Endangered & Protected Species

 

Trump Opens Habitat Of A Threatened Owl To Timber Harvesting . According to The New York Times, “The Trump administration on Wednesday removed more than 3 million acres of Pacific Northwest land from the protected habitat of the northern spotted owl, 15 times the amount it had previously proposed opening to the timber industry. The plan, issued by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, grew out of a legal settlement with a lumber association that had sued the government in 2013 over 9.5 million acres that the agency designated as essential to the survival of the northern spotted owl. The federal protections restricted much of the land from timber harvesting, which companies claimed would lead to calamitous economic losses. But rather than trim about 200,000 acres of critical habitat in Oregon, as the agency initially proposed in August, the new plan will eliminate protections from 3.4 million acres across Washington, California and Oregon. What is left will mostly be land that is protected for reasons beyond the spotted owl. ‘These common-sense revisions ensure we are continuing to recover the northern spotted owl while being a good neighbor to rural communities within the critical habitat,’ Aurelia Skipwith, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement.” [The New York Times, 1/13/21 (=)]

 

Trump Administration Slashes Imperiled Spotted Owls’ Habitat. According to Associated Press, “The Trump administration said Wednesday that it would slash millions of acres of protected habitat designated for the imperiled northern spotted owl in Oregon, Washington state and Northern California, much of it in prime timber locations in Oregon’s coastal ranges. Environmentalists immediately decried the move and accused the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under President Donald Trump of taking a parting shot at protections designed to help restore the species in favor of the timber industry. The tiny owl is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act and was rejected for an upgrade to endangered status last year by the federal agency despite losing nearly 4% of its population annually. ‘This revision guts protected habitat for the northern spotted owl by more than a third. It’s Trump’s latest parting gift to the timber industry and another blow to a species that needs all the protections it can get to fully recover,’ said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity.” [Associated Press, 1/13/21 (=)]

 

Interior Finalizes Revisions To Obama's Sage Grouse Plans. According to E&E News, “The Trump administration will go out insisting that its controversial revised greater sage grouse protection plans were done correctly and should be implemented, even as a federal judge’s order blocking the Bureau of Land Management from doing so remains in place. The latest is a series of records of decision (RODs) the bureau will publish tomorrow in the Federal Register that, while not new planning documents, attempt to set in stone the Interior Department’s position that the 2019 revisions to Obama-era sage grouse protection plans should be implemented without any changes. The six RODs — covering the seven states affected by the revisions — conclude a more than yearlong effort by BLM to convince Judge B. Lynn Winmill in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho to lift his preliminary injunction blocking the bureau from implementing the revisions (Greenwire, Oct. 17, 2019). They also finalize supplements to six environmental impact statements used to justify the revisions. The supplemental EISs addressed some of the problems Winmill noted in issuing his injunction, mainly oversights of National Environmental Policy Act mandates (Greenwire, Nov. 19, 2020). But Winmill’s preliminary injunction order remains in place.” [E&E News, 1/13/21 (=)]

 

Republicans Revive Bill To Keep Gray Wolves Off ESA List. According to E&E News, “A long-running political fray over the gray wolf now has a new combatant, with a House freshman’s introduction of a bill to deny the animal Endangered Species Act protections. The bill introduced Tuesday, H.R. 286, is the first authored by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), but the measure is only the latest in the multiyear dispute that’s played out in courts, Congress and executive branch agencies. The legislation would ‘exclude the gray wolf from the authority’ of the ESA as well as ‘remove the gray wolf from the lists of threatened species and endangered species.’ In March 2019, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed delisting the species, first identified as endangered decades ago, after concluding that the population in the Lower 48 states had rebounded. The wolf’s population now numbers an estimated 6,000 animals in the continental United States. The delisting was made final last October and then took effect on Jan. 4. ‘This final rule puts the process of managing the gray wolf back where it belongs, in the capable hands of individual states,’ said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.).” [E&E News, 1/14/21 (=)]

 

Settlement Agreement Says State Must Protect Endangered Species From Polluted Runoff. According to KNKX-Radio, “Endangered species in Washington will get a much-needed boost following the settlement of a major lawsuit about runoff and water quality. The case is about what’s known as non-point water pollution. This is mostly runoff that comes typically from farms and cities when it rains. Nitrogen from fertilizers or oily remnants from fossil fuel-burning engines are carried into streams and major waterbodies. Leaky septic systems are another problem. The pollution also includes logging practices that cause water to warm up, when shorelines and streambeds are denuded. Unlike point-source pollution, this is not permitted – there is no one party to point to at the end of an exhaust pipe to hold responsible. Instead, it must be dealt with collectively. All of this ‘non-point pollution’ hurts salmon and orcas, endangered species that continue to struggle, despite decades of restoration work funded by local and federal governments.” [KNKX-Radio, 1/13/21 (=)]

 

Wildlife Corridors

 

AP | New Mexico Land Purchase To Aid With Wildlife Protection. According to KRQE-TV, “The acquisition of nearly 1,200 acres (nearly 5 square kilometers) of private land near the New Mexico-Colorado border will go a long way to protect a migration corridor for elk and other animals, officials with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation said. The transfer was completed in recent weeks following three years of negotiations with land owners, the foundation, and the Bureau of Land Management. ‘It will permanently conserve the 1,200 acres of land for future generations,’ said Ryan Chapin, the Lands Operation Manager with RMFE. ‘So, any New Mexican will be able to go and visit this property, recreate, hunt and just be on this landscape.’ Recovered Midwestern bird soars off endangered species list The federal agency paid about $900,000 for four private in-holdings located within the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument near Taos. Money from the Land and Water Conservation Fund financed the effort. ‘This is a crucial swath of land and a key migration corridor for approximately 10,000 elk that move back and forth between New Mexico and Colorado,’ Kyle Weaver, the foundation’s president and CEO, said in a statement.” [KRQE-TV, 1/14/21 (=)]

 

Conservation Groups Blast Feds' Attack On Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. According to Public News Service, “In the last week of the Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is proposing big changes to a 2016 plan that took eight years to hammer out; a plan that had set aside millions of acres for conservation and recreation, as well as renewable energy. The BLM is now proposing to allow activities like energy development, mining and grazing on more than one million additional acres. Jeff Aardahl, California representative for the group Defenders of Wildlife, said habitat protections in the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan are crucial to stopping the desert tortoise’s slide toward extinction. ‘The desert tortoise in California is in bad shape; its populations are crashing,’ Aardahl explained. ‘So reducing those areas would be another blow to its potential for recovery.’ The BLM also proposes slashing about four million acres from the plan that are currently designated as areas of critical environmental concern or California Desert National Conservation Lands.” [Public News Service, 1/13/21 (+)]

 

 

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