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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ... has proposed designating 1.7 million acres in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah as critical habitat for the bird ... The designation sometimes, but not always, means restrictions on human activities on that land. The public and the scientific community have until March 12 to comment before the agency makes a final decision on whether to list the Gunnison sage grouse as endangered.

Welcome to the pretzel logic of liberal environmental protection: In order to "save" owls, the Obama administration is going to shoot them dead. This is not -- I repeat not -- an Onion parody. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House released a big fat policy turkey: its final critical habitat rule for the endangered northern spotted owl. The Obama plan will lock up 9.6 million acres of land (mostly, but not all, federal) in Oregon, Washington and northern California. This is nearly double the acreage set aside by the Bush administration. Thousands of timber workers (along with untold thousands...

The Obama administration announced with little fanfare Thanksgiving eve plans to lock up nine million acres of land for the endangered Northern Spotted Owl. The plan would double the amount of public forest lands proposed by the Bush administration for the owl’s habitat in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, and is expected to severely limit commercial activities like logging. Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said he is concerned the plan will cost taxpayers millions of dollars. “Expanding the Northern Spotted Owl’s critical habitat will further endanger the timber industry, the thousands of jobs that...

RENO -- As part of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) National Sage-Grouse Planning Strategy, the BLM and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) are holding interactive social and economic public workshops. ... Interested partners will be guided on how to contribute social and economic information in the development of the Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement to amend Land Use Plans throughout the Greater Sage-grouse’s range in Nevada and Northeast California. They will also provide an opportunity for individuals to provide information regarding the use of public lands resources, how public lands influence their quality of life and how the BLM and U.S....

A Spotted Owl may do what Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, Johnny Ringo, the Clanton gang, the Gunfight at the OK Corral and two major fires couldn’t do: destroy Tombstone, known throughout the century as “The town too tough to die!” According to several CNN reports, Tombstone may soon run out of water because of a broken 26-mile water pipeline, which runs through a National Forest....

Failed federal policies implemented by unelected agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management during the past 30 to 40 years remind me of a quote from the late economist Milton Friedman: “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” The Northwest Forest Plan enacted by President Clinton in 1994 may have had good intentions, but it has failed catastrophically.

Nothing's worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon's mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it's still slipping away. Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500...

To save the imperiled spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a controversial plan to shoot barred owls, a rival bird that has shoved its smaller cousin aside. The plan is the latest federal attempt to protect the northern spotted owl, the passive, one-pound bird that sparked an epic battle over logging in the Pacific Northwest two decades ago. The government set aside millions of acres of forest to protect the owl, but the bird’s population continues to decline — a 40 percent slide in 25 years. A plan announced Tuesday would designate habitat considered critical for the...

Communities all over the country feel that their hands are tied with one-size-fits-all DC Brand Red Tape. The rules and regulations prevent them from doing what is best for their specific circumstances. The situation has escalated to the point where elected officials are now taking charge to do what is local and logical. What took place this weekend in the rural New Mexico town of Cloudcroft could become the model for all who want to cut the red tape. Hundreds of people were at what is being called the “Otero County Tree Party” in support of realigning the federal government...

Wildlife biologists are proposing to shoot hundreds or even thousands of Pacific Northwest barred owls as a way to protect the endangered Northern spotted owl. Barred owls are larger, more aggressive and have been taking over spotted owl territory for the past 20 years. The proposal to shoot barred owls is part of a federal spotted owl recovery plan that will be released soon. Whether to intervene in what some see as a natural competition between species is a matter of hot debate among biologists, conservationists and the timber industry, which argues that we've set aside huge chunks of habitat...

Splinters in Her Crotch! A woman from Los Angeles who was a tree hugger, a liberal Democrat, and an anti-hunter, purchased a piece of timberland near Colville, WA . There was a large tree on one of the highest points in the tract. She wanted a good view of the natural splendor of her land, so she started to climb the big tree. As she neared the top she encountered a spotted owl that attacked her. In her haste to escape, the woman slid down the tree to the ground and got many splinters in her crotch. In considerable pain,...

For no reason I know of, the thought of endangered species came to mind on Tuesday morning. Then I saw this article and started wondering about synchronicity. I’m sure it’s just coincidence, but the entire story is so improbable that it seems like an April Fool’s Day joke. I don’t even know whether to laugh or cry or howl in rage. Back in the late 80s/early 90s, the Great Spotted Owl provided employment for way too many environmental activists and caused unemployment for way too many loggers. We were assured that if the logging industry would stop cutting down trees,...

First they came for the loggers, destroying 30,000 jobs and countless lives. Now they’re coming for the Barred Owl. Anyone remember the Great Spotted Owl Controversy? Back in the late 80s and early 90s, it was the first major instance of the environmental movement (with the cooperation of Al Gore and the Clinton administration) using the Endangered Species Act to accomplish their stealth goal — in this case driving productive mankind out of millions of acres of federally owned old-growth forest. When a judge ruled that cutting down trees endangered the picky owl’s habitat and had to end, it sparked...

The tiny mouse that became a hotly disputed symbol of wasteful spending in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill has returned to pester House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Obama administration revealed last week that as much as $16.1 million from the stimulus program is going to save the San Francisco Bay Area habitat of, among other things, the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse. That has revived Republican criticism that the pet project was an "invisible earmark" in the massive spending bill for Mrs. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district abuts the Bay, and epitomizes what Republicans say is the failure of...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday struck down the Bush administration's change to a rule designed to protect the northern spotted owl from logging in national forests. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ruled from Oakland, Calif., that the U.S. Forest Service failed to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of changing the rule to make it easier to cut down forest habitat of species such as the spotted owl and salmon on 193 million acres of national forests.

On April 22nd 2009, a man and his dog entered the ancient redwood forests of Humboldt County Ca. Only the dog returned. The camera was found two days later. Old Glory Radio Morning Report 04/27/09 - LINK TO FOUND CAMERA FOOTAGE -

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The Department of the Interior has told a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. The action could affect logging in western Oregon.

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—The Obama administration has notified a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. In a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Department of Interior said they based the decision on an inspector general's report finding political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. If the spotted owl measures developed by the Bush administration are withdrawn, it would become difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to go forward with plans to...

So Much For Saving The Spotted Owl By MICHAEL MILSTEIN   A spotted owl on National Forest land west of Veneta, Ore. (Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand)     OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — Two decades after the wrenching drive to save an obscure bird divided Americans and reshaped the economy of the Pacific Northwest, the northern spotted owl is disappearing anyway.Even the most optimistic biologists now admit that the docile owl — revered and reviled as one of the more contentious symbols the nation has known — will probably never fully recover.Intensive logging of the spotted owl's old-growth forest home...

SEATTLE - A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday to stop Weyerhaeuser Co. from logging in spotted owl habitat on four parcels of private land in Washington. U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman did not grant, however, an additional request by the Seattle Audubon Society to stop the state of Washington from granting permits to log in spotted owl habitat. The injunction from logging covers spotted owl habitat within 2.7 miles of the center of four circles of land in southwestern Washington that are owned by Weyerhaeuser. "It really shows the Endangered Species Act still has some teeth in...