Obama administration proposes dropping 'critical habitat' protections for threatened marbled murrelets

Obama administration proposes dropping 'critical habitat' protections for threatened marbled murrelets

By Scott Learn, The Oregonian 
on October 24, 2012 at 5:19 PM, updated October 24, 2012 at 7:53 PM

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The Associated Press

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to drop all 3.9 million acres of "critical habitat" for the marbled murrelet, a tiny, threatened seabird that nests in coastal forest in Oregon, California and Washington. 

Its proposal would partially settle a federal lawsuit brought by the American Forest Resource Council, southwestern Oregon's Douglas County and theCarpenters Industrial Council, who say the service inappropriately set aside habitat for the bird in 1996. 

The service says continuing coverage under the Endangered Species Act and the Clinton-era Northwest Forest Plan will protect the bird until the service's budget allows it to set a new habitat designation in 2018. 

But the proposed consent order, which the service frames as a compromise, has infuriated environmental activists, who point to declining West Coast murrelet numbers in recent years. 

Among other objections, they say removing the designation will reduce protection for marbled murrelets on at least a million acres of "unoccupied" forest -- land where the murrelet doesn't nest currently that could provide prime habitat for the bird. 

In a letter to President Obama Tuesday, the Audubon Society of Portland, theCenter for Biological Diversity and 19 other conservation groups said the "entirely voluntary" consent order comes as the lawsuit is still in its early stages. 

"It is extraordinary that the Service has simply given up," they wrote. 

Dropping critical habitat protection would limit the bird's prospects, the groups said, particularly on Bureau of Land Management forestland in western Oregon, where proposals to increase logging and related county revenues have gained momentum of late. 

Marbled murrelets, listed as threatened under the ESA in 1992, are robin-sized seabirds that forage in the ocean but nest in mature or old growth forests. 

West Coast populations of have declined because of logging, the groups say. A 2009 status review estimated that the population dropped to 18,000 birds in 2008, a 26 percent drop from 2002. 

Service officials declined to comment Wednesday, citing the ongoing litigation. In lawsuit filings, they said previous court rulings made it clear that the 1996 habitat designation is flawed. 

Most of the critical habitat is on federal land and is included under the Northwest Forest Plan as "late successional reserves," Gary Frazer, the service's assistant director for endangered species, said in an affidavit to the court. 

Birds in those areas will be protected from threats, Frazer said, including "major human impacts such as tree cutting." Removing the habitat designation "will not result in significant harm to the murrelet," he said. 

In other cases, courts have generally left habitat protections in place while errors are fixed, the conservation groups said. 

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates in Washington, D.C., must sign off on the consent agreement for it to take effect. The conservation groups want the Obama Administration to drop the agreement before a decision is handed down. 

-- Scott Learn; Twitter: @slearn1