Murrelet declining beyond Northwest

The marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird whose rare trait of nesting in old-growth forests made it a factor in Northwest logging battles, is also declining dramatically in Alaska and Canada where most of the birds live, a review released Monday by the federal government found.

The marbled murrelet, a threatened seabird whose rare trait of nesting in old-growth forests made it a factor in Northwest logging battles, is also declining dramatically in Alaska and Canada where most of the birds live, a review released Monday by the federal government found.

The review of existing population surveys by the U.S. Geological Survey was requested by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the Bush administration considers whether to take the marbled murrelet off the threatened species list in Oregon, Washington and California, where protection for the old-growth trees it nests in has dramatically reduced logging on some national forests.

The first comprehensive look at population surveys in Alaska and British Columbia found an overall decline of about 70 percent over the past 25 years, dropping the estimated population to 270,000 birds in Alaska and 54,000 to 92,000 birds in British Columbia.

Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Joan Jewett said the agency had received the USGS report and was reviewing it.

There is no time set for making a decision on marbled murrelet protection.

USGS seabird biologist John F. Piatt, lead author of the review, said none of the known human-caused threats to marbled murrelets -- loss of nesting trees to logging, getting caught in gill nets, and oil spills -- can by themselves explain the dramatic and widespread decline, particularly in Alaska.

Possibilities include changes in the ocean climate that alter the availability of food and an increase in predators.

The Bush administration's decision to review threatened species status for the marbled murrelet was triggered by a lawsuit brought by the timber industry, which argued that with nearly as many birds living off British Columbia and Alaska, there was no need to protect it in the Northwest.

"We still think the species should have never been listed," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource council. "Even though there's this estimate there has been a 70 percent decline, we are still talking about hundreds of thousands if not millions of individual birds."

Susan Ash, conservation director of Portland Audubon, said a recent proposal from Fish and Wildlife to drastically cut protection of nesting trees could lead to the bird's extinction in the Northwest.