Exhibit A
Political Interference and Manipulation of the Best Available Science in Developing the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan
Chronology of Manipulation and Interference
April 2006: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) assembled a multi-stakeholder recovery team, consisting of state, federal, tribal, timber industry, and conservation representatives. The team operated under a charter that called for making decisions by consensus. The composition of the recovery team was unconventional, as it did not include any well-published spotted owl scientists from academia or government, as has been the norm in past recovery teams.
September 21: After five months and 30 meetings, the recovery team authorized the Interagency Support Team (IST - composed of federal agency staff members assigned to assist in the development of the recovery plan) to finish writing the draft recovery plan and send it to FWS headquarters in Washington DC for agency review. Although all members are professional scientists, only one is widely regarded as a spotted owl expert.
There was agreement by all members that the recovery strategy should be based on fixed late-successional reserves (LSRs) linked to the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Scientific assessments conducted in 1990, 1992, 1993, and 2004 all concluded that this reserve-based management strategy is the most scientifically credible approach for recovering the threatened Northern Spotted Owl.
September 27: Dave Wesley, Deputy Regional Director of the FWS and recovery team leader, notified the recovery team of the existence of an "Oversight Committee," consisting of federal government officials that would review and revise the draft recovery plan. A memo distributed to the recovery team by the FWS Pacific Region office on October 27 listed the following members of the Oversight Committee:
* Lynn Scarlett, Deputy Secretary of Interior
* Jim Cason, Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Interior
* David Verhy, Assistant Secretary for Parks, Fish and Wildlife
* Julie McDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary For Parks, Fish and Wildlife
* David Bernhardt, Solicitor to Secretary of Interior
* Kathleen Clarke, Director, BLM
* Jim Hughes, Deputy Director of BLM
* Julie Jacobson, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Lands and Minerals, USDI
* Ed Shepard, BLM
* Dale Hall, Director, Fish and Wildlife Service
* Mark Rey, Undersecretary of Agriculture
* Dave Tenney, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture
* Fred Norburry, Assoc. Deputy Chief, Forest Service
Mr. Wesley described "very difficult discussions" he had with the Oversight Committee the previous week, and warned that the recovery team's product might not be well received. Recovery plan project manager Paul Phifer (FWS) told the recovery team that the Oversight Committee might order plan revisions that would be unacceptable to the team, and that the recovery team would not be in a position to negotiate. The draft recovery plan was forwarded to FWS headquarters (and thence to the Oversight Committee) for review on September 29.
October 6: Dave Wesley and FWS Pacific Region director Ren Lohoefener briefed the Oversight Committee in Washington D.C. The Oversight Committee made it clear that the recovery team's draft was unacceptable, and ordered the FWS Pacific Region office to extensively revise the draft recovery plan and to develop one or more alternative plans that would not rely on mapped habitat reserves.
October 17: Ren Lohoefener notified the recovery team that the September 29 draft was not acceptable to the Oversight Committee. He asked the recovery team to reconvene and to develop alternatives or "options" for the recovery plan based on the "Oversight Committee's directives." Mr. Lohoefener reported that the Oversight Committee objected to the draft plan because it was based on a mapped reserve system, and was therefore too "restrictive" for the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM). A majority of the recovery team members objected to this new direction, citing the lack of a sound scientific foundation for a recovery strategy that excludes mapped reserves. Mr. Lohoefener stated that the recovery team was expected to obey the Oversight Committee ("we are working for the Secretary of Interior"), and offered to arrange for a coach from the Oversight Committee to attend recovery team meetings, to ensure that the team did not deviate from Oversight Committee's directives.
October 18: The recovery team received written directions stemming from the Oversight Committee meetings, instructing the recovery team to conduct a "reorganization and emphasis rewrite" of the September 29 draft recovery plan, and to develop new options for a recovery plan that would exclude the use of mapped habitat reserves. The directions specified that the reorganized, rewritten draft should:
* "Emphasize the new science...and de-emphasize the past." The intent of this instruction was to downplay the vast body of scientific evidence demonstrating the spotted owl's association with old-growth forests and rely instead on a few recently published papers suggesting that a mix of old growth and forest openings in the southern end of the owl's range provides better habitat. These recent publications are being used to justify a reduction in old-growth habitat range-wide, despite the authors' warnings not to base management decisions on their conclusions.
* "Clarify language relating to the Northwest Forest Plan, with emphasis on Forest Service and BLM Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMPs) revisions." This was apparently a reference to attempts by the Bush Administration to dissociate the recovery plan from the NWFP. More elaborate instructions were given to the recovery team in a memo that followed on October 25.
* "State the plan's recognition of management flexibility, including the potential for a mosaic approach." This directive essentially instructs the recovery team to recognize the validity of wildlife conservation strategies that do not make use of fixed reserves. These are often called "shifting mosaic" strategies. The recovery team had the opportunity to adopt this approach early in the recovery planning process, but chose instead to base the spotted owl recovery strategy on the more scientifically credible mapped reserve model. This instruction was a clear attempt by the Oversight Committee to ignore the preponderance of scientific evidence and force the recovery team to base its recovery strategy on untested assumptions.
The written directions went on to describe in more detail the additional options the recovery team was directed to develop, both of which "eliminate the MOCA [i.e. mapped reserve] concept." Finally, the directions stated the expectation that the Oversight Committee would closely supervise the recovery team: "Reasonable coordination with decision-makers [i.e. the Oversight Committee] will help ensure the team is having the desired discussions."
October 19: The FWS Pacific Region Office recommended "the [recovery] team no longer make decisions by consensus" and notified the team of the need to "ensure we are exploring the options described by the decision makers." This clearly indicated that the recovery team was no longer in charge of developing the recovery strategy.
October 26-27: In a recovery team meeting in Portland, Ren Lohoefener admitted that the Forest Service and BLM were driving the recovery plan revisions demanded by the Oversight Committee, and stated that the end product would have to be flexible enough "to be acceptable to the Forest Service and BLM." Dave Wesley revealed that at the October 6 Oversight Committee meeting, he was told to "remember that this is a Bush plan, not a Clinton plan." Both Dave Wesley and Cal Joyner, the Forest Service representative on the recovery team, explained that the "flexibility" demanded by the Oversight Committee was intended to give the Forest Service and BLM the discretion to unilaterally alter or eliminate MOCAs [reserves] from the recovery plan. Mr. Joyner admitted that the Oversight Committee was actually telling the recovery team to reduce protection for the spotted owl, not merely provide more flexibility for managers.
Documents distributed to the recovery team at this meeting provided greater detail regarding the demands of the Oversight Committee. The directions specified that the recovery team should "flip and switch" the structure of the draft recovery plan, and include the following revisions:
* Downplay the threats posed by habitat loss and emphasize the role of the barred owl as the highest priority threat to spotted owls. Although the Recovery Team's September 29 draft identified both threats as equally important, these documents gave specific instructions to "summarize the habitat threats discussion into less than a page" in the final recovery plan.
* Avoid references to the Northwest Forest Plan in the recovery plan. Refer only to National Forest and BLM Land and Resource Management Plans throughout the revised recovery plan. These documents leave little doubt that the intent of the Oversight Committee is to set the stage for broad-scale changes in the LRMPs on National Forests and BLM lands, to meet the provisions of the global settlement agreement with the timber industry. It should be noted that on December 15, 2006 the U.S. Forest Service adopted a new regulation exempting its LRMPs from environmental and public review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). (Federal Register Vol. 71, No. 241, Friday, December 15, 2006, pp 75481-75495.)
* Develop a recovery plan option that would not include a provision for mapped habitat reserves or minimum amounts of habitat. This directive reflects attempts by the Oversight Committee to shift the conservation focus away from protection of spotted owl habitat in mapped reserves, and to permit the federal land management agencies to revise their land and resource management plans to allow accelerated logging of old-growth forests.
One of the documents distributed to the recovery team at the October 26-28 meeting contains specific instructions from Deputy Secretary of Interior Lynn Scarlett to "start with newer science...de-emphasize the reference to the NWFP" and to make the new recovery plan option "less focused on habitat preservation."
November 9: The IST completed preliminary revisions of the draft recovery plan to comply with the Oversight Committee's directives. This included both the reorganized reserve-based option (Option 1) and a new proposal for an option without mapped reserves (Option 2). Both of the new options downplayed the threats to the spotted owl caused by loss of habitat. Both gave broad discretion to the Forest Service and BLM to alter or eliminate mapped reserves designated by the recovery team.
December 15: The recovery team was notified that henceforth, the Oversight Committee would be "directing the approach," and that much of the guidance would be new. This apparently was a reference to the Oversight Committee's continued dissatisfaction with the level of habitat protection in both options proposed by the IST and FWS regional office. Furthermore, due to the increasing involvement by the Oversight Committee and the reduced authority of the recovery team, the FWS proposed that the recovery team be relegated to an "advisory role" only.
Mid-January, 2007: Lynn Scarlett, Deputy Secretary of Interior, for the third time gave new direction to recovery team leader Dave Wesley, stating that the IST, and not the recovery team, would develop the next draft of the recovery plan. A memo from Mr. Wesley to the recovery team acknowledged the new level of guidance being received "from DC" and noted that the "IST will be consulting with the Forest Service and BLM to ensure we address their concerns."
January 16: The recovery team obtained a memo written by the Regional Forester of the Forest Service and the Oregon State Director of the BLM and passed through Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior Julie Jacobson, which directed that "the RP [recovery plan]...must also provide a reasonable level of flexibility to enable the agencies to continue to adapt and revise land use plans." The memo directed the IST to write a recovery plan that would:
* Eliminate any provisions specifying minimum amounts of habitat that must be maintained at the regional or physiographic province scale to provide for spotted owls.
* Not assume continued management of the federal lands according to the NWFP.
* "De-link" recovery actions and Late Successional Reserves from the NWFP.
* Re-evaluate any owl conservation element of the NWFP "based on current knowledge of threats to ensure continued applicability."
* Assume that all federal lands "will continue to contribute to recovery," but recognize that "the amount and locations of such habitats will vary over time based on implementation of land use plans."
Events between mid-December and mid-January made it clear that the Forest Service and BLM, and not the FWS, were in charge of the recovery plan. Not only was the recovery team relieved of its authority to decide the content of the recovery plan, but also the FWS was put in a position of taking orders from the Forest Service and BLM at both the regional and national levels. Essentially, the FWS was being directed to ensure that the recovery plan would not interfere with LRMP revisions. By stripping mapped reserves and minimum habitat acreages out of the draft recovery plan, the Forest Service and BLM would no longer have to commit to maintaining old-growth forest habitat for spotted owls at the levels mandated by the NWFP. The order to dissociate the recovery plan from the NWFP could trigger unsustainable logging that led to the listing of the spotted owl as a threatened species in the first place. Notably, one of the primary reasons for listing the species was "inadequacy of regulatory mechanisms."
January 18: The recovery team was informed that IST would write the next draft of the plan to include both revised options 1 and 2, incorporating the instructions from the Forest Service and BLM as described above. The recovery team insisted again that scientific peer review be conducted and the results incorporated into the recovery plan. The FWS responded that there was not sufficient time to conduct a peer review before the publication of the draft plan in the Federal Register.
February 2: The recovery team was notified that the FWS would no longer ask for consensus, or even a vote, on the content of the draft plan. FWS confirmed that the recovery team was officially in an advisory role only.
February 7: The recovery team was instructed that it was no longer operating under consensus and would henceforth be responding directly to the Washington DC Oversight Committee and the Secretary of Interior. Ren Lohoefener advised the recovery team not to spend additional time on Option 1, as it was the "majority opinion of the Oversight Committee that Option 2 [the option with no mapped reserves and no minimum required amounts of spotted owl habitat] is preferred." He also revealed that the Oversight Committee was "responding to outside influences." In response to questions from the recovery team, Mr. Lohoefener stated that these outside influences included the timber industry and environmental groups. Upon further questioning, however, he admitted that he knew of no environmental groups consulted by the Oversight Committee during the recovery planning process.
March 2: The Recovery team was notified that a rewritten draft recovery plan, including both options, would be forwarded to the Oversight Committee on March 5. At this point the FWS would not commit to sending both options out for public review, citing "uncertainty" about decisions the Oversight Committee might make. The recovery team once again pressed the FWS to begin the peer review process, but the FWS resisted. After a long and contentious discussion, the FWS committed only to appoint two staff members to begin developing a "plan" to start the peer review process.
March 8: Ren Lohoefener reported that the regional office of the FWS sent the most recent draft of the recovery plan to the Oversight Committee on March 5. Thus the Oversight Committee received a single document containing two options, primarily written by the IST at the direction of the Oversight Committee rather than by the recovery team. In summary, the alternatives in this document were:
1. Option 1: An extensively re-organized and rewritten version of the draft recovery plan submitted by the recovery team in late September 2006. This new version reflected the changes ordered by the Oversight Committee, which included downplaying threats to the spotted owl caused by habitat loss, exaggerating the relative level of threat posed by the barred owl, nearly eliminating references to the Northwest Forest Plan, and allowing broad discretion for the Forest Service and BLM to eliminate or alter mapped reserve boundaries.
2. Option 2: This alternative also downplayed threats caused by habitat loss and dissociated itself from the NWFP, but it also eliminated all mapped reserves, did not contain any thresholds for minimum amounts of habitat at the regional or provincial scale, and it and gave complete authority to the Forest Service and BLM to decide the size, spacing, and locations of places to mange for the recovery of the spotted owl. Notably, recovery plans are supposed to be based on "measurable, objective criteria" before a species can be considered for delisting.
March 19: Dave Wesley forwarded to the recovery team an update from Ren Lohoefener, who stated that the March 5 draft had been reviewed by the Oversight Committee, which decided to publish both options for public review. FWS tentatively expressed the intent to have a 60-day public comment period, and four public hearings in the three-state region, although several recovery team members pressed for an extension that was denied.
April 25: Two days before the release of the final draft recovery plan, the recovery team was notified that the FWS had enlisted the assistance of two professional societies to conduct the formal peer review of the draft.
April 27: The draft recovery plan approved by the Oversight Committee was released for a 60-day public comment period. The FWS held a press conference to announce the release of the plan and to answer questions from the news media. The press release and other materials distributed to reporters by the FWS did not mention anything about the Oversight Committee or its role in the development of the draft recovery plan. Upon further questioning from the press, Mr. Lohoefener would not reveal the make up of the Oversight Committee (this was referred to Hugh Vickery, a spokesman for the Interior Department) nor could he remember who came up with Option 2.
