FreeLists / tn-bird / [TN-Bird] Bush administration moves to end protection for Marbled Murrelet

["Mann, Jon" <JMann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sad news for an endangered population - but hey, there are still plenty in 
Canada, right?
Going against a recommendation from its own scientists, the Bush administration 
took another step toward removing the marbled murrelet from the threatened 
species list, which could ultimately increase logging in old growth forests.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided Wednesday that marbled murrelets in 
Washington, Oregon and California, though they continue to decline in 
population, should not be considered for protection apart from their more 
abundant cousins in Canada and Alaska. 
The marbled murrelet is a robin-sized seabird that spends most of its life at 
sea, but flies as much as 50 miles inland to lay a single egg in a mossy 
depression on a large branch of an old-growth conifer. The habitat needs of the 
murrelet, combined with the northern spotted owl and salmon, resulted in sharp 
declines in Northwest logging in the past 10 years, particularly on national 
forests that provide 90 percent of the murrelet's habitat.
        
Endangered Species Act protection remains in place for the bird on the West 
Coast, but Fish and Wildlife will review its status across its entire range in 
the lower 48, British Columbia and Alaska -- a process that could take a year. 
Depending on what the review finds, Fish and Wildlife could recommend the 
murrelet be taken off the threatened species list, a process that would take 
another year.

The decision came from the office of Assistant Secretary of Interior Craig 
Manson, the Bush administration's point man on the Endangered Species Act. It 
went against the recommendation from the Northwest regional office of Fish and 
Wildlife in Portland, which felt the birds in Washington, Oregon and Northern 
California constitute a distinct population worthy of protection.

The action was prompted by a lawsuit brought by the timber industry demanding a 
review of the threatened species listings for the marbled murrelet and the 
northern spotted owl, which prompted sharp cutbacks in logging to protect their 
old growth forest habitats.

"The real question from our perspective is a status review now needs to look at 
not only the California, Oregon, and Washington population, but the population 
as it goes up the coast into Canada and Alaska," said Chris West, vice 
president of the American Forest Resources Council, which brought the lawsuit.

"Down the road if it's determined this isn't a species that needs to be on the 
list, there may be more opportunities to manage the land. The range of the 
marbled murrelet overlaps significantly with the spotted owl and many of our 
coastal salmon runs."

The Endangered Species Act offers protection to a species as a whole as well as 
what is called a distinct population segment, but does not define what that is. 
Fish and Wildlife adopted a policy in 1996 saying a distinct population segment 
must be discrete and significant to warrant protection apart from the whole.

Environmentalists were outraged that Interior used a different interpretation 
of the policy to override Fish and Wildlife biologists.

"It's ignoring the biology and playing games with the legal standard to say 
this is no longer a population segment we can list," said Kristin Boyles, a 
lawyer for Earthjustice, an environmental public interest law firm in Seattle.

"This is yet another example of the Bush administration agenda to open up 
Pacific Northwest old growth forests to logging," said Susan Ash of the Audubon 
Society of Portland.

Specifically, the Pacific region office found that the Northwest birds were 
distinct from their cousins in Canada and Alaska. Losing them would wipe out a 
significant portion of the gene pool, create a gap in 18 percent of their 
range, and threaten the species' longterm viability. Further, it is unclear how 
Canada's new law protecting the murrelet as a threatened species will work out, 
particularly in protecting old growth forests.

Interior changed those conclusions, saying the Northwest population was not 
genetically, physically, behaviorally or ecologically different from Canadian 
birds, and that Canada provided just as good protection for the birds and their 
habitat as the U.S.

"In the end we agreed with the assistant secretary's office that those 
differences are not significant enough," said David Patte, spokesman for Fish 
and Wildlife's Portland office. "It's kind of a policy call. They didn't change 
any of the biology in the report."

The review found that the Washington, Oregon and California murrelets, which 
number about 24,000, suffered a 10 percent decline in population in the past 10 
years, which was comparable to the 30 percent decline in the past 30 years 
reported in British Columbia, where the murrelet numbers about 66,000. Alaska 
claims 860,000 murrelets.




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