'Faulty' science used by Trump appointees to cut owl habitat

[left-of-center2012]

Source: AP

Political appointees in the Trump administration relied on faulty science to justify stripping habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl, U.S. wildlife officials said Tuesday as they struck down a rule that would have opened millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed a decision made five days before President Donald Trump left office to drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl. The small, reclusive bird has been in decline for decades as old-growth forests were cut in Oregon, Washington and California.

Government biologists objected to the changes under Trump and warned they would put the spotted owl on a path to extinction, documents show. But Trump’s Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith dismissed those concerns — instead adopting a plan to lift restrictions on more land than even the timber industry had sought.

Bernhardt defended his handling of the matter, saying that Congress gave the interior secretary authority to exclude areas from protection. Bernhardt said the agency’s “reasonable certainty” the owl would go extinct did not match the law’s requirement that habitat be protected lest a species “will” go extinct.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/science-business-california-forests-oregon-48c1dc3a59bda47c178437d6b1e538bd

[Champp]

1. Republicans don't have to lie about everything

But they do. Over and over and over.

It's kinda demonic to lie that much, many people say.

[Bayard]

2. Faulty science

How about fabricated science? Probably thinking--spotted owl? I heard they taste like chicken.

[sakabatou]

3. Dump: the quicker fucker upper.

[Submariner]

4. Objective: drastically shrink so-called critical habitat for the spotted owl

so that the forest can be clear cut and raped of its timber by the anti-science illiterates we unfortunately have to share our everyday habitat with.

This kind of radical far right wing decision making is mass murder of the environment. There is no excuse for this except greed on a grand scale.

As well as being disastrous for the owl, this would be just as tragic for the wild salmon populations in forest streams that are already devastated.

[secondwind]

5. Between logging and forest fires, this little owl will need all the help it can get....

[PoliticAverse]

6. Who who who would do such a thing?? n/t