The Obama administration today announced it will consider designating up to 10 million acres of critical habitat for the federally threatened spotted owl, which could nearly double the George W. Bush-era plan.

In addition, President Obama instructed the Interior Department to streamline its approach to designating critical habitats for all species by taking an earlier look at economic impacts.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the spotted owl plan comes as the bird faces serious threats from past old-growth logging and increased competition from the barred owl. The proposal would allow federal managers to kill or remove barred owls from certain areas.

Interior will continue encouraging ecologically sustainable logging that will gird forests against pests and severe wildfires, which also threaten owls, it said.

"The choice of clearcut versus no cut is a false choice," Salazar said.

The plan announced today does not propose specific habitat but identifies areas that may be considered for a final designation due in November. It could almost double the Fish and Wildlife Service's last critical habitat plan in 2008, which proposed 5.3 million acres, all on federal lands. Interior said timber harvests "consistent with ecological forestry principles" would still be allowed in any final critical habitat, which it said was a major change from previous designations.

Today's proposal also emphasizes the benefits of excluding private lands, Salazar said.

"It reflects the tremendous work by our scientists and biologists," said Salazar, citing the Bush-era plan for the spotted owl that the inspector general's office found to be tainted by political meddling (Greenwire, Dec. 16, 2008).

"It will allow us to do more work in the woods," he said. "It means sustainable timber jobs."

Today's announcement meets a deadline set by a federal district and comes more than two years after the Obama administration asked the court to let it revise the 2008 critical habitat plan.

In addition, FWS announced a draft plan involving lethal and nonlethal steps to remove barred owls from certain areas, as identified in the agency's 2011 revised recovery plan (Land Letter, July 7, 2011).

Northern spotted owl numbers have declined nearly 3 percent annually, leading to an estimated 40 percent decline in numbers over the last quarter-century, Interior said.

FWS Director Dan Ashe said the agency's environmental impact statement will explore experimental control techniques to be employed for the next three to 10 years. The agency will evaluate whether capturing and relocating some barred owls while shooting others helps stabilize the spotted owl population. The scale of the management would be unprecedented, Ashe said.

The agency will be accepting public comments for the next three months on both the proposed critical habitat and barred owl draft EIS as soon as they are published in the Federal Register.

Ashe, too, said the agency will encourage sustainable timber cutting, a strategy Salazar laid out during a visit to Oregon last week in which he announced five new timber sales would occur over the course of the year (E&ENews PM, Feb. 21).

"Unmanaged, fire-prone forests aren't healthy for the landscape or the spotted owl," Ashe said.

Lastly, Obama today issued a presidential memorandum instructing Interior to provide clear guidelines on how timber harvests may proceed in the spotted owl habitat and to reform the way it proposes future designations.

On the critical habitat designation itself, Obama said Interior must within three months conduct an analysis of economic impacts; consider excluding private and state lands; develop clear direction for evaluating logging activity in areas of critical habitat; consider public comments on science and economics; consider providing maximum exclusion from the final designation; and adopt the least burdensome means of promoting compliance with the law.

Ashe said the agency has already excluded some 4 million acres of state, private and federal lands from habitat consideration that are already managed with a conservation focus. About 10 million acres is still eligible, he said.

The president also directed the crafting of a new rule for all critical habitats requiring that an economic analysis be completed for public comment at the time of publication of a proposed habitat rule.

"Uncertainty on the part of the public may be avoided, and public comment improved, by simultaneous presentation of the best scientific data available and the analysis of economic and other impacts," the president's memorandum said.

Reaction

The American Bird Conservancy today said the potential to expand critical habitat for the spotted owl is a milestone in the conservation of a critical species.

"The increase in the amount of old-growth forest designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl is a triumph of sound science," said Steve Holmer, senior policy adviser at the conservancy. "Protecting the owl's old-growth forest habitat will also help communities and the nation by preserving a world-class tourism destination, a sustainable recreation economy and a source of clean drinking water for millions of people."

But he added that conservationists are concerned that some habitat will carry less protection.

"The service's plan to weaken forest protections east of the Cascade Mountains could open the door to extensive logging in owl habitat before we know whether it is beneficial," Holmer said. "We'd like to see research on small-scale thinning projects before the whole landscape is subjected to these treatments."

Interior last week also announced that the Bureau of Land Management will revise a handful of land management plans in western Oregon covering about 2.5 million acres.

But the American Forest Resource Council said the revisions announced today continue to ignore the threats of barred owls and catastrophic wildfire on spotted owl populations. Today's plan is guided by faulty science, it claimed.

"Habitat is not the current limiting factor for the northern spotted owl, nor is historic loss of old growth," said Tom Partin, president of the council. "In fact, the amount of old growth on our federal forests is increasing while the spotted owl's numbers are decreasing."

FWS is proposing critical habitat on hundreds of thousands of forested acres already overtaken by the barred owl, he said. The plan would nearly double the agency's previous critical habitat proposal if none of the 10 million acres is excluded, he warned.

Click here to read a timeline of past, present and future actions on the northern spotted owl.