Oregon County Sues to Get Murrelet Delisted

By AP

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) Hoping to remove one obstacle to logging on public lands, Coos County commissioners are suing to get the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to carry out its promise to take the marbled murrelet off the threatened species list.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Eugene argues that the original reasons for listing the 17,000 to 20,000 birds nesting in Oregon, Washington and Northern California no longer exist.

Canada has adopted its own version of the Endangered Species Act and genetic testing shows the listed birds are not significantly different from the 1 million birds in Canada and Alaska.

“The legal basis for the listing has disappeared,” said Scott Shepard, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, the property rights public interest law firm representing Coos County.

Coos County Commissioner John Griffith said he hoped the delisting would ultimately lead to more logs coming off state and federal lands, where protections for the large trees where murrelets nest have contributed to reduced timber harvests.

“We need to file now to make sure (Fish and Wildlife doesn’t) go into another 12-month or more slumber,” Griffith said.

Last October, Fish and Wildlife said it would formally propose delisting the murrelet by the end of the year, but has yet to do so. The proposal would start a yearlong evaluation before a final decision is made.

Fish and Wildlife spokesman David Patte said the agency was working on the proposal, but had no target date for it to be made.

The marbled murrelet spends most of its life on the ocean, but flies as far as 50 miles inland to lay a single egg on the mossy branch of a large tree.