A northern spotted owl.

A federal judge has allowed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to postpone a 3.5 million-acre reduction to the spotted owl’s critical habitat.

Shortly before leaving office early this year, the Trump administration decreased the threatened species’ critical habitat designation from 9.6 million acres to 6.1 million acres.

However, the Biden administration has delayed that decision’s effect until Dec. 15 while issuing a revised proposal that would only cut about 200,000 acres of critical habitat.

Groups representing the timber industry and affected counties filed a lawsuit arguing the postponed critical habitat reduction was unlawful for failing to follow notice-and-comment procedures.

The plaintiffs also requested a preliminary injunction against the delay but U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., has now determined they don’t meet the criteria for such an order.

Such an injunction would require the plaintiffs to show they’d suffer “irreparable harm” from the delay, but their attempt “falls short of the bar for the extraordinary relief they seek,” the judge said.

Delaying the critical habitat reduction only causes “general harms,” such as lost timber sales and tax revenues, which stem from an expansion to the critical habitat nearly a decade ago, he said.

The timber plaintiffs haven’t shown a “specific and concrete risk,” such as the “imminent closure of mills or the collapse of county finances due to the delays,” Leon said.

Also, an immediate reduction in the critical habitat wouldn’t necessarily prevent such injuries because actual timber harvest projects on that acreage “would require additional planning and approval,” he said.

Though the preliminary injunction was denied, that doesn’t signal the judge will disagree that the agency’s delay violated the law, said Sara Ghafouri, attorney for the American Forest Resource Council timber group.

“He only addressed irreparable harm,” she said.

The 3.5 million acres of critical habitat in question hinders timber management and fuels reduction projects because the Fish and Wildlife Service must “consult” on the impacts to spotted owls — even if they don’t occupy the area, Ghafouri said.

“It has pretty much put this chunk of land off-limits to important management,” she said.

The plaintiffs hope the judge will determine the agency didn’t follow the law by postponing the critical habitat reduction, Ghafouri said.

“They’re acting like the 2021 critical habitat rule never happened, and that’s inappropriate,” Ghafouri said.

If the government’s process were found to be invalid, the reduced critical habitat would then become effective, she said.

“It would remove the constraints and barriers on the management of public lands,” she said.

If the Biden administration wants to add back critical habitat, it can do so only after analyzing the economic effects of that action, Ghafouri said.

“It would reveal the impacts on local communities and the counties,” she said.