The Biden administration is proposing to restore protections for millions of forests home to the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, the latest reversal of environmental protections undone by the Trump administration.
In a Federal Register notice Tuesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined there was “insufficient rationale and justification” behind the Trump-era removal of protections. The affected 3.4 million acres stretched across nearly 45 counties in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.
The agency said it would instead curtail protections on about 200,000 acres in Oregon, following up on a 2020 proposal.
The environmental group Oregon Wild said that while the reversal was necessary, it was shy of the action needed to protect the species.
“We’re not going to get any new critical habitat out of this,” Steve Pedery, the group’s conservation director, told The Washington Post. “This is great, it absolutely needs to happen, but it’s not, in and of itself, going to recover spotted owls or protect salmon.”
Meanwhile, the timber industry has argued expanding protected forests prevents controlled forest management, which is often used as preventative measure against forest fires, the number one threat to the owl.
“We’re very concerned,” Lawson Fite, the general counsel for the American Forest Resource Council, told the Post. “I think it reflects potentially an elevation of politics over science and law.”
The announcement comes days after the administration announced it would both restore and expand protections for Tongass National Forest in Alaska, halting large-scale sales of wood harvested from the forest’s old-growth trees.
“This approach will help us chart the path to long-term economic opportunities that are sustainable and reflect Southeast Alaska’s rich cultural heritage and magnificent natural resources,” Agriculture Tom Vilsack
Tom VilsackUSDA: Farm-to-school programs help schools serve healthier meals OVERNIGHT MONEY: House poised to pass debt-ceiling bill MORE said in a statement last week. Environmentalists had long warned the forest was a major so-called carbon sink and that increased logging there could have drastic implications for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
