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Local group among 18 suing to protect northern goshawk By PAUL FATTIG The Williams-based Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center has joined 18 other environmental groups in suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in an effort to place the northern goshawk on the endangered species list. The coalition of conservation groups unsuccessfully petitioned the agency in 1991 and 1996. The coalition filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland Thursday in an attempt to have the agency's decision overruled. "The history of this case is so outrageous that the judge is tempted to get it all over with and order it protected outright," said Kieran Suckling, of the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, the group spearheading the lawsuit. In both previous cases, environmentalists also filed lawsuits and won court orders to force the Fish and Wildlife Service to review the status of the goshawk in Western states and determine whether it qualified as endangered. But the agency has consistently refused to endorse the goshawk for the protected status. "The information that was looked at out there indicated there was not sufficient evidence to warrant the bird's listing," said Monty Knudsen, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist who led the latest 12-month study of the bird. The goshawk is a large bird from the hawk and eagle family that lives primarily in old-growth forests, where its short, broad wings and long tail enable it to deftly dodge branches and brush while chasing down other birds and small mammals. Although its populations in the Western states are more robust than in the East, environmentalists say the raptor is in rapid decline in the West, mainly because of commercial logging. By some estimates, each pair of nesting goshawks requires nearly 6,000 acres of forest to feed and rear its young. In Oregon, there are about 300 nesting pairs, said Suckling. While conceding that goshawks nest only in mature forests, fish and wildlife officials say their studies have found that the raptor is a far-ranging bird that does not need old-growth forests to survive. "It's a rare bird; it always has been," Knudsen said. But environmentalists say it is particularly important to protect the goshawk because of its role as an "indicator species," meaning that its survival is proof of an ecosystem's health. "We get much more bang for our buck by protecting one of these keystone species from the strategic perspective that anytime you protect a top-level predator, you are protecting many other species beneath them in the forest," said Spencer Lennard, director of the Klamath Siskiyou Wildlands Center. Lennard said the federal agency buckled under pressure from timber companies that wanted unhindered access to cutting old-growth trees, a claim wildlife officials heatedly deny. "There was no pressure applied to the team to make a decision one way or another," said Knudsen. "I feel confident that the decision was not influenced by any political feelings." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA