***********************************************
WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Spotted
Owl Declines at Four Times Expected Rate in U.S.
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org
http://forests.org/ -- Forest
Conservation Archives
http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest
Conservation
07/11/00
OVERVIEW
& COMMENTARY
A new
report indicates that despite limited, albeit contentious,
efforts
to conserve spotted owl habitat in the Pacific Northwest of
the
United States, that the species continues to decline at four
times
the expected rate. Timber industry
apologists blame the owl
for
reducing logging in the region.
Environmental regulation has not
shut
down logging in the Pacific Northwest. Most mills were closed in
the
late 1970s and early 1980s, years before the spotted owl
scapegoat
was invented. The reason for timber
industry cutbacks is
simple;
the Northwest forests had been largely depleted as a vast
commercial
resource suitable for mowing and timber mining. The
depletion
of the Northwest forests was predicted by the US Forest
Service
and by industry for many decades, and it was only in the mid-
1980s
that the spotted owl emerged as an easy scapegoat, and industry
moved
on to other areas to over-exploit.
The
spotted owl is one of many, many species that depend upon large
tracts
of continuous old-growth for their survival and to thrive.
Some,
like the owl, depend upon old-growth ecosystems for habitat,
and
physically reside therein. At larger
scales, many others,
including
humans, depend upon old growth ecosystems for ecological
processes
and outputs. It should come as no
surprise that the
Pacific
Northwest timber compromise has not stopped the downward
spiral
of spotted owls, or salmon for that matter.
The point is that
the
region has been and continues to be overlogged to the point where
the
regional ecosystem and many landscapes are in spiraling decline.
If you
keep on cutting out pieces of an ecosystem, eventually the
whole
cannot remain intact, and begins to fall apart. The spotted
owl has
been made a fall-guy for a much more pernicious and
widespread
ecological phenomena -- overly intensive timber management
occurring
for too long across too large of area.
The
conservation solution is not half-assed measures that allow more
industrial
logging. Due to past and continuing
poor land management
practices,
regional sustainability will depend upon suspending
commercial
logging and letting huge areas regenerate.
Not doing so
dooms
the spotted owl, salmon and thousands of other species,
including
humans, to unnecessary declines in well-being.
Failure to
comprehend
and act upon the fundamentally ecological nature of being
is a
cause of continuing, clearly unsustainable practices worldwide.
g.b.
*******************************
RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Owl Disappears
Spotted Owl Declines at Four Times Expected
Rate
Source: Copyright 2000, The Associated Press.
Date: July 10, 2000
Q U I N
E S C R E E K, Ore., July 10 -
Endangered salmon may have
pushed
the spotted owl off the front page, but the birds are
continuing
to disappear from Northwest forests.
In five
years, the owl population's rate of decline has slowed from
4.5
percent a year to 3.9 percent a year. In some areas, such as the
forests
near Glendale, the spotted owl population may be stable; in
others,
like Washington state's Olympic Peninsula, the population is
plummeting.
Still,
the owl population is falling more quickly than the 1 percent
annual
decline predicted in the Northwest Forest Plan, an alarming
development
to forest activists.
The
Quines Creek nest is in LSR 223, a 63,259-acre parcel of federal
land
set aside in 1994 to prevent extinction of the spotted owl, which
most
wildlife biologists agree needs old-growth forests to thrive.
Long-Term
Progress
In 7.4
million acres of federal land set aside in California, Oregon
and
Washington logging is prohibited in stands older than 80 years and
allowed
in younger stands only if the post-logging forest will be
better
habitat for the owl.
"We
don't expect to see the types of changes habitatwise with this
plan
for 30, 50 and upwards of 80 years," says Joe Lint, a BLM
biologist
based in Roseburg. "We're hoping that in 80 years, 100
years,
120 years, some of these stands are going to come online as
habitat.
As the habitat comes online, we're confident the owls will
use it.
In the meantime, we're monitoring what's happening. We're
looking
for progress."
Progress
comes in tiny increments in a 100-year plan, but the slowing
rate of
decline gave federal biologists some good news to report. And
more
important, female birds are surviving and reproducing at a stable
rate
across the region.
"It
gives me hope that the plan is working and will work. To me,
that's
the biggest take-home from the data we're collecting," says
Eric
Forsman, a Corvallis-based U.S. Forest Service biologist. "But
there
is a chance that even though the rates are stable, they're too
low to
maintain a viable population. To me, that's the biggest area of
uncertainty."
Rachel
Fazio, an attorney with the Pasadena, Calif.-based John Muir
Project,
blames continued logging of owl habitat both inside and
outside
late successional reserves.
"They're
definitely taking out less board feet than they estimated
they
would. However, they seem to be applying to harvest maybe two to
three
times as much acreage," she says. "And they're not keeping track
of how
much habitat they're logging."
Lawsuit
Pending
A
federal judge in Seattle may rule by the end of the year on the Muir
project's
lawsuit, filed last summer, to suspend all logging within
the
range of the northern spotted owl until forest managers figure out
why owl
populations are falling more rapidly than expected and how
much
owl habitat actually remains in the Northwest woods.
"It's
really hard to think they're making really great management
decisions
for this species if they don't know the full story," Fazio
says.
When
the northern spotted owl made the endangered species list in
1991,
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that as many as
8,000
spotted owls lived in the Northwest woods.
But
with more than a billion board feet of trees falling in federal
forests
each year and environmental groups winning a series of court
battles,
Fish and Wildlife decided that without protection northern
spotted
owls faced extinction.
The
resulting Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, which reduced
timber
harvest on federal lands by 80 percent, predicted owl
populations
would continue to fall for 40 years before stabilizing.
###RELAYED
TEXT ENDS###
This
document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non-
commercial
use only. Recipients should seek
permission from the
source
for reprinting. All efforts are made to
provide accurate,
timely
pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all
information
rests with the reader. Check out our
Gaia's Forest
Conservation
Archives & Portal at URL= http://forests.org/
Networked
by Forests.org, Inc., gbarry@forests.org