Biden administration: Trump-era stripping of owl protections based on ‘faulty’ science interpretation

The Biden administration is restoring habitat protections for the northern spotted owl — saying that its predecessor relied on a “faulty” interpretation of science to remove such protections. 

The administration on Tuesday withdrew a Trump-era determination that would have excluded more than 3 million acres of protected habitat for the owl.

Northern spotted owls are brown birds with white spots that can be found in the Pacific Northwest. They’re considered threatened by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). 

The agency in January — in the final days of the Trump administration — decided to exclude nearly 3.5 million acres of owl habitat from protection, which would have opened it up for timber industry use. 

The Biden administration pulled that rule, and argued that its predecessor relied in part on a “faulty interpretation of the science.”

Specifically, it said that the agency’s former director “overestimated” the likelihood that the owl population would persist into the foreseeable future if large swaths of its habitat were opened up to the timber industry. 

It said that this failure to recognize that spotted owl populations are declining “precipitously” because of both habitat loss and competition with another species and that the only way to halt this is to both manage threats from the other creatures and conserve enough connected “high-quality habitat.” 

It also said that the move, to cut 36 percent of the owl’s protected habitat, would have represented a “significant portion of the subspecies’ most important remaining habitat.”

But top Trump officials pushed back on the assertion of a “faulty” interpretation. 

“As a lawyer and biologist, I use sound science and operate within the rule of law for all my decisions. It is easy for biased individuals to say negative things about science when they do not get the outcome they want,” Aurelia Skipwith, who led the FWS at the time, told The Hill in an email. 

Meanwhile, former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt argued that his department’s action was legal, pointing to part of the Endangered Species Act that allows for some discretion unless failure to protect an area will result in species extinction. 

“The comment about faulty interpretation of science is false. This is a question of law, informed by science,” Bernhardt said via email. 

“Any future Secretary can weigh the benefit factors differently, but they can not change the law or the legal standard. The current exclusion is consistent with the existing law,” he added. 

The Biden administration previously delayed the Trump-era determination from taking effect and previously proposed withdrawing it in July.