The suit alleges the decision last year not to list the owl under the federal Endangered Species Act was contrary to scientific evidence and therefore illegal.
Noah Greenwald, with the Oakland-based Center for Biological Diversity, says the US Fish and Wildfire Service’s own research documents the need for protection.
"They concluded that it’s likely to be lost from the Southern California ranges, and that it’s likely to decline in the Sierra Nevada, that it faces multiple threats, climate change, logging, the barred owl," he says. "When you look at the ongoing declines, you look at the loss in range that’s predicted and the threats that it faces, it just doesn’t make any sense that they would deny it protection."
The California spotted owl inhabits the western Sierra Nevada Range and mountains to the south. And, like its cousin the northern spotted owl, whose listing in 19-90 led to cuts in logging on public lands in the Northwest, it needs intact old forest habitats to thrive.
The Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that the California owl is declining, but doesn’t warrant Endangered Species Act protection.
The suit asks the court to reject the agency’s conclusions and require it to come back with a new decision within six months.
Federal officials declined to comment on the suit.
