Judge orders review of salamander status

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally rejected a petition by environmentalists to give protected status to two salamander species that live in old-growth forests in California and Oregon.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the agency to consider listing the Siskiyou Mountains and Scott Bar salamanders as threatened or endangered species.

The San Francisco-based judge said the service's decision last year to deny the petition was "arbitrary and capricious." Alsup gave the agency until March 23 to decide whether to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the salamanders' status.

If the two species are granted protected status, the U.S. Forest Service would be required to make sure that logging operations do not harm the salamanders or their habitat.

Both salamanders are about five inches long, colored black with speckles, and have no lungs, instead breathing through their skin. They live on rocky slopes under the canopy of old-growth trees in the Siskiyou Mountains and Klamath River basin in northern California and southern Oregon.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will comply with Judge Alsup's order, said agency spokeswoman Alexandra Pitts.

Environmentalists who filed the original petition in April 2004 were pleased with Friday's decision.

"We're delighted that they're going to be considered for protection," said Noah Greenwald, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of five environmental groups that sued the service.