Lawsuit demands listing of eagles as endangered

TUCSON, Ariz. — Conservationists sued Friday to place Arizona's bald eagle population on the endangered species list and to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to incorporate scientific studies showing the birds are still endangered into its management plans.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society, alleges that the Bush administration suppressed scientific reports concluding that the Arizona bald eagle should remain on the endangered species list.

In Phoenix, a Fish and Wildlife official said the filing was no surprise.

Across the nation, the bald eagle's recovery has been extraordinary, reaching some 10,000 pairs today versus only 416 pairs in 1963. But the recovery has been much slower in Arizona, from 18 breeding pairs in 1985 to a high of 39 pairs last year.

Last summer, Fish and Wildlife decided that it would not reclassify the state's bald eagle population from threatened to endangered, concluding that conservationists failed to show the Arizona population was significant to the species as a whole or that it was at risk of extinction.

That makes the issue even more pressing for Arizona's environmentalists, because the entire U.S. bald eagle population could be taken off the federal endangered and threatened list as soon as February, under a proposal being studied by the government.

Environmentalists had petitioned the agency in October 2004 to upgrade the classification for desert eagles, saying they are isolated physically, geographically, behaviorally and physiologically from other bald eagles. They then sued last March.

The Fish and Wildlife Service subsequently issued its decision that it wouldn't reclassify the state's bald eagle population.

The lawsuit filed Friday asks the court to find the federal agency in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

It also seeks an injunction ordering the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct a prompt, complete review for desert eagles following endangered species listing requirements and preventing removal of the law's protection for desert eagles until it has complied with its requirements for delisting a species.