Lawsuit challenges massive spotted owl 'habitat'

Mexican Spotted Owl

The U.S. government broke the law when it designated more than eight million acres in the western United States as "critical habitat" for the Mexican spotted owl, charges a lawsuit filed today by Pacific Legal Foundation.

"The critical habitat designation for the Mexican spotted owl runs afoul of the law in a number of ways," claimed Pacific Legal attorney Damien Schiff. "Some of the areas that have been set aside by the regulators clearly don't have physical and biological features that are essential for the owl's conservation. Other areas are described in such vague terms that it's anyone's guess whether it's necessary to take them out of public use."

In addition, said Schiff, "the regulators ignored their legal duty to consider and factor in the economic impact of the designation."

The suit is being filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association, which claims the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for the August 2004 habitat designation, failed to abide by requirements of the Endangered Species Act in designating more than eight million acres in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as federally protected spotted owl habitat.

Back in 1990, as WND has reported, the designation of the northern spotted owl as a threatened species resulted in the closure of 187 mills throughout Oregon, Washington and California and the loss of 22,654 jobs. Over the next decade, the public timber harvest in the region plummeted by at least 80 percent, devastating Oregon's largely timber-based economy.

Today's lawsuit is being filed in an attempt to stave off a similar fate. "Shutting off these millions of acres will have substantial negative effects on many private citizens who make a living through cattle grazing and oil and gas appropriation," said Schiff.

Many members of the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association, said Schiff, "hold grazing permits and leases authorizing livestock grazing on national forest lands included within the owl's critical habitat. This habitat designation will hurt them because it could mean an end, or severe curtailment, to their grazing permits on public lands." According to Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act, a federal agency may not issue a grazing permit if the permitted activity will adversely modify terrain that has been designated as a species' critical habitat.

"It is important to note that this lawsuit is not about removing protections for the Mexican spotted owl," Schiff noted. "Rather, the case is about making sure that federal agencies abide by their statutory obligations so that the rights and economic interests of private citizens are not violated."

In 2004, as WND reported the federal government had seriously underestimated the cost of the Endangered Species Act to American taxpayers and businesses.

"The Fish and Wildlife Service report does not come close to accounting for the costs to taxpayers and to the private sector of complying with the ESA," said Randy T. Simmons of the Property and Environment Research Center. "A more accurate figure for the annual ESA costs would place those costs in billions, not millions, of dollars."

Read lawsuit here.

See map of eight million acres affected in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

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