CNN/AP: Big fight over tiny owl

[DeepModem Mom]

Big fight over tiny owl
Monday, May 15, 2006


The pygmy owl faces imminent extinction if protection is removed, according to Defenders of Wildlife.

TUCSON, Arizona (AP) -- Conservation groups have gone to court to try to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from removing a tiny owl from the endangered species list.

The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl -- which is only about 6 inches long and weighs less than 3 ounces -- has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers for years.

It is scheduled to officially be taken off the list Monday.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife filed suit in federal court in Tucson on Thursday challenging the delisting decision and requesting a temporary restraining order to block Monday's action.

The Justice Department filed a response Friday asking the court to deny a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/15/pygmy.owl.ap/index.html

[lonestarnot]

1. Ahhhh my kid will not like reading about their extinction.

[pitohui]

5. they're common in mexico

my bird guide tells me that this owl was never more than an occasional in arizona, it is a shame to lose it from the usa but it will not go extinct

i am not sure of the range of this subspecies but he feels confident it will endure well in mexico

ah, i see the reason for delisting is that it is not accepted as a separate subspecies, that is prob. what he was trying to tell me, in which case this bird is very widely distributed indeed, i have even seen in in trinidad, an island offshore venezuela

oh to clarify, i do think the bird should be protected but all is not lost if usa lets down the team

[woo me with science]

2. What a gorgeous bird. nt

[panader0]

3. I read in the Arizona Daily Star (Tucson) this morning that there

was only one sighting this year versus twelve last year. The pygmy owl is headed foe extinction. The growth around Tucson is crazy. Especially with no water to support it. Even years ago, Tucson was the largest city to support itself from wells (now drying up) Colorado River water is being divided up by several states. Botttom line: NOT ENOUGH WATER for so many people. I live 80 miles SE and even the wonderful San Pedro River with it's various wildlife and faune is going dry slowly.

[Fridays Child]

4. I remember being able to see the wide, flowing San Pedro from a...

...pullout area along the road to Mount Lemmon. From what I've read, the river is a sad trickle, now, compared to how it used to be.

[alarimer]

11. Humans as a species are a cancer on the landscape

Destroying everything we touch. Sure, this species MAY survive elsewhere, for a time. We are in the middle of the greatest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. And it is all the fault of development. Too many people, living in places where it makes no sense to live the way we do. God knows we need more plastic trees and shopping malls.

This Land is Our Land by Todd Snider

Freeway through a reservation
make way for a brand new nation
Big ideas, we got brand new plans
Heaven knows we need this land.

http://www.toddsnider.net/lyrics/thisland.pdf

[Coventina]

19. What you said.

:cry:

[xchrom]

6. to think that for some -- there is no room

in this world for that little owl.

[pitohui]

7. there is room, see my other post

this is a widely distributed bird

it is a shame there is no room in arizona, but it thrives elsewhere in the americas

[xchrom]

8. not all agree with you

http://www.pima.gov/cmo/sdcp/sdcp2/PO/pygmy.html

In 1999, Pima County also funded some of the telemetry work performed by Arizona Game and Fish through a $60,000 contract. Based on preliminary information:



* 11 nest sites were located and monitored and owls at each site were banded
* Nest sizes varied from 2 to 5 babies and at least 16 of 35 fledglings dispersed
* At least 13 owls had transmitters placed on them (including 3 adult males)
* At least 8 juvenile owls were tracked through dispersal
* At least 5 owl mortalities occurred during the survey season


4. Harris/Duncan 1999 Survey Report - During the 1999 survey season (from January to July), Pima County undertook the most comprehensive study effort of the decade through a contract awarded to Harris Environmental Group through a competitive proposal process. Covering over one quarter of a million acres, this search for owls exceeded the scope of all combined efforts during the first five years of surveys conducted by the State before the listing of the pygmy-owl. Pima County also obtained site specific results from the survey effort conducted on numerous future bond projects. After determining where surveys were already being conducted by U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Arizona Game and Fish, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management, the remaining study area was divided into 9 survey districts and 2,632 call stations were established, under the Pima County contract. To put this in perspective, in 1998, the same team staked out 768 call points. In 1996, Arizona Game and Fish worked from a total of 356 call points. The 1999 effort allowed research to take place in areas that have not been surveyed in the past.

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/swcbd/species/pygmyowl/index.html

The Arizona population of the pygmy-owl formerly occurred in desert and riparian habitats from around the New River north of Phoenix south to the Mexican border. Habitat losses have reduced the range of the species to an area between Tucson and the border. The known population has dropped from 47 birds in 1999 to 18 in 2002 and 2003 likely as a result of development of the last occupied habitat and drought. Some of the pygmy-owl’s most vital Arizona habitat is located in the ironwood forests of northwest Tucson and Marana, an area also coveted by developers and threatened by dozens of construction projects.


no matter what -- there are not a lot of these owls because of the specific habitat they inhabit.

the likelyhood that there subspecies i sprobably large due to the difficulty of each group finding the other -- creating island like environments.

[pitohui]

9. they are no longer considered a subspecies apparently

that's the whole issue, apparently, if there is no "cactus" subspecies then apparently they are not entitled to legal protection

this isn't my argument, i am just explaining the legal argument

ferruginous pygmy-owl (the species, now i'm talking abt, not this disputed subspecies) is just not a rare bird, it is a common bird of south and central america, and in north america it is common if you consider mexico north america, it is only a rare bird in arizona if you get the distinction

while you might go your whole life and never see one in arizona, they are easily found in many other places

i tried to look up a range map for you but didn't see one easily to hand

my point is that we need not give up hope, the species is not going to vanish from the earth

we certainly need to defend our habitats from the predations of the developers, but we also need to do good science, and apparently raptor specialists do not view this population as a separate subspecies

i'm really not qualified to say one way or another, the guide i spoke to is a specialist with diurnal raptors rather than owls, so take it for what it's worth but he considered the ferruginous pygmy-owl to be very healthy and they are certainly quite a visible presence in some other parts of the americas

i have personally observed the species in considerably wetter climes than southern arizona and i don't buy the over-specialization argument at all, these are adaptable birds who are not confined to desert nor do they seem terribly bothered by high human populations if the population on trinidad is any indication

my guide's feeling is that arizona is the extreme northern end of the species range and that in "good" years or decades there will be more of them than in "bad" years or decades, i won't defend this statement, just passing it on for what hope it might give

i do not think these owls terribly fearful of human populations tho, at least if the human population in question doesn't shoot at them

[Tony_Illinois]

10. They Don't Have A Chance In This World To Survive

if their peril did not receive more of a response than it did on this board. I'm afraid that the "outcry" here is but a microcosm of the response of the nation as a whole. I'M NOT CRITICIZING ANYBODY. But this is the place where I would expect more outrage than this.

[Patchuli]

12. I am outraged!!!

It's time for humans to control themselves and stop pushing everything else off the planet. Will Arizona 'lawmakers' listen to a Californian?

[Lorien]

13. We environmentalists are a very small minority on this board

as we are everywhere else in this country. If you can't make an issue self serving to the excessively selfish (sadly, most of America), then it dies. There's a severe lack of education and disinformation in the MSM about the very real threat biodiversity loss poses to our species, and the immediate threat of climate change and environmental collapse. Here, as everywhere, you'll find far greater outrage over a celebrity comment or a story where someone isn't permitted to wear an anti-Bush T-shirt in a store than you will when a species faces extinction or a habitat faces annihilation. It's sick and it's disgraceful-but there seems to be little that can be done to change those attitudes.

[aaronbees]

14. Beautiful creature

** This is the scariest part, at least to my eyes:

Daniel Patterson, desert ecologist at the Center for Biological Diversity, said eliminating the bird's protection would immediately affect dozens of conservation agreements in southern Arizona.
"If the owl is no longer protected, a lot of these agreements could become invalid, which would open up big new areas to urban sprawl," he said.


** Amazing to see the Justice Department's very narrow idea of justice: "justice" for developers. Blech. **

[arikara]

15. That would be what they are after

opening up the habitat to developers. Nobody or nothing benefits except developers and those they bribe. The rampant paving over of this once great and beautiful continent is heartbreaking.

They are doing it here in BC too, I live on Vancouver Island and developers are bribing gov't officials to have land removed from the ALR (agricultural land reserve) they get caught and still it goes on. Its a big race to see how much land they can destroy and how many cheap ugly houses they can bang up. I don't see how it can go on but it shows no sign of slowing.

The birds and animals are the ones who pay the biggest price.

[aaronbees]

16. Yep, unfortunately...

More and more, there's precious little of the mysterious wilderness that makes this land so wonderful; at the very least, it seems there's more and more pressure to cut it down and convert to shopping mall territory. I think many people here in the U.S. have no idea what it means to really be in nature, apart from setting up shop and bass fishing on the lake (which is fine, in and of itself, but limited). I guess that's why these kinds of stories make me so angry. It's about much more than one owl.

[rumpel]

17. Some time back we were fighting for their protection...

I thought all went well - Fish & Game had written back, too

obviously bush & co is hellbent on exploiting all there is for a buck.

don't give up keep fighting.

[DeepModem Mom]

18. sorry -- misspost

[DeepModem Mom]

20. A word of thanks to all who've posted informed and heartfelt...

comments in this thread --

DMM

[Dufaeth]

21. Wikipedia article on this species

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferruginous_Pygmy_Owl