** Trump officials ignored science when they cut spotted owl habitat
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Thursday, November 11, 2021
Northern spotted owls are native to the Pacific Northwest, Frank D. Lospalluto ([link removed]) , Flickr ([link removed])

The Trump administration stripped habitat protections for the northern spotted owl—opening millions of acres of forest in the West to logging and all but guaranteeing the owl's demise. Now, the Biden administration is restoring those protections, because the Trump rollback was based on 'faulty' science ([link removed]) .

The Biden administration made a Trump-era U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service memo public, showing that agency staffers warned Trump's political appointees that the dramatic loss of habitat protections would lead to the owl's extinction ([link removed]) .

"If DOI excludes the large amount of critical habitat … and this exclusion leads to subsequent habitat management on these lands that is inconsistent with the current [federal] land management plans, it is my opinion it will preclude the recovery of the [northern spotted owl]. Most scientists (myself included) would conclude that such an outcome will, therefore, result in the eventual extinction of the listed subspecies," USFWS biologist Paul Henson wrote in a Dec. 9, 2020 email. ([link removed])

Still, former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt defended his decision to remove protections for 3.4 million acres of owl habitat. Bernhardt told the Associated Press ([link removed]) that the agency’s “reasonable certainty” the owl would go extinct did not match the legal requirement that habitat be protected lest a species “will” go extinct.

The Biden administration will restore protections for roughly 9.4 million acres ([link removed]) of critical habitat for the owl. That's 204,294 acres less than the original designation. The amount of habitat protected for the owl has flip-flopped based on who is in the White House since 1992, when 6.9 million acres of critical habitat for the owl was protected under George H.W. Bush.
Quick hits


** Biden won't reduce livestock numbers to address methane problem
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Iowa Capital Dispatch ([link removed])


** Idaho lawmakers want public lands appraised, so they can ask the federal government to pay taxes
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Associated Press ([link removed])


** How Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is influenced by history
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History Channel ([link removed])


** New Mexico wants to be the country's hydrogen capital
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C ([link removed]) apital & Main ([link removed])


** Sequoia National Park to partially reopen, as KNP Complex wildfire continues to burn
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Los Angeles Times ([link removed])


** In a first, timber poachers identified using tree DNA
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N ([link removed]) ew York Times ([link removed])


** Companies capitalize on cheap methane to mine bitcoin on Navajo Nation
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V ([link removed]) ice ([link removed])


** Government report says outdoor industry lost money during COVID. But did it?
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Colorado Sun ([link removed])
Quote of the day
You promised to address the climate crisis with the urgency it deserves... Selling more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas development just days after the international climate talks makes a mockery of those commitments.”
— Over 250 environmental, religious and Indigenous groups in a letter to President Biden, E ([link removed]) &E News ([link removed])
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** @ ([link removed]) I ([link removed]) nterior ([link removed])
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For the Huna Tlingit, @GlacierBayNPS ([link removed]) is a place for reconnection with the lifeways, knowledge, and ancestors of the past. For centuries this ancestral homeland has provided the Tlingit an abundance of resources from both the land and sea.

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