dissenting:

For some reason which is a mystery, the majority has agreed to laboriously prepare and publish an opinion which, although favorable to the government, the government has told us that it does not want. 1 All that is accomplished is a waste of judicial resources at a time when those resources are at a premium.

But the waste of the resources is just beginning. As day follows night, the plaintiffs will file a petition for rehearing and a suggestion for en banc review. Then all the active judges of this court and one senior judge will be involved in that process. It borders on the unbelievable how burdensome the judicial process can become when a panel files an opinion based upon facts and law which everyone knows have changed.

On June 22, 1990 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“the Service”) listed the northern spotted owl as a “threatened species” pursuant to the Endangered Spe *1185 cies Act, 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq. ( the Act ). See 55 Fed.Reg. 26114 (June 26, 1990).

In its description of the background to this decision, the Service explained that in 1987 it had denied petitions for such listing, but in response to a Sierra Club suit challenging that decision, the Service initiated a new “in-depth review” of the issue on December 5, 1988.

55 Fed.Reg. at 26118 (emphasis added).

Pursuant to Section 41 of the Act, the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”), in a July 16, 1990 letter to the Cromon Corporation, a copy of which was forwarded to this panel, ordered the entire contract for the Wilcox Peak area at issue in this litigation suspended pending administrative consultation, because of the presence of northern spotted owls. The order reads:

The U.S. District Court for the district of Oregon has already acknowledged that the decision to list the northern spotted owl as “threatened” “substantially affects” the legality of sales of old-growth forests. Gifford Pinchot Alliance, et al. v. Butruille, et al., 742 F.Supp. 1077 (D.Or.1990).

Clearly the Service no longer adheres to those views put forward by BLM regional personnel in the Wilcox Peak litigation. One striking example is testimony cited by the majority opinion alleging that deforestation of an area of old-growth forest, excepting a single tree where a pair of spotted owls live, might not affect the owls’ survival: if the owls’ nesting “tree itself would not be cut ... this action alone might be sufficient protection” to preserve the pair. (Majority opinion at 1177). This view is irreconcilable with the Service’s current analysis:

55 Fed.Reg. 26155 (citations omitted).

It is our responsibility to take judicial notice of these decisions. See, e.g., Thornton v. United States, 271 U.S. 414, 420 , 46 S.Ct. 585, 586 , 70 L.Ed. 1013 (1926); 10 J. Moore, Federal Practice, § 201.02[1] (1988). But the majority opinion ignores these events and analyses and would affirm a district court decision reached before the spotted owl was listed as threatened, a course needlessly burdensome to the parties and this court. We should re *1186 mand to the district court for reconsideration in light of the northern spotted owl’s listing as a threatened species.

. On July 31, 1990, Martin W. Matzen of the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice sent the court a letter, the body of which reads as follows: