Expected Protection of Owl May Sharply Curb Logging

In a potentially wrenching development for West Coast loggers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is ready to reverse itself and declare the northern spotted owl to be threatened with extinction, sources familiar with the decision-making process said.

The decision, scheduled to be presented Monday to a U.S. District Court in Seattle, could sharply limit logging to protect the owl species--and thousands of acres of old-growth forest in which it lives--under the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

The policy reversal contained in the decision also could renew criticism and scrutiny of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which had declined to list the owl in 1987 after an unusual process, which critics in and out of the agency say gave too much weight to economic impact on the timber industry.

The Endangered Species Act specifically prohibits consideration of economic factors when deciding whether to list an animal as threatened or endangered. Such factors may be considered in subsequent plans to save the species.

The decision favoring the owl, now being reviewed at the Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters in Washington, is a victory for conservationists eager to save not only the owl, but its habitat and the many other animals that share it.

But with loggers in Oregon, Northern California and Washington already asserting that a sawlog shortage has closed many mills and cost hundreds of jobs, protection for the owl could face spirited fights both in Congress and during the formal process to add the bird to the list of federally protected species.

At stake are thousands of acres of valuable old-growth timber in forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon, Northern California and Washington.

“Old-growth” is used to designate mature forests, generally with trees at least 200 to 300 years old and other unique attributes. Loggers want to cut down these publicly owned trees because little old growth is left on private land and because its quality wood is highly valued. Conservationists want to preserve old growth because it is rapidly disappearing, is home to birds and animals that may not thrive elsewhere and is exceptionally scenic.

Environmentalists have seized on the 14-inch-tall dappled-brown owl as a way to protect what they call “the ancient forests” from the loggers’ chain saws. GreenWorld, a Massachusetts-based environmental group, asked the Fish and Wildlife Service in October, 1986, to list the owl as endangered.

Special Handling

The petition was forwarded as usual to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional office in Portland, which covers California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho and Hawaii, but agency officials in Washington set up a special decision-making process to deal with the controversial proposal.

The request to protect the owl was controversial because each nesting pair requires from 1,000 to 2,700 acres or more of old-growth forest to hunt for flying squirrels and other prey. If a thousand or more owl pairs eventually are discovered, more than 1 million acres of forest could be put off limits to loggers.

Instead of letting this decision be made in the regional office, as was the routine in the recently decentralized Fish and Wildlife Service, then-Director Frank Dunkle, who instituted the decentralization, ordered that the decision on the spotted owl be made by a specially convened panel of experts in Washington.

After taking what the General Accounting Office later described as an unusually long time to decide whether the owl merited a formal review, the Fish and Wildlife Service took an unusually short time to decide, in December, 1987, that there was not enough scientific evidence to list the owl as threatened or endangered.

Instead, the agency struck a deal with the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service to try to protect spotted owls informally while gathering more data on the species.

Conservationists, represented by the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, were unsatisfied with the decision and sued in federal court in Seattle. Last November, U.S. District Judge Thomas Zilly criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to adequately document why it denied federal protection for the spotted owl. He also ordered the agency to return to his court Monday to provide that documentation.

Outpouring of Research

Ironically, in the 18 months since the Fish and Wildlife Service’s initial ruling, research on the once-obscure owl has poured out of universities and other institutions. The new data presented in this research persuaded agency scientists to reverse their decision and support listing the owl as “threatened.”

Such a designation would not be as restrictive as “endangered,” but it very likely will provoke a backlash from the timber industry. Interim court rulings in favor of the owl--so far 140 Forest Service timber sales have been held up and logging has been banned within 2.1 miles of known owl nests on property under Bureau of Land Management jurisdiction--already have been blamed by the Northwest Forest Resource Council for the loss of 21,000 jobs.

Underscoring the industry’s complaints about a log shortage, two of the industry’s leaders, Weyerhaeuser and Rosboro Lumber, announced last week that each may have to close 400-man mills because of a shortage of timber from federal lands.

The Northwest Forest Resource Council, an industry group, contends that adding the owl to the threatened-species list will eliminate 130,000 jobs, and cost the federal government about $1 billion in timber revenue and deprive logging-dependent local governments of $400 million. The federal government gives local counties a substantial share of the money it makes from selling timber on federal lands.

Conservationists call such estimates wildly exaggerated, saying that the figures would represent twice the number of lumber and wood-processing jobs in Oregon, the nation’s leading lumber state.

Instead, they note that despite the court-ordered protections for some owl habitat, the timber industry has cut record volumes of timber in the Pacific Northwest over the last two years--and has done so with modernized mills that employ 16,800 fewer workers today than in 1978.

‘End of an Era’

“We are running out of the forest that was originally here. Less than 15% of Oregon’s ancient forest is left,” the Oregon Natural Resources Council said in response to recent industry assertions. “We are at the end of an era. Our economy is in transition to greater diversity. . . .”

Rolf L. Wallenstrom, the former Fish and Wildlife Service regional administrator in Portland who signed the decision not to list the owl, agrees that the impact of protecting owls is being overstated by industry.

“We usually find ways (through land exchanges or modified logging activity) to allow 90% of the development that would have occurred anyway,” he said.

“The owl has become a scapegoat,” he added. “Even if we didn’t stop logging old growth because of owls, we would have to do it in 10 years anyhow because there won’t be any old growth left.”

Ironically, it was Wallenstrom who first raised doubts about the integrity of the agency’s study of the owl. He said--and the General Accounting Office later confirmed--that unusual pressure was applied to staff members making the decision, that the whole process was skewed to prevent the owl from being listed and that problems with the review of the spotted owl were indicative of politicization throughout the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Wallenstrom said he made those assertions even though he ultimately agreed with--and signed--the decision not to list the owl. Despite the politicized process, he said, at the time there was not enough supporting evidence.

Wallenstrom, who is leaving the Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday, added that he now believes there is enough evidence to support listing the owl as threatened.

Even before the initial study began, however, Wallenstrom said several top officials in the U.S. Department of the Interior, including then-undersecretary James Cason, called to warn that under no circumstances would the Fish and Wildlife Service be permitted to list the owl because of the impact that such an action would have on the economy of the Pacific Northwest.

The GAO, after investigating charges made about the process, concluded that “other (Portland) personnel also told us that they believed listing the spotted owl was unacceptable to top FWS and Interior officials.”

Cason, now being considered to serve in the U.S. Department of Agriculture as undersecretary in charge of the Forest Service, has denied trying to influence the process.

However, the GAO faulted the process as “beset by many problems.” Besides allegations of interference by upper management, the report found that some “potentially critical” evidence was inadequately studied while other facts were ignored when they did not support the decision not to list the owl.

“These problems raise serious questions about whether FWS maintained its scientific objectivity during the spotted owl petition process,” the GAO concluded.

The GAO, at the urging last December of Congress, is investigating whether “widespread politicalization” is skewing scientific research of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) said she and Rep. Gerry E. Studds (D-Mass.) asked the GAO to investigate the Fish and Wildlife Service’s management practices after hearing about alleged abuses in three high-profile California issues:

- Oil drilling off the Northern California coast. Wallenstrom and other agency employees were punished after issuing a report critical of Reagan Administration plans to open the scenic North Coast to offshore drilling.

- Reclamation of the poisoned Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge. Standard policies for dealing with contaminated wetlands--this area was tainted by selenium-fouled agriculture runoff--allegedly were ignored to accommodate growers in the area.

- Water rights in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Fish and Wildlife Service studies supporting smaller water exports from this vital source of irrigation and drinking water were ordered suppressed and merged with Bureau of Reclamation papers supporting greater exports of water from Northern California to Central and Southern California.

These and other attempts to shape scientific studies were carried out or enforced by widespread transfer or demotion of uncooperative employees, Boxer said she was told.

“If these reports are true, this agency appears to be riddled with political manipulation,” she said. “The service really is a scientific organization and the taxpayers expect unbiased data for their money.”

Frank Dunkle, the director in charge during most of the controversy, resigned recently. A new director has not yet been confirmed.