A series of industry sponsored data quality petitions challenged U.S. Forest Service documents restricting logging and forest use in order to protect the Northern Goshawk, a hawk listed in several regions as a "sensitive species." The Washington Contract Loggers Association, Northern Arizona Loggers Association, Coalition of Arizona/New Mexico Counties and a forester company W.K. Olsen & Associates jointly submitted the petitions this past January. The challenged documents include research, analysis, and forests plans to protect Northern Goshawk habitats. The Forest Service considered adding the Northern Goshawk to the federal Endangered Species list but finally decided against it in 1999. However, the Forest Service's Northern Region and many national forests throughout the West listed the goshawk as a sensitive species. This designation mandates that forest managers monitor the hawk's status and evaluate project impacts on the species. Many managers have amended their forest plans to better comply with the goshawk's needs. The main data quality challenge disputes information in the 1992 Management Recommendations for the Northern Goshawk in the Southwestern United States, which recommended forest management restrictions to protect the Northern Goshawk's habitat. In a detailed 281-page petition the requestors claim that numerous aspects of the report do not comply with the Forest Service's data quality guidelines. The petition asserts that information in the report is inaccurate, unclear, biased and arbitrary. These charges are leveled at numerous information topics, such as nest size, canopy cover, nest tree buffer, and models for foraging area conditions. The challenge also claims that an inherent bias throughout the document indicates the lack of objectivity. The other petitions challenged documents relying upon the Management Recommendations, including:

• Conservation Assessment of the Northern Goshawk
• Record of Decision for Amendment of Forest Plans: Arizona and New Mexico
• Expert Interview Summary for the Black Kills National Forest: Land and Resource Management Plan Amendment
• Black Hills National Forest: Phase I Goshawk Analysis

These shorter petitions, each only 4 pages, list the reliance and use of data from the Management Recommendations as the documents' only data quality failure. The requestors claim the documents place incorrect restrictions on forest and range management of U.S. Forest Service lands reducing timber harvests, timber quality, forage utilization, recreational opportunities and forest access. The petitions even assert these documents, which encompass the U.S. Forest Service's efforts to understand and protect the Northern Goshawk, promote forest conditions that may negatively impact goshawk populations. Each petition recommends that the agency correct the data quality of the by withdrawing the entire document or expunging whole sections. The Center for Biological Diversity, with nine environmental groups co-signing, submitted comments to the U.S. Forest Service on the five data quality challenges. The comments urged the agency to reject the petitions claiming they fail to meet legal requirements. The environmental groups argue that the petitioners fail to demonstrate they are "affected parties" which data quality guidelines require in a correction request. They also claim that the petitions are untimely and seek corrections of opinion rather than factual error. The groups accuse the petitioners using the data quality guidelines to make "an end run" around the forest planning process, the National Forest Management Act and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). In a July 25 response letter the U.S. Forest Service denied all of the requests stating the claims did not have any substantive merit. The letter describes the extensive scrutiny and peer review the Management Recommendations received prior to publication. The Forest Service, after reviewing the main challenge and the Management Recommendations document, discovered eight minor errors that do not affect the report's outcome or conclusions. The Forest Service committed to correcting the errors by distributing an errata with the report, but refused to retract the publication since no significant errors were found. The Service denied the other four requests since each relied on the argument that the Management Recommendations was seriously flawed and no such errors were found. The letter notes that if the requestors are dissatisfied with the Forest Service's decision they have 45 days to file a request for reconsideration. Unsatisfied with the Forest Service's response, the petitioners filed a Sept. 4 request for reconsideration. The request asserts eight reasons for the appeal and details the numerous violations and errors that the petitioners assert the report still contains. The eight reasons listed in the request are:

• The agency's response failed to address the quality violations laid out in the petition.
• The response to the petition was arbitrary, because the documented errors were not addressed, and capricious, because the service selectively validated errors and only disclosed one.
• The agency incorrectly justified the report by defending the process that produced the report and not the quality and accuracy of the report.
• The agency only responded to claims of errors and ignored the charges of utility violations, which result from a lack of objectivity, transparency or reproducibility.
• While the Service defended the peer review process it did not address the result, which the petitioners contend failed to "ensure and maximize quality" of the data as required in the data quality guidelines
• The Forest Service's response limited the petitioner's ability to evaluate and refute their position since seven of the acknowledged eight validated errors were withheld.
• The Forest Service ignored the petition's claims that quality violations are incorporated throughout the methods, analysis, discussion and results of report and only focused on errors in the appendix.
• The report errors documented have merit and affect forest conditions.