The marbled murrelet is a shy, robin-sized seabird that feeds at sea but nests only in old growth forests along the Pacific Coast. Murrelets don’t actually build nests, instead laying their single egg only when they can find a natural, moss-covered platform where the massive branches of old growth Douglas fir and redwood trees join the tree’s trunk.

In 1992, Earthjustice successfully fought to get federal protections for marbled murrelets and their habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed marbled murrelets in Washington, Oregon, and California as a threatened species due to over-logging of coastal old growth forests. Despite undisputed scientific evidence that murrelets are disappearing from the Pacific Coast, the timber industry has set its sights on the small seabird in order to increase logging of forests over 100 years old.

Timber industry attorneys have tried to force the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to remove the threatened marbled murrelet from the Endangered Species Act. Earthjustice represented several conservation groups requesting “intevenor” status in the lawsuit.

On February 2008, a federal district court rejected the timber industry’s suit. In a related matter a few weeks later, the FWS announced that it would not finalize a proposal that would have slashed murrelet habitat by almost 95 percent.

In July 2008, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled in favor of retaining federal Endangered Species Act protections for the marbled murrelet.

In April 2012, Earthjustice, representing seven conservation groups, moved to intervene in a federal lawsuit brought by the timber industry to gut protections for the marbled murrelet and its critical nesting habitat.