Smaller habitat for threatened bird proposed

[XemaSab]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday proposed trimming the amount of coastal forest lands designated critical habitat for the marbled murrelet, a threatened species of sea bird that nests in old-growth timber.

Fish and Wildlife said the 254,000 acres that would be removed from the 1996 critical-habitat designation of 3.9 million acres represents a new focus on trying to protect forests most likely to be used by the birds for nesting.

Conservation groups complained that the agency was making it easier to log old-growth timber in the central Coast Range of Oregon, where the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has been working on plans to greatly increase timber harvests, and ignoring opportunities to add more critical habitat to improve the bird's chances.

The areas to be removed include lands in Northern California and Southern Oregon, where surveys have not turned up any nesting birds, and parts of Lane and Douglas counties that birds still use, but are more than 35 miles inland, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Joan Jewett.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008082940_murrelet31.html