Lawsuit Seeks to Protect Habitat for Pacific Forest Bird

HONOLULU, Hawaii, May 25, 2004 (ENS) - Conservationists have filed suit against the Bush administration for violating the federal Endangered Species Act by refusing to establish protected critical habitat areas for the endangered Rota bridled white-eye, a forest bird found only on the western Pacific island of Rota in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

"Without critical habitat in place, there is no way to ensure that the federal government will not destroy the forest habitat the Rota bridled white-eye needs to avoid extinction," said David Henkin, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice, which filed suit in federal district court on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Conservation groups petitioned the federal government to put the white-eye on the endangered list in 1980.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed that the species was declining and, in 1982, with 10,763 birds left in the wild, identified the white-eye as a candidate for listing.

The species continued to decline unprotected for more than two decades until Earthjustice and the Center for Biological Diversity secured a series of court orders forcing the Bush administration finally to list it as an endangered species.

By the time the white-eye was listed as endangered in January 2004, its numbers had declined 90 percent, to 1,092 birds.

In the final listing rule, the Bush administration identified habitat loss and degradation as primary causes of the species' steep decline. But it failed to map out and protect critical habitat areas as required by the Endangered Species Act.

"The Service's refusal to protect the Rota bridled white-eye's critical habitat illegally undermines a fundamental goal of the Endangered Species Act," Henkin said, "to protect the ecosystems on which endangered species depend for their continued survival and eventual recovery."