Guardians and allies called on the U.S. Forest Service to revise a logging plan that threatens the imperiled Mexican spotted owl and New Mexico meadow jumping mouse.
New Mexico’s Lincoln National Forest is a stronghold for Mexican spotted owls, which thrive in areas with large, old conifer trees. The Service is planning to log more than 54,000 acres of the forest and remove limits on cutting large-diameter trees. Logging could include the territories of 80 breeding owl pairs. Logging equipment also destroys the habitat of the critically endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse.
Additionally, the project calls for using toxic herbicides on 140,000 acres of public lands and building 125 miles of new roads across steep mountain slopes, further harming owl habitat and destroying water quality in the area.
Read the press release.
