Rare, Tree-dwelling Seabirds Survive Timber Industry Attacks
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Center for Biological Diversity
April 2013

The judge ruled in a lawsuit spurred by a proposal by the timber industry to remove protections - the industry's third try in the past decade to toss out murrelet protections so that it can increase logging of forests more than 100 years old.

Marbled murrelet, threatened seabirds that nest in coastal old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, kept their protections this week after a Washington, D.C., district court ruled against eliminating their federally protected "critical habitat" and remove Endangered Species Act protections they've had since 1992.

marbled murrelet habitat

The judge ruled in a lawsuit spurred by a proposal by the timber industry to remove protections - the industry's third try in the past decade to toss out murrelet protections so that it can increase logging of forests more than 100 years old. This is despite undisputed scientific evidence that murrelets are disappearing from the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California. The Center for Biological Diversity has been fighting to protect murrelets since 2005, and we were one of several environmental groups defending the murrelets in the latest timber industry case.

"This industry assault ignores the biological reality that murrelets in our region continue to struggle to survive," said the Center's Endangered Species Director Noah Greenwald.

"Without old-growth forest protection, these beautiful birds will disappear from our coast." 


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