Lawsuit Launched to Safeguard North Coast Red Tree Voles 

By: Dara Evans and Nicole Morshead, 2025 Summer Legal Interns  

Among the old-growth forests along Oregon’s North coast lives a population of delightful little creatures that frolic in the treetops feasting on conifer needles and rarely ever touching the ground. Weighing less than two ounces, these North Coast red tree voles are a unique population of red tree voles, which primarily exist from western Oregon to Northwest California. Unfortunately, decades of clearcutting and wildfires have destroyed the vast majority of the old-forests that these animals call home. What remains of the North Coast vole population live on federal public lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. For over a decade, advocates have fought to secure listing under the Endangered Species Act to protect these red tree voles, which would provide the entire isolated population with fierce and important safeguards that could prevent total elimination.  

The Endangered Species Act, designed to provide protections to endangered or threatened species, directs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) to “list” imperiled wildlife, fish and plants by adding the species to a comprehensive list of endangered and threatened species. The Service is meant to make these listings based on the “best scientific and commercial data available.” Once a species is listed, it gains numerous protections, including the designation of “critical habitat” deemed essential to the conservation of the species. The Service has had every opportunity to list the North Coast red tree vole but has repeatedly failed to do so. First petitioned in 2007 by the Center of Biological Diversity, the Service found that the North Coast red tree vole “warranted” protections under the Endangered Species Act in 2011, but that listing the species was “precluded” by other “high priorities,” an unfortunate loophole within the law. Since this initial finding, the Service maintained that the red tree vole warranted protection but continued to delay listing it – allowing habitat destruction through logging and wildfire to further imperil the shrinking population. In 2019, the Service denied protections to the red tree vole which the Center of Biological Diversity challenged, resulting in a settlement requiring a new listing decision. Unfortunately, in 2024, the Service once again found that the North Coast red tree vole did not warrant listing as an endangered or threatened species under the ESA.  

This clear violation of duties by the Service has led valiant red tree vole defenders Center of Biological Diversity, Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, and Bird Alliance of Oregon to file suit against the agency for ignoring the best scientific and commercial data and downplaying the risk of habitat fragmentation, isolation, and wildfire – which could lead to the extinction of the North Coast red tree vole.  

Cascadia Wildlands has fiercely advocated for the red tree vole for over a decade. In 2012, Cascadia litigated against three timber sales —North Fork Overlook, Buck Roberts, and Bummer Ridge — challenging the Bureau of Land Management’s failure to analyze whether the proposed thinning would harm the red tree vole. Cascadia, working alongside various other environmental groups, has continued to fight for the red tree voles’ right to live safely in Oregon North Coast forests. In 2015, Cascadia won a legal challenge over clearcutting in the Bureau of Land Management’s White Castle project, which put 160 acres of 100-year old trees, and their little residents, at risk. And now, Cascadia, along with the Center for Biological Diversity, Bird Alliance Oregon and Oregon Wild, will once again battle it out with U.S. Fish and Wildlife for the lives of the North Coast red tree voles.  

To learn more, see our press release discussing the details of the litigation we recently initiated. We hope the lawsuit will result in North Coast red tree voles finally receiving necessary protections.  

We are grateful for legal representation by attorneys at the Center for Biological Diversity. We also appreciate your ongoing interest and concern about this issue and the red tree voles that call the Oregon coast old-growth forests their home. 

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