PORTLAND, Ore.— The Center for Biological Diversity sent a notice today to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of its intent to sue the agencies for approving a logging project in western Oregon that will destroy and fragment the mature and old-growth forests needed by marbled murrelets. These forest-nesting seabirds are protected as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

The Big Weekly Elk project authorizes roughly 3,600 acres of logging in Coos County, Oregon, including cutting down mature and old-growth trees. The entire project lies within the range of the marbled murrelet.

“This logging project is an absolute disaster for marbled murrelets. It’s decimating the forests where these fragile, far-flying seabirds live and raise chicks,” said Lia Comerford, a senior attorney at the Center. “In allowing these old trees to be chopped down, federal officials are abandoning the public lands and wildlife protections they agreed to, including safeguarding murrelets. We won’t let it happen without a fight.”

In 2016 the Bureau adopted new management plans for nearly 2.5 million acres in western Oregon that were designed to significantly increase logging while providing protections, comparable to the Northwest Forest Plan, for murrelets and other animals and plants that rely on mature and old-growth forests. The Service relied on these protections in determining that the 2016 revisions would not drive murrelets closer to extinction.

In Big Weekly Elk, however, the Bureau has abandoned key protections for marbled murrelets provided by the plans, including no longer buffering all known murrelet sites or surveying all nesting habitat that might be affected by logging, meaning there will be less occupied sites discovered and protected. The Service determined the project not likely to jeopardize murrelets despite the weakened protections.

As the Bureau continues implementing its 2016 plans with weakened murrelet protections, the Trump administration recently announced plans to again revise the agency’s land management plan for western Oregon. This time Trump intends to scrap nearly all restrictions on logging. The administration is also working on a revision to the Northwest Forest Plan to allow more logging on U.S. Forest Service lands across Oregon, Washington and California.

“Trump’s scheme to increase logging in the Pacific Northwest would spell the end of America’s magnificent old-growth forests,” said Comerford. “The timber industry gets richer while these logging projects drive species to extinction, increase fire danger and worsen the climate crisis. This administration is like a runaway train, and we’re going to do everything we can to pump the emergency brakes.”

Marbled murrelets are small, diving seabirds that forage in near-shore, coastal waters and breed in mature and old-growth forests of northern California, Oregon and Washington. During the breeding season, murrelets make daily flights of up to 55 miles inland to feed their young.

They nest in small depressions or cups made of moss or other debris on large branches or suitable platforms high in large trees. More than a century of logging has decimated the murrelet’s nesting habitat. By 2017, only about 7% of forests in the murrelet’s U.S. range supported nesting habitat for the species and much of what is left is fragmented.