Northern spotted owl faces nonlogging threats

By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

DEAN RUTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES A northern spotted owl

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Threats include surging populations of the rival barred owl in prime spotted-owl territory, the potential spread of West Nile virus to the spotted owl and the prospect of intense wildfires in overgrown eastern Cascade forests.

Scientists also are concerned that a mysterious plant disease, sudden oak death, could eventually attack large areas of tanoak, a tree favored by the spotted owl in southern Oregon and Northern California.

The threats are detailed in a draft report intended to guide the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the agency decides whether to continue listing the spotted owl under the federal Endangered Species Act. With all the uncertainties the owl faces, it is essential to maintain large blocks of federal forests now set aside as areas where the bird might breed and recover, according to the draft recommendations of the seven-scientist research committee.

"There is no hope for the spotted owl without habitat," said Jerry Franklin, a University of Washington scientist who helped sum up the committee's findings at a meeting here yesterday.

The review ranks as the most ambitious effort yet to assess the more than 1,000 published studies detailing the fate of the northern spotted owl, a nocturnal bird that preys on flying squirrels, voles and other small mammals.

The reviewers said there are still plenty of gaps in knowledge, and they offer no clear path for restoring the species. But their findings will help guide the Wildlife Service in making a Nov. 15 decision on whether to continue listing the spotted owl as threatened, remove the listing or upgrade it to endangered, requiring more stringent protective measures.

The spotted owl was listed as threatened in 1990. The designation helped trigger a revolution in federal-lands logging policies as efforts to protect the bird — and the hundreds of other species that inhabit old-growth forests — led to dramatic declines in logging. The designation also prompted more trees to be left standing around owl nesting areas on private and state lands that now sustain the regional timber industry.

The owl-literature review has been long sought by some timber companies, which have chafed at logging restrictions that put most federal forests off limits to commercial harvests. In a settlement agreement with a timber industry group, the Wildlife Service agreed to an independent review of spotted-owl literature organized by Portland-based Sustainable Ecosystems.

The committee findings will be delivered to the Wildlife Service in July. They also are being closely examined by timber industry and conservation groups, each with their own views on what the research means.

Ross Mickey of the industry's American Forest Resource Council said research indicates spotted-owl populations are faltering even in areas protected from logging. So he questioned whether all the restrictions on harvests still can be justified by science.

Mickey said one new direction the review pointed to was the need to thin forests inhabited by the spotted owl that are at increased risk of wildfire, particularly east of the Cascades.

"Without managing those forests, we are going to lose them," he said. "The listing is working counter to that happening."

But Alex Morgan of the Seattle Audubon Society said troubles facing the owl underscore the need to increase protections on some intensively logged Washington private lands.

The new review has highlighted the troubles, beyond decades of logging, that face the spotted owl. Among the top threats appear to be the barred owl, a species that arrived from the Midwest and is now expanding throughout the range of the spotted owl. In areas of the Olympic Peninsula and the eastern side of the North Cascades, barred-owl populations increased substantially throughout the '90s, and spotted-owl populations declined even as logging on federal lands dropped to a fraction of former levels.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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