Path to recovery for Mexican spotted owls
Everybody’s smiling, even the Mexican spotted owls, after WildEarth Guardians, the U. S. Forest Service and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service reached an out-of-court agreement Oct. 27 to resolve a major legal dispute over the threatened owls and national forest protection in New Mexico and Arizona.
A federal court issued an injunction on tree cutting in national forests in the Southwest in response to a lawsuit originally filed by WildEarth Guardians in 2013. It has been in place since Sept. 2019.
This agreement requires the USFS to comply with the Endangered Species Act by conducting annual population trend monitoring of the Mexican spotted owl population through 2025.
“This agreement provides a framework for the Forest Service to better protect national forests and Mexican spotted owls,” John Horning, Executive Director of WildEarth Guardians, said.
The key legal dispute at issue and the legal basis for the federal judge’s order was that the agency had violated the Act.
“By agreeing to rigorously monitor species and track habitats, this management framework could be a national model for the Forest Service to protect and recover threatened and endangered species,” Horning said.
The agreement also contemplates that the Forest Service will comply with the requirements of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s spotted owl recovery plan by identifying and protecting owls by surveying for owls prior to ground-disturbing activities and protecting those areas where owls are found and tracking long-term trends in the owl’s habitat. The agreement also establishes a Mexican spotted owl leadership forum, something the agency recently created. The agreement applies to all 11 national forests in Arizona and New Mexico, which cover over 20 million acres.
The agreement further requires the Forest Service to assess the effects of timber management activities such as logging, thinning, and prescribed burning on the owls and their habitat. The Forest Service will then use its monitoring data and assessments of effects, along with up-to-date scientific studies, to inform, constrain, and modify ongoing and future timber management in owl habitat.
The Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department’s Forestry Division’s Cabinet Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst said the agreement between WildEarth Guardians and USFWS will be reviewed by a U. S. District Court judge in the coming weeks.
“Thankfully, our Forestry Division was able to find some interim solutions to help keep local companies afloat, prevent long-term layoffs, and save jobs,” Propst said. “The relationships born during the MSO [Mexican spotted owl] injunction are now a solid foundation for New Mexico to build upon to respond to the escalating threat of catastrophic wildfire.”
Meeting twice monthly for a full year, partners from local communities, agencies, and nongovernmental organizations worked together to find alternative projects for 80 percent of thinning contractors affected by the MSO injunction and to find alternative wood supply for 75 percent of the wood-products manufacturers and 100 percent of commercial firewood operators. This unprecedented level of cooperation kept the MSO injunction from devastating New Mexico’s forest sector and restoration economy while the parties negotiated.
EMNRD Forestry Division State Forester Laura McCarthy said, “The community of people who work on forest restoration came together like never before while the MSO injunction was in place to make sure that communities had access to firewood, forest workers had jobs, and small sawmills and wood-products manufacturers had a wood supply.”
The parties negotiated the agreement over a six-month period and the ultimate product reflects the efforts of all of the parties to create a new paradigm for forest protection that will ensure that the agency funds, creates, and abides by the latest and best available science.
“The agreement’s greatest significance is that it brings citizens, science, and the law together in the way that the framers of environmental laws intended,” Horning stated. “The foundational principle of environmental laws is that citizens uphold the laws. This is the core principle of healthy, functioning, and effective democracy, and one that is currently under direct threat.”
Once a final ruling is in place, the Forestry Division, the Forest Service, and partners will work together to decide when and where forest restoration projects on the Carson, Cibola, Gila, Lincoln, and Santa Fe National Forests will resume.
