Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Grazing Plan Spurs Lawsuit

By Tania Soussan
Journal Staff Writer

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a Forest Service livestock grazing plan that harms threatened Mexican spotted owls in New Mexico and Arizona, environmental and hunting groups alleged in a lawsuit Monday.
The suit, filed in federal court in Tucson by a coalition of 12 groups, is one of the largest ever against public lands grazing in the West.
Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Vicki Fox said she hadn't seen the suit and could not comment.
Forest Guardians and the other groups want the court to order the Fish and Wildlife Service to do a new consultation on owl protection with the Forest Service.
The case still is about more than the spotted owl, said John Horning, director of Santa Fe-based Forest Guardians.
"It's about the Forest Service's failure on a regional level to comply with standards that ought to ensure protection of sensitive fish and wildlife habitat and clean water," he said. "It's really about sound grazing management."
Mexican spotted owl habitat includes about 13 million acres of national forest land in the Southwest. Most of the important habitat in New Mexico is in the Lincoln and Gila national forests.
This is the second time environmental groups have sued to enforce 1996 Forest Service standards that require the agency to protect sensitive wildlife by monitoring and preventing damage from livestock grazing.
A federal judge in late 2002 ordered the Forest Service to halt grazing on hundreds of thousands of acres where owls hunt and nest until it completed a new consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The agencies completed the consultation— a process required by the Endangered Species Act— before the judge's order went into effect.
The groups filing the suit include the Wildlife Federation, Gila Watch, Carson Forest Watch, Animal Protection of New Mexico and the Southwest Environmental Center.