Report: Endangered spotted owl dying off at fast pace

By Jeff Barnard
The Associated Press

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The study appears to be a blow to timber-industry efforts to loosen restrictions on national-forest logging in Washington, Oregon and Northern California to protect fish and wildlife habitat. The study follows another report that found the threatened marbled murrelet was in decline.

While owl numbers from 1998 to 2003 held steady or declined only slightly in most of the study areas in Oregon and California, they declined so fast in Washington that the population as a whole fell by 4.1 percent, the study found.

That compares to an overall decline of 3.5 percent in the previous five years, said Eric Forsman, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Ore.

The spotted owl appears to be suffering from incursions by the more-aggressive barred owl, a native of Eastern Canada that has moved into Washington, and the loss of forests to insect infestations on the east slope of the Cascade Range in Washington, Forsman said.

The study will be presented tomorrow to a panel of experts gathering information for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will decide late this year whether the owl continues to be protected by the Endangered Species Act.

The review was ordered by the Bush administration to settle a lawsuit brought by the timber industry, which hopes to loosen restrictions on logging.

"I'm sure this will be a very significant piece of information they are going to have to weigh in their decision," Forsman said.

Compiled by 29 biologists from federal agencies, timber companies, private consulting firms and Indian tribes, the study monitored 11,432 banded owls in 14 study areas in Washington, Oregon and Northern California. It represents 12 percent of the owl's range.

Washington saw declines of 7.5 percent a year, Oregon 2.8 percent a year, and California 2.2 percent a year. Reproduction was stable in seven study areas, declining in five areas and increasing in two areas. Survival rates declined in five study areas, but were stable in the other nine.

Andy Stahl of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics noted that the authors of the Northwest Forest Plan — instituted in 1994 to settle the lawsuit brought by environmentalists to protect habitat for the northern spotted owl — envisioned owl numbers would slowly decline until habitat reserves grew over the next century to support greater numbers.
 
"If the rate of decline is twice as fast as assumed, will the owl still be around to enjoy the new habitat grown in 100 years?" Stahl said from Eugene, Ore. "The only way to responsibly come to grips with it is to cease cutting spotted-owl habitat on federal lands."

Chris West of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber-industry group, noted the study has yet to be reviewed by peers and suggested the data did not fully support the conclusions.

"The bottom line is the status review that the Fish and Wildlife service is conducting will use this and the new genetics report and all other information to discern the status of the owl — whether habitat loss due to forest management is still the culprit or whether it's climate, the barred owl and catastrophic wildfire," West said.

The panel of owl experts also will consider a new genetics study by U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist Sue Haig.

Haig said the study to be published in the journal Conservation Genetics found strong evidence for designating the northern spotted owl a subspecies separate from the California and Mexican spotted owls.

The study also found California spotted owls overlap the range of the northern spotted owl and interbreed with them, particularly in the Klamath Basin near the border between Oregon and California.

"From a listing point of view, that could be problematic," she said.