SAVING THE MARBLED mURRELET

In 1974 at California’s Big Basin Redwood State Park, the marbled murrelet — the “enigma of the Pacific” — won the distinction of being the last bird species in the United States to have its nesting site discovered. This came on the heels of more than a century of searching by early ornithologists for the elusive murrelet “nest.” Actually, though, rather than building a nest, this seabird travels inland as much as 50 miles to lay a single egg high in the old-growth forest canopy, which it depends on for survival. But as old-growth forests have declined, so too has the murrelet, with commercial logging — followed by climate change, oil spills, and entanglements in gillnets — representing the greatest threat to the species.

For years, the Center has defended the marbled murrelet from its top threat: In 2005, we filed suit against a logging company and the state of California for harming the bird and its forest home, and in February 2008 we succeeded in halting a timber-industry attack on the bird’s Endangered Species Act status — a lawsuit to remove protections based on a finding that was scientifically flawed due to political interference under the Bush administration.

But the marbled murrelet wasn’t out of the woods yet — in the metaphorical sense, that is. The Fish and Wildlife Service found merit in a timber-industry petition to remove the bird’s protections based on the same unscientific finding proved tainted in February 2008. Fortunately, after the Center and a coalition of conservation partners demanded that the Service uphold the murrelet’s protections, in June 2009 the agency released a report finding that murrelets in Washington, California, and Oregon still need federal safeguards, due mostly to the extensive logging of their Northwest old-growth habitat. We’ve requested that the Service upgrade the bird’s status and expand protections to include more of the species’ dwindling populations.