Saga of the spotted owl not over yet

Federal government’s proposed recovery plan renews debate over bird’s habitat

By Anne Marie DiStefano

The Portland Tribune, May 29, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (15 Reader comments)

“As goes the owl, so, too, a host of values that are hitched to old-growth forest.” — Dominick DellaSala, northern spotted owl recovery plan team member

For the past year, Dominick DellaSala has been part of a 12-member team charged with creating a recovery plan for the northern spotted owl.

Now a draft of the recovery plan has been released to the public, and he has become one of that plan’s most outspoken critics.

It seems that the spotted owl, which was so controversial in the 1990s, is still a magnet for conflict.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking public input on the new draft recovery plan for the spotted owl. “It’s probably the most significant hearing that we’ve had on the spotted owl in over a decade,” says Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the Audubon Society of Portland.

But before the public can voice an opinion, it needs to understand the draft plan and its implications, which is no mean feat.

Since it was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, the northern spotted owl has been a lightning rod for conflict between environmentalists and the timber industry.

That remains the case as the Fish and Wildlife Service brings to the table a proposal containing two options for recovery and begins to address a new threat to the spotted owl: invading barred owls that are moving into spotted owl territory.

Barred owls are native to a large swath of eastern North America. Named for the “barred” feather patterns on their bodies, these owls have been expanding their range.

In California and the Northwest, the invaders are increasingly displacing spotted owls from nesting spots. Sometimes they kill spotted owls outright. The new draft plan calls barred owls “the most important threat currently facing the spotted owl.”

Draft looks at federal land

The draft plan also offers two options for creating spotted owl reserves. Both options focus on federal land. State and privately owned land would not be affected, unless land managers choose to use the guidelines in making land-use decisions of their own, according to Joan Jewett, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service.

Option 1 of the draft plan includes a map of forests that would be reserved for spotted owl habitat.

“In many cases those locations are overlaid on the current reserve system in the Northwest Forest Plan,” Jewett says, referring to the comprehensive forest management plan that has stood in for specific owl protections since 1994.

Option 2 of the draft plan, on the other hand, gives decision-making power to forest managers – meaning, for the most part, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. It provides guidelines they would have to follow to set aside reserves for spotted owls.

“They would have more flexibility in deciding where those areas are going to be as they go through the process of revising their forest management plans,” Jewett says.

The inclusion of two options in a draft wildlife recovery plan is unprecedented.

“With such a far-ranging, complex species, the Service is interested in generating the widest possible discussion about the best way to recover the species,” a fact sheet about the plan says (more information can be found at www.fws.gov/pacific/ecoservices).

“The final plan, which will be out in about a year, will likely just have one option,” Jewett says. “That may be either of these options, or something else.”

Timber group has preference

The American Forest Resource Council, a group that represents privately owned timber companies in the Northwest, is solidly behind Option 2.

“The problem is, lines on the map in Option 1 are still based on the old paradigm that the owl is purely dependent on old growth,” says Chris West, the group’s vice president. “Option 2 allows them to put the lines on the map based on where the owls really are, and what they’re using.”

He argues for a more locally based, ground-level approach to managing the owls.

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