The Southwest Washington PIEC recently developed a useful matrix outlining FS and BLM current public comment opportunities. The matrix lists proposed actions, Federal Register publication dates, comment periods, addresses for comments, and some additional information. The following proposed actions are covered in the matrix:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will settle a lawsuit that was brought by American Forest Resource Council (AFRC) and others by reviewing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings and critical habitat designations for the northern spotted owl and the marbled murrelet. AFRC and others are challenging the protected status of the owls and murrelets on the basis that FWS has not conducted the 5-year status review required for ESA-listed species. According to the settlement, FWS will complete a status review of the two species by the end of this year, and revisit the critical habitat designation for the spotted owl by December 2005 and for the murrelet by August 2006. Click here to read the spotted owl settlement. Click here to read the marbled murrelet settlement.  Although this has been submitted to the court, a final agreement has yet to be accepted. For more information, contact Jay Watson (503) 808-2178.

The 2002 Annual Species Review (ASR) of Survey & Manage (S&M) species has been completed. The ASR is an adaptive management provision for the S&M program. Its purpose is to evaluate new information that has accumulated on individual species and serve as the mechanism by which species are added to or removed from the S&M list, or moved between S&M categories. Following is a summary of the 2002 ASR results:

For more information, contact Jay Watson, (503) 808-2178

The Aquatic Conservation Strategy SEIS is proceeding on a rapid schedule, though the initial Draft release date of February 28, 2003 has been moved to March. IAC members will receive a copy of the Draft upon its release, and will have an opportunity to discuss it with the ACS SEIS team during the April 1 IAC pre-brief. The ACS SEIS team has prepared a series of briefing papers summarizing the ACS SEIS efforts to date. These are available on the REO website at http://www.reo.gov/acs.

The agencies continue to move forward with implementation of the S&M mitigation measures of the NWFP, as amended in January 2001. At the same time, on October 21, 2002, the FS and BLM published a Notice of Intent to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) to remove the S&M measures from the NWFP and instead rely on other elements of the NWFP and existing FS Sensitive Species and BLM Special Status Species programs to provide habitat for rare or little-known species. The scoping period for the SEIS closed on November 20, 2002. The SEIS Team is currently in the process of preparing an SEIS that will analyze three alternatives. The draft is expected to be available for public comment in May.