Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Group suing U.S.
over isle bird protection

The suit concerns critical habitats
for 17 types of Hawaiian birds listed
as endangered species

---

By Janine Tully
Star-Bulletin

An environmental group is taking the federal government to court for not adequately protecting Hawaiian forest birds threatened with extinction after alerting officials eight years ago.

Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund has filed suit against Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Jamie Clark for failing to designate critical habitats for 17 Hawaiian forest birds listed as endangered species.

The suit, filed yesterday in U.S. District Court on behalf of the Conservation Council for Hawaii, seeks to compel Babbitt and Clark to take action on a 1992 council petition to designate critical habitat for the forest birds found on the islands of Kauai, Maui, Molokai and Hawaii.

"Critical habitats are essential to the survival of these bird species," said Earthjustice attorney John Fritschie. "It supports their basic life functions, feeding habits and shelter."

Barbara Maxfield, acting Pacific Islands manager for Fish and Wildlife Service, acknowledged that the Conservation Council has been requesting a critical habitat designation for several years now, but she said the organization's petition is not a priority. Funds currently available have been earmarked for other court-ordered critical habitat petitions, Maxfield said.

"For fiscal 2001 we have to review 255 species of Hawaiian plants, four species of Hawaiian invertebrates, the Oahu Elepaio (forest bird) and several Guam species," she said.

Fish and Wildlife is required to take action on petitions to designate critical habitats. Yet it has failed to do so on behalf of Conservation Council for Hawaii after already having identified the essential or critical habitat for each of the species in four different recovery plans, according to Earthjustice reports.

Fritschie said the birds were listed as endangered between 1967 and 1975, but all of them remain in peril because of degradation to their environment.

Contributing to the depletion of the birds natural habitat are the loss of native forest, caused by invading foreign plants, and roaming feral pigs, he said.

Fritschie also recommends that Fish and Wildlife adopt more stringent rules when awarding permits involving federal projects in the areas where the birds live.

All Fish and Wildlife needs to do now, Fritschie said, is to publish a proposed rule in the Federal Register formally proposing as critical habitat those areas already determined to be essential for the survival and recovery of these forest birds.

The agency initially indicated it would hire a biologist and "diligently" work on the petition, he said.

But "nothing has happened. If Fish and Wildlife delays an answer on the petition much longer, the only possible response for most of the species soon will be that it is too late because none are left," Fritschie said.