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Feds to consider endangered species listing for spotted owl

The Columbian
Published: April 8, 2015, 5:00pm

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — 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, Calif., 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.

Tree-cutting on federal lands in Oregon, Washington and Northern California fell by 90 percent in the 1990s.

Paul Henson, supervisor for Fish and Wildlife in Oregon, says much has changed since the owl’s original listing. In 1990, the biggest threat was loss of old-growth forests where spotted owls live, and now it is the invasive barred owl. Those two threats will be the focus of the review, he said.

The number of spotted owls is estimated at less than 4,000.

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