Northern spotted owl's decline revives old concerns
Habitat for the famous owl is again a hot issue, as the US seeks to set aside less old-growth forest.
from the June 27, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
Owl is less choosy than was thought
The latest recovery proposal tries to incorporate new information about where spotted owls prefer to live (which is not always old-growth forests) and threats other than loss of habitat to logging, such as diseased trees, wildfires, and deadly competition from the barred owl.
"We've had years of intensive scientific study on the northern spotted owl, so we've learned a lot more about it, a lot more about the habitat it needs," says Phil Carroll, spokesman for the FWS's Oregon field office in Portland. For example, he says, in some parts of its range, it's not quite as dependent on big blocks of old growth as we had thought before."
That's how the FWS explains a recent proposal to reduce critical habitat from 6.9 million acres to 5.3 million acres.
Timber industry officials say this is a good first step. They also applaud new elements in the proposed plan: emphasizing that the barred owl, not habitat loss from logging, is the prime threat to the spotted owl, and giving local and regional US Forest Service and US Bureau of Land Management officials more say about where habitat should be protected.
"We truly believe that the debate and the needs of the owl have significantly changed from when it was listed," says Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council, an industry trade group in Portland, Ore.
"It was presumed originally that it was old-growth dependent and that it needed large undisturbed tracts of that habitat," says Mr. West. "When we finally got the technology to put these little dinky radios glued to their tail feathers instead of these backpacks that were causing them to have issues with mating and surviving, we found that they were using a variety of habitat."
"Whatever we do in developing a recovery plan and identifying critical habitat," he adds, "needs to have flexibility for the land managers and the biologists so that they can deal with where the owls are on the ground today to make sure what they do helps recover this species."
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