Interior Dept. overturns Trump administration reduction of spotted-owl habitat, saying it was based on faulty science

A northern spotted owl pursues a mouse in Deschutes
National Forest in Oregon. (AP photo by Don Ryan)

"Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of forest in Oregon, Washington and California to potential logging," Matthew Brown and Gillian Flaccus report for The Associated Press. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl."

The federal government has protected 9.6 million acres of the owl's habitat—old-growth forests—since 2012, but many have blamed the move for hurting rural logging communities in the West. In August 2020, then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt proposed removing protections for about 2% of the birds' habitat, but "the timber industry said the plan didn't go far enough and called for removal of more than 28%," Brown and Flaccus report.

Northern spotted owl habitat
(American Bird Conservancy)

In January, then-Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith "abruptly changed her agency's recommendation and went even further, telling Bernhardt more than one-third of the protected land, or almost 3.5 million acres (1.4 million hectares), should be excluded from protection." She said spotted owls were more threatened by barred owls, and that controlling the predators' numbers would better help. 

Government biologists warned that the changes would trigger the extinction of the species, but Bernhardt and Skipworth dismissed their objections. "Officials said in documents provided to AP that Bernhardt and Skipwith underestimated the threat of extinction and relied on a "faulty interpretation of the science" to reach their decision," Brown and Flaccus report.

However, Bernhardt told the AP in an email that the scientists' "reasonable certainty" of the owls' fate didn't meet the legal threshold for habitat protection. Under the statutory authority established by Congress, the Interior may only protect such areas if a species "will" go extinct, Bernhardt wrote, and suggested that wildlife officials who wish to change that standard should talk to Congress.

Wildlife officials twice delayed the changes after President Biden's inauguration, and the policy was never implemented. But it's one of many Trump administration moves—since struck down—that opened up public lands for drilling, logging and other commercial interests. The administration also tried to weaken protections for the greater sage grouse, declared gray wolves no longer endangered (which may have resulted in overhunting in Wisconsin), and drastically reduced the footprints of two national monuments in Utah that sit atop rich coal seams.

This wasn't the first time Bernhardt undermined government scientists: when he was the deputy secretary, pesticide lobbyists convinced him to block a 2017 FWS study that found that the pesticide chlorypyrifos was so toxic that it threatened the existence of more than 1,200 endangered species.