Lujan Forms Third Panel to Study Fate of Spotted Owls : Environment: He says aim is to save species, limit timber industry job losses. Conservationists charge it is an effort to undercut protection of the bird.

Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., in an action that environmental groups said undercuts the government’s commitment to saving the threatened northern spotted owl, announced Tuesday the formation of a new government task force to develop ways to both save the owl and limit job losses in the Northwest timber industry.

“We owe it to the people and communities of the Pacific Northwest to explore all options to preserve the northern spotted owl and to preserve jobs in the region,” Lujan said in a statement.

The new task force brings to three the number of federally created panels pondering the fate of the owl. It will essentially parallel the work of an existing team, mandated by the Endangered Species Act, which is developing a recovery plan for the owl.

The recovery plan is scheduled to be submitted for public comment in April. The alternative options developed by the newly created group, along with the recovery team’s directives, would then be presented to Congress.

“This does not supersede the recovery plan,” Interior Department spokesman Steven Goldstein said. He said the new plan offers Congress the option of either permitting the recovery process under the Endangered Species Act to go forward, with its projected loss of 31,000 timber industry jobs, or legislating an alternative as proposed by the new special task force.

“All we can do is present options to Congress,” Goldstein said. “If they are as concerned about jobs as they say they are, they can take a look at this.”

The new study team creates one more complication in the already tangled history of the northern spotted owl, which has become the focus of a long and divisive battle between the timber industry and environmentalists. Designated as a threatened species in 1990 under the Endangered Species Act, the owl is already the subject of numerous court cases, scientific studies and government actions.

There is no provision in the Endangered Species Act for creation of such a group as Lujan plans to convene. But the act does provide a mechanism for permitting economic considerations to take precedence over the law’s requirements for species protection, a mechanism that Lujan already has set in motion.

Under that procedure, a special seven-member endangered species committee can vote to allow specific federal actions to go forward that otherwise would jeopardize a species listed as endangered or threatened. Lujan last fall convened the committee to decide whether to permit 44 Oregon timber sales that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had previously ruled would imperil the owl. That panel’s decision is expected in April.

Lujan’s creation of another new task force prompted sharp criticism from conservation groups.

“Every time they’ve come up with a situation where they have had to follow the law, they’ve refused to and either violated it or tried to circumvent it,” said Larry Tuttle, Oregon state director of the Wilderness Society.

In an internal memorandum last week to the head of the owl recovery team, Lujan conceded that the creation of a new task force constitutes an end-run around existing environmental laws.

Noting that implementing its recommendations would require congressional approval, Lujan wrote that “the work group thus will not necessarily be constrained by the recovery standard set forth in the (Endangered Species Act), by the other requirements in the act, or by such other regulatory standards as the viability standard of the National Forest Management Act.”