Feds to consider endangered species listing for spotted owl
Source: AP-Excite
By JEFF BARNARD
GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Federal biologists will consider increasing Endangered Species Act protections for the northern spotted owl, reflecting the bird's continued slide toward extinction despite steep logging cutbacks in the Northwest forests where it lives.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that there is enough new scientific information in a conservation group's petition to warrant a hard look at changing the owl's listing from threatened to endangered, which will take about two years. A notice will be published Friday in the Federal Register.
While the change would be largely symbolic, the Environmental Protection Information Center in Arcata, California, said it hoped the listing would push federal agencies to more aggressively protect old-growth forest habitat and reduce the threat from the barred owl, an aggressive cousin that migrated across the Great Plans and forced spotted owls out of their territory.
After the northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990, it became a symbol for Endangered Species Act protections that harm local economies. Conservation groups won court-ordered logging cutbacks to protect owl habitat, and many Northwest towns relying on the timber industry have yet to fully recover.
FULL story at link.
FILE - A northern spotted owl named Obsidian by U.S. Forest Service employees, sits in a tree in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, Ore., in this May 8, 2003 file photo. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has agreed to consider a petition from a conservation group to change the Endangered Species Act listing for the owl from threatened to endangered. The process will take more than two years. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, file)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150408/us--spotted_owl_protections-9d974fcae2.html
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