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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to finalize Endangered Species Act protections for California spotted owls it proposed in 2023

The Center for Biological Diversity, represented by Earthjustice, brings this action under the federal Endangered Species Act to compel the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take the statutorily required action of making a final determination on the proposed listing of two distinct population segments of the California spotted owl occurring in California and Nevada as endangered and threatened species.

The California spotted owl is the last of four native Sierra Nevada species to receive Endangered Species Act protection in the culmination of a 30-year legal fight.

Agreement leads federal agency to implement some safeguards

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will protect the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act. The owls have seen their numbers dwindle because of logging and climate change, among other threats.

Lawsuit Challenges Trump Administration’s Refusal to Protect California Spotted Owl

Administration denies protections by denying their own scientific assessment

We are writing on behalf of Sierra Forest Legacy, a project of the Tides Center; Center for Biological Diversity; and Defenders of Wildlife to notify you of violations of Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”), 16 U.S.C. § 1533, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“Service”) in determining that listing the California spotted owl under the ESA is not warranted. See 84 Fed. Reg. 60371 (Nov. 8, 2019). This letter is provided pursuant to the sixty-day notice requirement of the citizen suit provision of the ESA, 16 U.S.C. § 1540(g).

Conservation groups file a formal notice of intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over its failure to protect the endangered owl

The California spotted owl, a cousin of its more famous cousin, the northern spotted owl, has declined in numbers as logging has accelerated in the national forests of southern California and the Sierra Nevada. Earthjustice brought a series of lawsuits aimed at forcing the U.S. Forest Service to adopt meaningful protections for the owl’s old…

Bush administration increases logging and ignores science