ARIZONA DAILY STAR: Fri., April 14, 2006
Bird loses status as protected
By Tony Davis
The U.S. government pulled the pygmy owl from the endangered species list Thursday, ending nearly a decade of federal regulation of Northwest Side development but opening the door for more lawsuits over the tiny bird's legal status.
The Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it would no longer protect the owl under the Endangered Species Act after concluding the loss of the bird's small Arizona population wouldn't significantly affect the survival of its entire subspecies, which dips well south into Mexico.
Environmentalists said they would continue fighting in the courts and by other legal means to keep the bird protected in Arizona. Even the service refused to rule out the possibility that the bird could be ultimately relisted under a separate, future action. The delisting of the pygmy owl goes into effect in 30 days.
The decision will remove a key layer of federal regulation that was delaying construction of more than a half-dozen Northwest Side projects and would have required setting aside up to 80% of the project land as open space for the owl. It will also end the need for federal review of zoning approvals from Pima County or Marana governments. In the past, 17 such projects have had to undergo reviews lasting up to two years.
The FWS review determined that it could not prove that the Arizona population — 20 known birds last year — contributed significantly to the entire cactus ferruginous pygmy owl subspecies, which also lives in Texas and in both eastern and western Mexico. The small Arizona population isn't enough by itself to qualify those birds for endangered status under 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals standards from a 2003 decision, the service said.
I n a written statement, the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association's chief executive said the service's decision was long overdue, based on the 2003 court ruling and what it said was nine years of scientific data and research.
The decision is fair and reasonable, "based on facts, not emotions," said Ed Taczanowsky, SAHBA's executive vice president. "Now that the federal government has made its final ruling, we consider this issue to be over and will direct our attention to other development-policy issues in Southern Arizona."
SAHBA's lawsuit, filed in 2000, led directly to the federal court ruling that spurred Thursday's FWS decision. The owl's listing itself was a product of a lawsuit, filed in the 1990s by what is now called the Center for Biological Diversity.
The center's David Hogan said Thursday that the group would sue and take other legal steps if necessary to keep the listing alive. The Defenders of Wildlife said it, too, will keep fighting for the owl, although it said it wasn't ready to say how.