U.S. Sets Larger Preserve for Spotted Owl : Nature: The timber industry and environmentalists assail plan to designate 11.6 million acres in Northwest for endangered species.

Under orders from a federal district judge in Seattle, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday it will designate 11.6 million acres of forest in the Pacific Northwest as “critical habitat” for the endangered northern spotted owl.

The decision, the latest in a long-running struggle between the timber industry and environmentalists, drew polarized reactions from forces representing jobs and economic interests on the one hand and efforts to save the owl and ancient forests on the other.

Industry officials estimated that the plan would cost 100,000 jobs in Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. But a Sierra Club official also denounced the plan--calling it inadequate because it does not ban logging outright on the 11.6 million acres and instead leaves industry activity to the discretion of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The plan, to be presented to the court on Monday and officially published in the Federal Register sometime next week, proposes to expand the designated owl habitat by about 4 million acres over an earlier proposal submitted by an interagency scientific committee last year.

But Fish and Wildlife Service and Interior Department officials stressed that the plan, ordered by District Judge Thomas Zilly, is preliminary and subject to substantial change before becoming final late this year.

“We met the court deadline, but a great deal remains to be done,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director John Turner. “We must combine conservation with common sense as we seek to forge a sensible plan that balances protection of the owl with concern for the well-being of the people of the Northwest.”

After the plan is officially published, it will be subject to a 30-day period of public comment before it is revised and subjected to a final round of comment.

While that process goes forward, Turner said he will launch an intensive analysis of the economic cost of protecting the reclusive owl, which nests in hollows of old growth trees.

“We need to cast a much wider net than we’ve been able to so far,” he said. “In particular, we need more time and better information to analyze the impact of this proposal on the economy of the Pacific Northwest.”

He said he will assemble a blue-ribbon panel for “the challenging task of weighing the economic costs with the benefits of designating critical habitat so we can balance all the vital interests at stake.”

In Salem, Ore., Jackie Lang, coordinator of the Oregon Lands Coalition, called the decision another victory by “big money, power-hungry environmental groups . . . trying to throw the equation into disarray. They win by default. They beat us down every time they go to court.”

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) said the new plan would mean the loss of 30,000 jobs. “Most of these lands,” he said, “are second growth timber planted specifically for timber production. This proposal is bad news for the people of the Pacific Northwest.”

The government was placed under a court-ordered deadline when, in the wake of the owl’s addition to the endangered species list, the Sierra Club and several other conservation and environmental groups sued to force designation of critical habitat.

While the Fish and Wildlife Service maintains that the law mandates it to exclude areas covered by the plan if the costs of protection outweigh the benefits, environmentalists maintain that all of the 11.6 million acres should remain off limits to logging.

“We are pleased that they have come up with a finding that more habitat needs to be protected,” said James Blomquist, Washington director of the Sierra Club’s public lands program. “But they don’t seem to think that it is critical to stop logging. Here, they are saying that 11 million acres are necessary to protect the owl from extinction, but they stop short of saying that the habitat should be protected.”

The 7.7-million acres proposed for protection by the interagency scientific committee earlier were virtually all on public lands, but the expanded habitat now being proposed by the Fish and Wildlife Service includes some 3 million acres of privately owned lands.

Of the 11.6 million acres, about 3.2 million are in Northern California, 5.1 million in Oregon and 3.3 million in Washington.

Eventually, the designated critical habitat will become a key element in a plan for the spotted owl’s recovery from the brink of extinction.

Researcher Doug Conner in Seattle contributed to this story.