Still Safe: Unusual Coastal Bird Stays On Endangered Species List

The timber industry group American Forest Resource Council sued to remove protections for the Marbled Murrelet - and lost.

Federal wildlife officials said today that the marbled murrelet, a rare seabird, still merits federal protection.

The timber industry has lost the battle to remove the marbled murrelet from the Endangered Species list.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the bird will keep its status as a “threatened” species. It made the decision after reviewing a petition from the American Forest Resource Council and other groups. They were hoping to delist the species along the entire West Coast.

The marbled murrelet is one of the more interesting characters in Oregon’s logging wars.

About the size of a robin, the marbled murrelet spends most of its life on the Pacific Ocean. But when it comes time to nest, it leaves the water for old growth forests near the coast. Protecting their habitat is one of the reasons logging has been curtailed so dramatically in Oregon.

You might say this bird is our “other” spotted owl.

Fish and Wildlife says that despite protections, populations of the marbled murrelet continue to decline in Oregon, Washington and especially in California. Along the coast south of San Francisco, the numbers dropped off 75% from 2005-2008. North of the Bay area to Canada, things are not quite as awful. From 2000-2008 the population here suffered a 34% decline. Fish and Wildlife estimates there’s 18,000 birds remaining in all three states.

“Overwhelming evidence shows marbled murrelets are in deep trouble in Washington, Oregon and California, and we cannot deny them the protection they need,” says Tom Strickland of the Interior Department. “This decision strongly reflects the Obama administration’s deep commitment to basing ESA decisions on the best available science.”

Loss of habitat to logging is only one of the pressures faced by this small bird. They also suffer from high rates of predation, harmful algae blooms, and a decreasing quality in the types of food they eat.

The marbled murrelet nearly lost protections during the Bush Administration. In 2004, the agency released a report saying that even though they were declining along the West Coast, there were still plenty of them left in British Columbia. The claim was made that the two populations were basically the same, so the American birds didn’t warrant special protection.

It was that finding that led to the recent delisting petition filed by the timber industry.

In today’s announcement, the Fish and Wildlife Service says the 2004 Bush-era review was wrong. “We believe the analysis in 2004 was fundamentally flawed,” according to Pacific Region Director Robyn Thorson. “The petitioners’ arguments for delisting are based on that flawed
analysis.”

Fish and Wildlife now concludes the West Coast population qualifies as a distinct population segment, or DPS, for three reasons.

    * The West Coast population is much smaller than the Canadian population, 18,000 versus 66,000.
    * Marbled murrelets in Oregon, Washington and California have far lower success at breeding.
    * There are big enough differences in the amount of habitat, the rate of habitat loss and regulations between the two countries.