Bid to protect gray squirrel denied

SEATTLE – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has turned down another petition to list the Western gray squirrel for protection under the Endangered Species Act, the agency said Wednesday.

A petition filed in December 2002 by the Institute for Wildlife Protection, based in Eugene, Ore., asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to name all Western gray squirrels as endangered, not just the Washington population as other recent petitions and lawsuits have requested. The government definition of endangered is that the species is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range.

“It was kind of a peculiar petition,” said L. Karolee Owens, fish and wildlife biologist in the agency’s Lacey office. The petition came as a letter in response to a Fish and Wildlife finding concerning just the Washington squirrel population. The group asked, however, for a response concerning all Western gray squirrels, including those in Oregon and California.

In deciding how to rule on such a petition, the agency is required to look at the materials presented by the petitioner and what the agency already has in its files, Owens said. Government scientists are not required to do any additional research unless the petition is granted.

In Washington, researchers counted 81 Western grays near Fort Lewis in the early 1990s. A more thorough survey in 1998-1999 found only six.

Other Washington populations of the largest native tree squirrel in the Northwest are in southwest and Eastern Washington.

But Owens said the petition did not contain enough information about the species’ status to warrant further study and the petition was denied.

A phone call Wednesday to the phone number listed on the petition found that the institute’s phone had been disconnected, but a scientist who works with the organization said the institute was in the process of moving to a new office. Phone and e-mail messages left at the organization director’s home were not returned Wednesday afternoon.

Roy Keene, a forest ecologist who signed the December 2002 letter to the Fish and Wildlife Service, said he had not talked about the ruling with organization leadership and had not seen the government documents.

In other news, three environmental groups have appealed a ruling in a federal lawsuit seeking to force the Fish and Wildlife service to list the Western gray squirrel for protection in Washington state under the Endangered Species Act.

The lawsuit filed in November 2003 in U.S. District Court in Portland, site of the agency’s regional headquarters, was decided in August in favor of Fish and Wildlife, Owens said.

Dave Werntz, science director of Northwest Ecosystem Alliance in Bellingham, said his group and Tahoma Audubon Society and the Center for Biological Diversity appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 15.

“We felt as though we didn’t get an adequate hearing,” Werntz said Wednesday.