Opinion ID: 6320238
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: FWS issues Enhancement of Survival Permits

Text: and enters into Safe Harbor Agreements with four non-federal landowners. The Oregon Coast Ranges study area is a checkerboard of federal, state, and private land. To create contiguous areas for the experiment, FWS sought cooperation from nonfederal landowners to gain access to their lands. Though not strictly necessary to complete the experiment, such access would help FWS complete the experiment in the most efficient and complete manner. Failure to gain such access could reduce the ability to detect changes in the spotted owl population caused by barred owl removal. To that end, FWS issued permits and entered into Safe Harbor Agreements with four non-federal landowners within the Oregon Coast Ranges study area: Roseburg Resource Company (Roseburg), Weyerhaeuser Company (Weyerhaeuser), Oxbow Timber I, LLC (Oxbow), and the Oregon Department of Forestry (Oregon). 3 Each permittee agreed to allow FWS to access their property and roads to remove barred owls and agreed to conduct or support spotted owl surveys on their lands. In exchange, the permittees may keep harvesting timber on their property in areas where no northern spotted owls resided when the parties entered into the Safe Harbor Agreements (“non-baseline sites”) without incurring 3 After FWS issued the permits, Roseburg acquired Oxbow. Because of this acquisition, there are now only three permits for the Oregon Coast Ranges study area that are being challenged (Roseburg-Oxbow, Weyerhaeuser, and Oregon). FRIENDS OF ANIMALS V. USFWS 11 liability for incidentally taking any spotted owls that later reoccupy those locations. The permittees, however, receive no liability protection for any incidental take in areas where the owls already resided (“baseline sites”). FWS used survey data to designate any site in which a “resident” northern spotted owl had been detected in the previous three to five years as a baseline site. Thus, the permits authorized incidental take only in non-baseline sites (i.e., areas where no “resident” northern spotted owls have been observed in the past three to five years). And even in those non-baseline sites, the permits restricted the land during nesting and rearing season. As required by the ESA’s implementing regulations, FWS determined that each permit was “reasonably expected to provide a net conservation benefit” to the northern spotted owl. See 50 C.F.R. § 17.32(c)(2). Although FWS acknowledged that there was potential for “take of spotted owls on the temporarily reoccupied” non-baseline sites, FWS concluded such take would be “more than offset by the value of the information gained from the Experiment and potential contribution to long-term barred owl management strategy.”