Environmentalists Stand Up For Goshawk New Lawsuit Claims Logging Practices In The Northwest Endanger Bird

(From For the Record, March 2, 1999): Acreage wrong: A proposed timber sale on the Idaho Panhandle and Colville national forests that may be affected by a lawsuit over giving endangered species protection to the Northern goshawk entails 153 million board feet of logging. Saturday’s newspaper incorrectly reported the acreage figure for the bark beetle sale.

Decades of old-growth logging combined with Forest Service foot-dragging have pushed the Northern goshawk to the brink of extinction, a consortium of environmental groups charged Thursday.

They filed suit in U.S. District Court in Portland to force endangered species protection for the bird.

The suit has significant implications for North Idaho and a slice of Eastern Washington because it is home to remaining habitat for the goshawk, the conservation groups said. Plans for emergency logging of 153 million acres in the Panhandle and Colville national forests to deal with Douglas fir bark beetles are part of the problem, they charged.

The timber industry said the evidence is clear the Northern goshawk doesn’t need need federal protection. Even if it did, the Endangered Species Act wouldn’t help the bird recover, they said.

Despite losing two previous lawsuits, the Fish and Wildlife Service again decided it had no reason to give full-fledged federal protection to the goshawk.

“The best available information does not indicate that it is in danger of extinction or likely to become so in the foreseeable future,” the agency ruled.

That ruling prompted 19 environmental groups to research the science and file the latest suit, said Bill Haskins, executive director of the Missoula-based Ecology Center and one of the litigants. They said the Fish and Wildlife Service is caving into political pressure from the timber industry.

But the Forest Service is a larger part of the problem, Haskins said.

“The Forest Service ignores these situations until they become a disaster, the species gets listed, and then they run around and flap their wings piteously, acting like they didn’t know it was coming,” Haskins said. “They end up spending lots of money to stave off extinctions at the very last minute - when they can only be staved off by lots of money and large sacrifices by those who depend upon making their livelihood in the woods.”

During the decade-long fight over the Northern goshawk, the Forest Service has ignored hundreds of opportunities to make small changes to timber sales that would have given the bird’s a large boost, Haskins said.

Colville Forest official George Buckingham said that doesn’t describe what’s happening at his forest. Biologists, often with the aid of a local falconer, do extensive surveys for goshawks, he said. When goshawks are found, their nests are given a 40-acre buffer and protected during hatching season.

“We’ve recognized, through time, that there is concern about the goshawk and we did need to do some additional work to identify goshawk nests and protect them,” Buckingham said.

The Colville Forest no longer logs in areas the goshawk frequents, Forest Supervisor Bob Vaught said. “I don’t know anything we could do to better protect the goshawk on the Colville,” he said.

The timber industry, meanwhile, sees this as another attempt to shut down national forest logging using the Endangered Species Act. Millions of dollars are spent each year on the Endangered Species Act with almost no resulting recovery of species, said Stefany Bales of the Intermountain Forest Industry Association.

“It is overwhelmingly clear that listing a species does not equal recovery,” Bales said. So it’s equally clear “that’s not what (environmental groups) are interested in. What they are interested in is ending timber harvest activity.”

“Our folks are absolutely committed to improving timber harvest activities and forest practices,” Bales said. “We have laws in place to ensure we do that.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: BACKGROUND Third time around This is the third time in a decade that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been sued over the Northern goshawk. A federal judge twice has ruled against the agency, saying its refusal to protect the bird was arbitrary and capricious.