an allotment in Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest where monitoring of owl populations has allegedly not been done.
The lawsuit also contends that the agency hasn't consulted as required with the Fish and Wildlife Service. |
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