Arizona’s pygmy owl will once again be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Wednesday that it will list the cactus pygmy owl as an endangered subspecies. The decision comes after an almost 17-year legal battle to restore bird protection.
This pygmy owl is a subspecies of the more widespread ferruginous pygmy owl, a 6- to 7-inch-tall predator found in parts of the Sonoran Desert, southern Texas, and northeastern and northwestern Mexico. In Arizona, the population of non-migratory pygmy owls has declined to the brink of extinction. Currently, the state has the lowest population of the entire territory.
This small bird of prey is intermittently under federal protection. Federal officials said it was “highly likely to become an endangered species in the near future.”
In the last century, it has completely disappeared from areas of Arizona and Texas that were part of its original territory, largely due to urbanization. By 1997, biologists counted only 35 bird populations in Arizona.
That year, the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the subspecies endangered, but house builders pushed back, arguing that the species did not need protection in Arizona to survive, given that it also occurs in Texas and Mexico. The agency canceled the endangered species status in 2006. Conservation groups, including the Center for Biodiversity and Wildlife Advocacy, have petitioned and sued the agency for re-registration.
“The ferocious little cactus iron pygmy owl needs our care and protection, and after a long battle we finally got it,” said Noah Greenwald, director of endangered species at the Center for Biodiversity. “But it shouldn’t have taken this long or required multiple lawsuits to get to this point.”
The nonprofit filed another lawsuit last month, alleging the agency was six months past the legal deadline to list the bird.
Greenwald added that the federal agency was “severely broken” and needed new leadership to “effectively protect species and address the threat of extinction.”
Endangered Species:Four pygmy owls hatch at Phoenix Zoo as part of conservation program
Conservation status and land use
Despite the loss of federal protection, efforts to protect Arizona’s pygmy owl population continue.
The listing of the pygmy owl in 1997 “created uncertainty about where and how[Pima County]will grow,” said Adelita Grijalva, chairman of the Pima County Supervisory Board.
In the early 2000s, regulators created the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a regional plan to balance development with the protection of natural and cultural resources, and a multi-species conservation plan to comply with the Endangered Species Act. The county now owns more than 250,000 acres of unsafe land.
With these plans, designation of the pygmy owl as an endangered species “will not lead to land use wars like there were in the 1990s and early 2000s,” Grijalva added.
“The pygmy owl only joins the list of other endangered species whose habitats are being protected and preserved by the people of Pima County through the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.”
The bird’s range includes Pima, Santa Cruz, Cochise, and Yuma counties, but most observed nests are in Alter Valley northeast of Sasabe, as well as in the Tohono O’odham Nation lands and Abra Valley. The Alter Valley Conservation Alliance, a partnership of ranchers committed to watershed health and good land management practices, has also developed a plan to help strengthen the pygmy owl’s habitat.
The primary habitats for small birds of prey in Arizona are the saguaro and mesquite woodlands.
A USFWS analysis found that the Mexican state of Sonora, which has a larger owl population than Arizona, has seen a “significant decline” in owl populations. The pygmy owl population in Texas is in the high a few hundred and is “somewhat genetically isolated from the rest,” the agency said. This gives this population some resilience. It is estimated that there are “tens of thousands of pygmy owls” in the northeastern and northwestern regions of Mexico.
Defining Important Habitats for Owls
When the species was first listed, the Federal Wildlife Service identified 731,712 acres of land in southern Arizona as important habitat for the pygmy owl, primarily alongside streams, mesquite thickets, forests, and desert scrubland.
The agency said biologists will propose new designated critical habitats “at a later date.”
The designation is a “legal requirement that should not be deferred but may be deferred,” Greenwald told The Republic.
One of the changes that comes with the listing is that the Fish and Wildlife Service will be required to develop a recovery plan for this species. The list also provides additional protection against development in areas where pygmy owls live or are designated as critical habitat, and federal funding for protection is frozen under Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act, he added.
Arizona Game Department opposed It added that it opposed listing it during the public comment period and against “any designation of critical habitat.”
“Critical habitat designations add an undue regulatory burden to the Department and partners in current and future conservation efforts, and increase the regulatory burden on private property owners within designated critical habitat areas,” wrote Clay Crowder, the agency’s deputy director of wildlife management.
Clara Migoya covers environmental issues for the Republic of Arizona and As Central.Send your tips and questions to clara.migoya@arizonarepublic.com.
Environmental reporting at azcentral.com and in the Republic of Arizona is supported by a grant from the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust. Follow The Republic Environmental Reporting Team at environment.azcentral.com and @azcenvironment on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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