[va-richmond-general] From the NY Times - Saving the Northern Spotted Owl
- From: "Kathy" <k-kreutzer@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <va-richmond-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:58:26 -0400
Go to the link for photos and more
Kathy Kreutzer
Chesterfield, VA
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/01/us/01owls.html?hp
June 30, 2011
20 Years Later, Government Issues Plan to Save Northern Spotted Owl
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/y/william_yardle
y/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
SEATTLE ? It has been two decades since the fate of a bashful bird that most
people had never seen came to symbolize the bitter divide over whether to
save or saw down the ancient forests of the Pacific
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessio
ns/pacific-northwestern-states/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Northwest. Yet it
was not until Thursday that the federal government offered its final plan to
prevent the bird, the northern spotted owl, from going extinct.
After repeated revisions, constant court fights and shifting science, the
Fish
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/fish_an
d_wildlife_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org> and Wildlife Service presented
a plan that addresses a range of threats to the owl, including some that few
imagined when it was listed as a threatened species in 1990.
The newer threats include climate
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?
inline=nyt-classifier> change and the arrival of a formidable feathered
competitor, the barred owl, in the soaring old-growth evergreens of
Washington, Oregon and California where spotted owls nest and hunt.
One experiment included in the plan: shooting hundreds of barred owls in
certain areas to see whether that helps spotted owls recover.
Even after all these years since the spotted owl became the cause célèbre of
the environmental movement, it is far from clear that the plan is a
solution. Advocates on both sides, conservationists and timber executives,
say it will inevitably be challenged, and both sides have expressed
frustration with the Obama administration on the issue.
Some contentious points have still not been addressed, including precisely
mapping the so-called critical habitat to be protected. And some experts say
that while two decades of protections for the owl have helped preserve
forest ecosystems, they are less certain that the bird itself can still be
saved.
The spotted owl is declining by an average of 3 percent per year across its
range. While some populations in Southern Oregon and Northern California are
more stable, some of the steepest rates of decline are here in Washington.
Some study areas in the Olympic and Cascade ranges show annual declines as
high as 9 percent.
?I?ve certainly become much less confident as the years have gone by,? said
Eric Forsman, a research biologist with the United States Forest Service in
Corvallis, Ore., whose work in the 1970s first drew attention to the owl.
?If you?d asked me in 1975, ?Can we fix this problem??, I?d have said, ?Oh
yeah, this problem will go away.? ?
The listing of the spotted owl as a threatened species led to a virtual ban
on logging in many older federal forests, inspiring angry lawsuits and
threats of violence by rural loggers against owl advocates, who often came
from urban areas.
?We were trained not to tell people in the local towns that we were
surveying spotted owls,? said Paula Swedeen, a government owl surveyor in
the early 1990s who now works for a nonprofit group that develops incentives
for private forest owners to retain and restore owl habitat.
Yet over time, the public passion and the owl both faded.
No longer are there presidential Timber Conferences, like the one Bill
Clinton held in Oregon in 1993 seeking middle ground between conservation
and protecting rural economies, even as unemployment in some timber counties
routinely rises into double digits. Many factors contribute to rural
declines, but logging restrictions played a role.
?Nothing against the bird, but it?s wreaked a lot of havoc in the Pacific
Northwest for the past 20 years,? said Ray Wilkeson, president of the Oregon
Forest Industries Council, which represents loggers, sawmills and others in
the industry. ?A lot of human suffering has resulted from this. Now there?s
new threats to the owl that may be beyond anybody?s ability to control.?
The barred owl, a bigger, more adaptable bird with a broader diet than the
flying squirrels and the wood rats that spotted owls prefer, has expanded
its range westward in the past century, and it is now a more common resident
than spotted owls in many Northwest forests. Sometimes barred owls even kill
male spotted owls and mate with females.
?The barred owl is the most imminent challenge,? said Paul Henson, the
Forest Service?s team leader for the spotted owl recovery plan. ?We believe
there is a very good chance of recovering the spotted owl in the long term
if we can manage the barred owl issue in the short term.?
Others are less sure. While some early experiments showed success, Dr.
Forsman, the Forest Service biologist, questions whether barred owls could
be managed on a broad scale, if it came to that.
?You would have to shoot barred owls forever to do that,? he said, ?and I
don?t think that?s likely to happen.?
The plan?s supporters say it provides for studies that may reveal ways to
manage forests to create space for both birds.
Although the plan does not map critical habitat ? the mapping process is
more than a year away from completion, a fact that frustrates
conservationists ? it proposes expanding protections for owls beyond areas
currently set aside. The existing areas were outlined by the Northwest
Forest Plan, which was approved a year after President Clinton?s Timber
Conference, revised under President George W. Bush to allow more logging and
reinstated by the Obama administration.
The American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said the plan
would impose ?massive new restrictions on both federal and private lands.?
But supporters say it will provide more wood for mills by increasing forest
thinning and restoration work to battle threats like disease and fire that
could increase with climate change. The plan would provide timber companies
incentives to create potential spotted owl habitat. Officials from the
Forest Service and from the Bureau of Land Management, which oversee logging
on federal land, expressed support for the plan.
?Thinning opportunity, that?s what?s always offered up to us as an alleged
middle ground,? said Mr. Wilkeson of the Oregon Forest Industries Council.
?But it?s pretty limited.?
While timber advocates question protections for a bird that some say may be
bound for extinction, conservationists say that it is too soon to give up on
the spotted owl, and that the fight to save it has served broader benefits
of the forest, from cleaner water and air to habitat for hundreds of other
species, including streams for endangered salmon.
?The spotted owl is the icon,? Dr. Forsman said, ?but there are a lot of
other players in terms of species and protecting biodiversity in these
forests.?
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