U.S. wildlife officials say political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl.
The Associated Press
Officials said in documents provided to AP that Bernhardt and Skipwith underestimated the threat of extinction and relied on a “faulty interpretation of the science” to reach their decision. “Any future Secretary can weigh the benefit factors differently, but they can not change the law or the legal standard,” Bernhardt wrote, adding his January rule was “consistent with the existing law.”
Federal habitat protections imposed in 2012 were meant to avert the bird's extinction, but have been blamed for a slowdown in logging that's devastated some rural communities. Logging those lands might not have killed off the owls immediately — they live up to 20 years on territories that can stretch across 10,000 acres per owl — yet eventually they would have gone extinct, said Paul Henson, the wildlife service's Oregon supervisor.“You can’t remove over a third of an endangered species’ habitat and not expect it to go extinct,” Henson said in an interview. “There wasn't much disagreement about the science.
The logging industry says the larger, non-native barred owl is a much greater threat than logging. Skipwith echoed that contention when she said the most effective way to preserve spotted owls was to control barred owl numbers. Study authors cautioned that the results show habitat protections are also critical to the spotted owl's survival.
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