Conservation groups in the Pacific Northwest filed a legal challenge recently to reinstate federal protections on more than 3.4 million acres of federal old-growth forests, which are essential for the survival of the threatened northern spotted owl. The lawsuit asks the court to reject a rule issued in the last days of the Trump administration that eliminated one-third of the critical habitat protections for the species.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protected the northern spotted owl, a bird found only in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. In 2012, approximately 9.6 million acres of habitat necessary for the owlâs survival and recovery were protected on federally managed public lands in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
Lawsuit Seeks to Reinstate Protections on 3 4 Million Acres of Critical Northern Spotted Owl Habitat biologicaldiversity.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from biologicaldiversity.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Holiday Farm Fire has been mostly contained since October, but the Bureau of Land Management is now proposing salvage harvesting, a controversial forest management practice where trees affected by natural disaster are logged.
The BLM is proposing more than 1,500 acres in salvage timber sales on the McKenzie watershed and could bypass environmental assessments because the Trump administration has expanded the use of categorical exclusions, which allow federal agencies to move faster on salvage harvesting. But the BLM says environmental impacts are still considered in this rule and selling affected trees would mean fewer living trees cut down this year.