Judge Halts Southwest Logging to Protect Mexican Spotted Owl
Judge Halts Southwest Logging to Protect Mexican Spotted Owl
(CN) - A federal judge has stopped three logging projects on National Forest lands in Arizona and New Mexico over concerns that they could harm the Mexican spotted owl.
In a 2010 federal complaint, WildEarth Guardians said the U.S. Forest Service had approved logging and grazing projects in Arizona and New Mexico without studying how the work might affect the Mexican spotted owl. The agency also allegedly failed to properly monitor the owl, which is a threatened species.
Reversing a previous ruling last week, U.S. District Judge David Bury put a temporary halt to logging on Upper Beaver Creek in Arizona's Coconino National Forest, a utility maintenance project in several Arizona forests and the Perk-Grindstone project in New Mexico's Lincoln National Forest.
An estimated 91 percent of Mexican spotted owls live on national forest lands. They grow to just 17 to 19 inches tall and prefer old-growth forests. According to the plaintiff's amended complaint, "biologists estimate that the population of Mexican spotted owls in New Mexico is declining at the rate of approximately 6 percent annually, while the population in Arizona appears to be stable but is not increasing." The bird has been listed on the Endangered Species List since 1993.
"The Forest Service promised it would count the numbers of the Mexican spotted owl and it hasn't," WildEarth Guardians spokesman Bryan Bird said in a statement. "But the agency continued business as usual with no idea how this imperiled bird is faring. It took a federal lawsuit to give the owl some much needed attention."
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/10/42924.htm
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Just more illegal immigrants taking American jobs. 
