Spotted owl in a tight spot: Recovery plan flaps familiar debate

On April 26, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft of its recovery plan for the northern spotted owl. Within it are two options for setting aside new spotted owl habitat that both rely on the eviction of barred owls from nesting sites -- by shotgun. Yet it's the options, one that calls for mapping spotted owl conservation areas and another that leaves such designations up to public land managers, that once again brings both sides of a nearly 20-year-old debate up in arms.

A male spotted owl perches on a branch of a tree, on BLM land near Umpqua, Monday night. Photo by Jon Austria, News-Review Staff.

UMPQUA -- With four distinct hoots and a box of white mice, Amy Price lures a northern spotted owl within close range of her Maglite.

The bird arrives with stealth, but not before it replies with territorial hoots of its own in the darkness of the night.

The hoots tell Price the bird is male, and she surmises it's the same one researchers saw last March in the area with a female spotted owl six years his senior.

But he isn't the only male owl to reply.

A barred owl first hoots at Price, perched on a ridge overlooking the Umpqua River, and plants some doubt that the spotted owl pair is in the area.

The wildlife biologist walks the old logging road again to hoot in a different direction. About five minutes later the 11-year-old male of the threatened species returns confirmation: He's here, despite the barred owl living nearby.

After a rustled landing, the spotted owl peers querulously from a Douglas fir at a mouse Price has offered on the road. He swoops in, talons and wings caught by her flashlight, and bounces to a low branch with his midnight snack.

From the distance, a female spotted owl hoots a couple of inquisitive calls. The male replies.

Underneath the tree, Price shines her light on the band around the spotted owl's leg and determines that he is, indeed, the same owl researchers saw in March.

She pulls out her logbook and notes the sighting and the auditory responses of the other two birds -- a field procedure which has taken place between April and August for more than a decade at about 1,200 sites across the Northwest.

A STEADY DECLINE

Unless spotted owl numbers rebound and stabilize, the surveys could continue for years, maybe decades. Research has shown that spotted owl numbers from Washington to Northern California are declining an average 3.7 percent annually while its competitor for habitat, the barred owl, is increasingly taking up residence in the region.

A new plan, however, is now aimed at spotted owl recovery with the removal of barred owls in its sights.

On April 26, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft of its recovery plan for the northern spotted owl. Within it are two options for setting aside new spotted owl habitat that both rely on the eviction of barred owls from nesting sites -- by shotgun.

Yet it's the options, one that calls for mapping spotted owl conservation areas and another that leaves such designations up to public land managers, that once again brings both sides of a nearly 20-year-old debate up in arms.

In 1990, the northern spotted owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Timber harvests were largely identified as the main threat to the bird's habitat.

In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan -- implemented by the Clinton administration -- became the region's cornerstone for conserving 24.4 million acres of habitat for northern spotted owls and other species identified as dependent on late successional reserves.

Since then, timber harvests have been greatly reduced on U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands -- lessened to an extent well beyond production marks promised by the Northwest Forest Plan.

And spotted owl numbers keep dropping.

In 2002 and 2005, the American Forest Resource Council and Seattle Audubon sued U.S. Fish and Wildlife for an updated -- and legally required -- review of the northern spotted owl.

A LONG, HARD LOOK

With the review now complete, U.S. Fish and Wildlife identifies barred owls as the spotted owl's greatest threat to habitat. Falling in line on the list of threats are timber harvests -- more markedly of the past -- and wildfire.

But some aren't convinced the spotted owls' avian cousin is the real culprit.

"It's not like a barred owl sees a spotted owl and it's a goner," says Jason Mowdy, a wildlife biologist and a faculty research assistant with Price at Oregon State University.

"I'm not so sure, in my mind, that they are that big of a deal."

Mowdy and Price, academic researchers with eight and 11 years of respective spotted owl survey experience, work within the Tyee Study Area, a 615-square-mile block of forest designated by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

The Tyee Study Area is one of eight study areas in the Northwest designed to keep tabs on spotted owl populations. It's a rectangular piece of habitat that begins on the north side of Smith River and stretches south to the Callahans. Elkton and Drain are the area's east and west boundaries, while the bottom-half makes a westerly shift and has a narrow strip at the bottom that is a few miles wide. It encompasses a large swath of public and private lands in a checkerboard format that is either managed by the BLM or owned by private timber companies or other landowners.

Researchers survey 128 spotted owl sites within the Tyee Study Area about four to five times each between spring and summer. They determine with territorial hoots whether each site is occupied and later conclude if it's housed by a single owl, an owl pair or a nesting owl pair.

Nesting pairs make up the Tyee Study Area's critical data, but often occupy fewer than 25 percent of the owl sites.

The population, however, is stable. And it's the only one of the eight study areas in the Northwest that is not in decline.

"We are kind of in the heart of their habitat," Price says, but adds there aren't any studies to show why.

One reason could be the availability of food. Spotted owls eat flying squirrels, wood rats and red tree voles, the last of which Price says are plentiful in the Tyee Study Area.

What is understood is that the northern spotted owl has been hit hardest in Washington, where populations have declined in some cases as much as 60 percent and where more barred owls are found than anywhere else in the region.

If the spotted owl is the middleweight of owl species, then the barred owl is a cruiserweight.

The northern spotted owl stands about 18 to 19 inches tall and weighs less than 1 1/2 pounds.

The barred owl is slightly larger and in some cases a third heavier. Just bulky enough to intimidate the amiable northern spotted owl and bully it from its habitat.

The barred owl is an eastern species that is believed to have made its way west following urban development. In appearance, it resembles the northern spotted owl in many ways, but it doesn't have colored discs around its eyes and there are vertical stripes on its torso. They're also known to occasionally mate with spotted owls.

Mowdy says barred owls were first detected in Oregon in the late 1980s, but have since dramatically increased in numbers.

Price says their population numbers in the Tyee Study Area increase each year. Though researchers don't survey for barred owls, researchers keep track of the known spotted owl sites that they occupy.

From 1990 to 2006, the presence of barred owls increased in the Tyee Study Area by almost 40 percent.

"It's going up and it's climbing fast," Mowdy said.

Barred owls are known to "thump" roosting spotted owls, but Mowdy says he's also seen a pair of spotted owls in the Tyee area throw jabs at a fledgling barred owl.

Barred owls present a level of threat to spotted owls with their presence, but Mowdy and Price aren't convinced they are the real reason for declining spotted owl numbers.

It's all about habitat, Price says, or old growth, which late successional reserves cultivate and ensure stability for spotted owl populations. She only has to look in the stable spotted owl area that she has worked in for nearly a decade to come to her conclusion.

"The federal lands are really the only hope the spotted owl has," she says.

Of the spotted owl nesting sites annually surveyed in the Tyee Study Area, Price estimates 95 percent are found on BLM land. This year 26 nesting sites have been confirmed. Only one is on private land.

Price says spotted owls prefer big hollow trees with platform structure and branches that stick out and form cover overhead: the kind of trees found in late successional reserves.

"They almost always have never been harvested," she said.

TWO OPTIONS, MORE OR LESS

The draft recovery plan is open to public comment and could be finalized by next summer. It is designed to provide wildlife and land managers the guidance to bring spotted owl populations back to stable conditions and possibly have the species delisted.

But its release now has those who pressured U.S. Fish and Wildlife for an updated review on the northern spotted owl pitted once again on both sides of an incendiary issue.

Some cry foul, insisting the Northwest Forest Plan is a better designed plan for the species.

Others welcome it as fresh change to an otherwise faulty set of rules and guidelines.

"If they don't deal with that No. 1 thing (barred owls), or stop fires like Biscuit from occurring, we're not going to have owls or a whole host of species," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council.

West and other timber industry leaders are in favor of Option 2 of the draft recovery plan, which provides land managers the flexibility to designate habitat areas in forests and ensure the needs and recovery of the northern spotted owl.

“We’re supporting Option 2 because it uses the latest information on where owls actually are,” West said.

Option 1 would identify conservation areas for spotted owls throughout the region that would mostly remain static, and support — in about half the areas — 20 pairs of spotted owls at a time.

Dominick DellaSala, executive science and policy director for the National Center for Conservation Science and Policy in Ashland, says that compared to the Northwest Forest Plan, both options are deficient and Option 2 is “even worse.”

“We could see, down the road here, an uplisting of endangered status. And that would put us back to where we were in the early 1990s. And no one wants that,” DellaSala said.

DellaSala points to the plan’s ability to change management approaches for federal land-use allocations as a bellwether for future misguided policy.

West hails it as a tool to draw new habitat areas based on science and erase the politically drawn boundaries of the Northwest Forest Plan and its reserves.

“Anybody who looks at where those lines were drawn on the maps, there wasn’t a lot of logic,” West said. “We can do a better job.”

Francis Eatherington, conservation director for Umpqua Watersheds, calls the draft recovery plan another Bush administration strategy to increase logging on federal lands. She says the spotted owl would be better off with a continuance of the Northwest Forest Plan as guidance for the species’ survival.

“It certainly did help the species from tumbling into extinction,” Eatherington said.

Bob Ragon, executive director of the Douglas Timber Operators, prefers Option 2 of the draft recovery plan but has trouble with the overall means for spotted owl recovery.

“I’m having difficulty with shooting one wild creature for another wild creature,” Ragon said.



• You can reach reporter Adam Pearson at 957-4213 or by e-mail at apearson@newsreview.info.