Eight Western lawmakers are calling for a federal review of the Trump administration’s decision to reduce critical habitat protections for the northern spotted owl in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

In a Feb. 2 letter to Mark Lee Greenblatt, the Department of the Interior inspector general, the lawmakers said reducing the owl’s critical habitat designation by 3.4 million acres was “as bewildering as it is damaging.”

The group also suggested former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt acted unilaterally to overrule officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which had previously proposed a much smaller reduction.

“In less than two brief years under Secretary Bernhardt’s leadership, the department has been mired in one ethical scandal after another,” the lawmakers wrote. “Bernhardt and his loyalists have demonstrated a willingness to insert themselves into the scientific process in order to achieve preferred policy outcomes, withhold information from the public, and even mislead Congress.”

The letter was signed by Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray of Washington and Dianne Feinstein of California, as well as Reps. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Jared Huffman of California and Raul Grijalva of Arizona. All are Democrats.

The northern spotted owl was listed in 1990 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, triggering protections in old-growth forests where the birds nest and creating a flashpoint for Oregon’s timber wars.

Initially, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated 6.9 million acres of critical habitat for the spotted owl in 1992. That was decreased to 5.3 million acres in 2008, before jumping to 9.5 million acres under a new recovery plan for the species.

The American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, led a group of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the 2012 rule, which they argued was fraught with problems.

Lawson Fite, an attorney for the AFRC, said the 9.5 million acres did not differentiate between what was actually spotted owl habitat versus potential habitat. It also conflicted with forestland that was earlier set aside for logging in the Northwest Forest Plan.

“A lot of that was not only designated for timber production, but it was not occupied by the owl,” Fite explained.

According to its economic study, the AFRC estimates that providing critical habitat protections in uninhabited forests cost the region’s economy $1.2 billion.

“That has kind of been the focus in this whole thing, at least from our perspective, that the critical habitat designation really makes a big difference if there is no real owl presence there,” Fite said.

In 2018, the AFRC and plaintiffs reached a settlement with the Fish and Wildlife Service in which the agency agreed to reexamine critical habitat for spotted owls.

Initially, the feds landed on a relatively modest 205,000-acre reduction. But just before leaving office in mid-January, the Trump administration announced a 3.4 million-acre decrease — more than one-third of the existing critical habitat.

The lawmakers are now asking the Interior inspector general to investigate whether Bernhardt ignored scientific recommendations made by Fish and Wildlife Service staff.

“The USFWS decision appears to fit a larger pattern of malfeasance by the Trump administration’s political leadership at the Department of Interior,” they wrote.

While Fite did not comment on the letter specifically, he did say there was nothing nefarious about the process that he observed.

Of the 3.4 million acres taken out of critical habitat protections, about 1.4 million acres are part of the Bureau of Land Management’s Oregon and California Railroad Revested Lands, also known as the O&C lands, which exist as a checkerboard pattern across Western Oregon.

Fite said O&C lands are supposed to be maintained for sustainable timber production by law, though environmentalists disagree with that interpretation.

Fite said he anticipates a lawsuit, though any revisions of the final rule would have to go back through the public process. The rule is scheduled to go into effect March 16.

“The government has limited authority to delay effective dates once a rule has been finalized,” he said. “If they did a short time-limited delay, that would probably be fine. But an indefinite delay I don’t think would be lawful.”