Friday, May 7, 2021
CapitalPress.com 3
Biden administration will look to
overturn spotted owl habitat rollbacks
By GEORGE PLAVEN
Capital Press
WASHINGTON, D.C.
— The Biden administra-
tion announced April 29 it
intends to revise or with-
draw a Trump-era rule that
would roll back 3.4 million
acres of federally protected
“critical habitat” for the
northern spotted owl.
It is the latest twist in the
battle over the small, for-
est-dwelling owl, with envi-
ronmental and timber inter-
ests lobbing lawsuits on
both sides.
Days before leaving
offi ce in January, Trump’s
Interior Department reduced
critical habitat for the spot-
ted owl by roughly one-third
in Oregon, Washington and
California. The rule was
supposed to be implemented
in March, but was delayed
by the new administration
until April 30 pending fur-
ther review.
Now, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service says it will
block the rule until Dec. 15
while it prepares a revision
or withdrawal.
“Robust habitat protec-
tions are essential to the
conservation of the northern
spotted owl,” said Alyssa
Hausman,
congressional
and legislative aff airs spe-
cialist for the Fish and Wild-
life Service, in an email sent
April 28 to lawmakers.
Hausman said loss of
habitat due to logging, land
conversions, natural dis-
turbances such as fi re and
windstorms, and competi-
tion with barred owls have
led a decline of spotted owls
in much of their historic
range.
The northern spotted
owl was listed as threatened
under the Endangered Spe-
cies Act in 1990. Initially,
the USFWS set aside 6.9
million acres of critical hab-
itat where the birds nest.
A new management
plan for the species in 2012
increased protected habi-
tat to 9.5 million acres. The
American Forest Resource
Council, a regional timber
trade group, led a lawsuit
against the expansion, argu-
ing it wrongfully restricted
logging in more than 1 mil-
lion acres of land where the
owls do not live.
Part of the 9.5 million
9th Circuit hears arguments
over ‘grazing preference’
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Tom Kogut/USFS
A northern spotted owl in the Giff ord Pinchot National
Forest of Washington state. The species is at the center
of ongoing lawsuits.
acres also encroached on
land that was to be managed
by the Bureau of Land Man-
agement for sustainable tim-
ber production — known as
the Oregon and California
Revested Lands, or O&C
lands, scattered across 18
Western Oregon counties.
Nick Smith, AFRC
spokesman, said the group
strongly supports the Jan-
uary 2021 rule “because
it provides an opportunity
for agencies to address the
real threats to the species,”
including large wildfi res and
the barred owl.
“Until the federal govern-
ment focuses on those actual
threats, the (spotted owl)
is just going to continue to
decline, along with our rural
communities,” Smith said.
The AFRC and Associ-
ation of O&C Counties is
already suing the govern-
ment over delaying habitat
rollbacks. The eff ort to over-
turn the rule has also drawn
condemnation from sev-
eral Western Republicans,
including Oregon Rep. Cliff
Bentz.
“It is shameful that the
Biden administration would
rather kowtow to radi-
cal environmental groups
than follow the science and
the law,” Bentz said in a
statement.
Nine
environmental
groups fi led their own law-
suit in March seeking to
overturn the Trump admin-
istration’s spotted owl rule.
Ryan Shannon, staff attor-
ney at the Center for Bio-
logical Diversity, one of the
plaintiff s, described the hab-
itat reduction as “inaccurate,
sloppy and illegal.”
“Our goal is to make sure
the owl retains all the habitat
protections it scientifi cally
needs to recover,” Shannon
said.
On Aug. 11, 2020, the
USFWS proposed a habi-
tat reduction of just 204,653
acres. But the fi nal rule in
January called for 3.4 mil-
lion acres removed, more
than 16 times that amount.
According to the Biden
administration, the 3.2 mil-
lion-acre diff erence was
never presented to the pub-
lic for notice and comment.
The agency has since gath-
ered more than 2,000 addi-
tional public comments out-
lining concerns with the
rule.
“Based on this informa-
tion, the service intends to
prepare a notice of proposed
rule-making to revise or
withdraw the January 2021
fi nal rule to address issues
that the public comments
raised,” the agency stated.
An Oregon family wants
to convince a federal appeals
court that its ranch’s “graz-
ing preference” was can-
celed contrary to the U.S.
Bureau of Land Manage-
ment’s own regulations.
The 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals heard oral
arguments on May 3 in the
lawsuit, which raises ques-
tions about the interaction
between private lands and
public grazing allotments.
After losing a permit to
graze on 30,000 acres of
BLM allotments in nearby
Idaho, ranchers Mike and
Linda Hanley leased their
private “base property” in
Jordan Valley, Ore., to their
daughter and son-in-law,
Martha and John Corrigan.
When the Corrigans
applied for a new grazing
permit — citing the private
ranch’s “grazing preference”
to the allotments — the BLM
rejected the request in 2017.
The BLM claimed the
property’s grazing prefer-
ence, which gave it prior-
ity for access to public allot-
ments, was lost along with
Hanley’s grazing permit.
The agency’s interpreta-
tion of the preference rules
was upheld by a federal
judge last year, but an attor-
ney for Hanleys and Cor-
rigans has now asked the
9th Circuit to overturn that
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press File
From left to right, Mike Hanley and his wife, Linda,
stand with daughter Martha Corrigan and her hus-
band, John, at the family’s ranch near Jordan Valley,
Ore. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral
arguments May 3 in the family’s lawsuit against the
U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
mine the important connec-
tion between private prop-
erty and surrounding grazing
allotments.
Schroeder said the BLM
has in the past revoked graz-
ing preferences separately
from grazing permits, which
simply allow cattle to be
released onto government
property.
In the case of Nevada
rancher Wayne Hage, an
icon of the “Sagebrush
Rebellion” against govern-
ment grazing restrictions, 12
years elapsed between the
two actions.
The government’s own
defi nition of grazing pref-
erence provides a property
with super-priority to apply
for grazing access regard-
less of why a permit was
lost, Schroeder said.
decision.
Alan Schroeder, the fam-
ily’s attorney, argued that
BLM must undertake a sep-
arate legal process to elimi-
nate the grazing preference,
which provides the ranch
property with fi rst-priority
access to permits for nearby
grazing allotments.
The Hanleys and Cor-
rigans believe the BLM’s
decision could set a trou-
bling precedent for ranch-
ers’ due process rights, since
they weren’t allowed to chal-
lenge the BLM’s elimination
of their property’s valuable
grazing preference.
The controversy has also
concerned ranch groups,
such as the Owyhee Cattle-
men’s Association, which
have argued the BLM’s
actions threaten to under-
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