Timber group sues to have protection
for rare marbled murrelets lifted

by Jim Scarborough
Thursday, March 16, 2007



The American Forest Resource Council (AFRC), a timber industry front group whose mission is to extract as many trees as possible from our public forests, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government in an attempt to remove Endangered Species Act protections from the marbled murrelet. The murrelet, a mysterious seabird in the same family as puffins, nests in older forests in Western Washington. It is presently hanging on by a thread in the lower 48 states and, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is also on the decline in coastal Alaska and British Columbia.

The murrelet's legally threatened status is the primary reason why the Forest Service no longer designs old-growth timber sales on the Olympic National Forest. Delisting the murrelet would cause tremendous upheaval in the management of national forests across the Pacific Northwest, and could well usher in another chapter in the so-called "war in the woods." OFCO will be monitoring this situation closely. There is great concern that the Bush administration quietly invited this lawsuit for the purpose of later "settling" with AFRC out of court, by way of subsequently delisting the murrelet.

Read more about AFRC's greed-fueled legal plotting in the SeattlePI.com site:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.