SAVING THE NORTHERN SPOTTED OWL

Icons of the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests, northern spotted owls teeter on the brink of extinction because of decades of logging and invasive barred owls.

Curious and vocal, these medium-sized, chocolatey-brown owls are excellent indicators of the health of old forests and the hundreds of other species that depend on them. But without continued habitat protection and swift action to reduce barred owl populations, this native owl species will surely disappear forever.

BACKGROUND

Even as northern spotted owl populations have continued to drop, protections for their habitat have been subject to the whims of presidential administrations. The Clinton administration first designated protected critical habitat for these owls in 1992 — including 6.9 million acres — and enacted the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994, which created millions of acres of “late-successional reserves” for the owls and hundreds of other old-forest-dependent species. The Bush administration worked to undo these protections by releasing a recovery plan for the owls that called for less habitat protection, as well as slashing more than a million acres of critical habitat. After conservation groups, including the Center, challenged this reduced designation, the Obama administration expanded critical habitat to more than 9 million acres in 2012, but the timber industry challenged that move in court — which led to the first Trump administration removing protections from nearly 3.5 million acres of federal old-growth forests: habitat essential to the species’ conservation. Although the Biden administration reinstated much of those slashed safeguards, the timber industry (and this time, several counties) immediately went back to court seeking to reinstate the Trump rule.

Meanwhile northern spotted owls continue to decline. The species was first listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, and in 2020 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined its status should be changed to the more protective “endangered” — though the agency has dragged its feet on implementing that upgrade.  

OUR CAMPAIGN

The Center has been watching out for these owls at every twist and turn, submitting comments in opposition to forest plan amendments and revisions threatening the species, as well as intervening in timber-industry lawsuits that seek to reduce the owls’ critical habitat. For example, it was thanks to a Center lawsuit that the Obama administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service increased the owls’ critical habitat to 9.4 million acres. We also took the Service to court over an Oregon Department of Forestry logging plan in the Elliott State Forest, an area providing crucial habitat for northern spotted owls in the logging-devastated Oregon Coast Range.

In 2021 the Center and our Pacific Northwest allies filed a lawsuit to reinstate the nearly 3.5 million acres of habitat protections stripped in the last days of the first Trump administration —about one-third of the species’ critical habitat. We ultimately won it back under President Biden, leaving northern spotted owls with 9.4 million acres of designated critical habitat. The Center is continuing the fight and has again intervened in the latest industry challenge to critical habitat.

Check out our press releases to learn more about the Center’s actions to save northern spotted owls.