Recovery plan kills species’ foe, thins fire-prone forests. (Warning: Spotted Owls. Bring Popcorn.)

[XemaSab]

Protecting the northern spotted owl from wildfire and killing a competing owl should restore the controversial species in 30 years, federal scientists said Friday.

"Unless the barred owl threat is lessened, land management alone will not recover the owl," said Ren Lohoefener, director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Pacific region.

The shotgunning of barred owls, a cousin of the spotted owl that encroached from back East on its old growth turf, to see if it improves spotted owl numbers is part of the final Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan released Friday by the Fish and Wildlife Service. So is a new strategy to thin fire-prone forests, leaving behind patches of spotted owl habitat.

That strategy goes for more than 1.1 million acres of timberland between Redding and the Oregon border, said Joan Jewett, spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific region. Overall cost of the owl’s recovery is estimated to be $489 million, Lohoefener said.

http://www.redding.com/news/2008/may/17/recovery-plan-kills-species/

The comments are PRICELESS. :popcorn:

[uppityperson]

1. We have barred owls, they are very neat birds but I understand the problem with them.

They are very tolerant of people, and interbreed with spotted owls. Spotted owls are just owls, but the important thing is they are an indicator of the health of a forest.

Some people think that the forests are being saved for the owls, getting it backwards that the owls are indicating a healthy forest. Rather like those parakeets or whatever the little birds were going down into mines. They indicate healthiness.

Barred owls are extending their ranges, since they can and do dwell around people. They interbreed and thusly the indicator shy Spotted owls are becoming scarcer.

I hate to see a bird shot simply because it can live around people, but I don't want an indicator species to die out either.

[malakai2]

2. When comes the next injunction?

Seriously...

What good does culling barred owls do if dispersal habitat across the Great Plains is left intact? That's like trying to control Kudzu by removing half of it every year. If they are as successful as the Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service have been at removing goats and pigs from the Hawaiian Islands, they can look forward to the cost of just that part of the program ballooning while not effecting any change in the spotted owl's status.

What logging company is going to selectively remove the small diameter saplings, doghair stands, and the like without removing any large live trees, snags, or downed wood? Is fire going to be returned to the landscape after "thinning" so that this undergrowth does not grow beyond control again like it has over the past 100 years of fire exclusion? I suppose maybe it'll be less of an issue when the Federal agencies start making counties and municipalities responsible for fighting fire in the WUI areas those counties and municipalities create, but even then there are so many other legal problems with controlled burns on the necessary scale that I don't see this ever happening. Meaning, the cost estimate is probably quite optimistic in this regard.

Where is the expansion of old growth acreage, stands at 4B, 4C, and 5? If the species is listed and the current acreage of old growth is so inadequate that listing is warranted, it would seem that under the definition of "conserve" in the ESA, every land management agency in the species' historic range should be protecting and expanding suitable habitat. That's right, I forgot, the current FWS solicitor in Bush's FWS has said that "range" in ESA refers to where the species exists now, in it's listed state, and not where it existed historically, when listing was not required. Here again, they'll be doing nothing to help the critter in question.

When can we expect senior FWS staff to start doing what is required under ESA so that politicians are forced to make the political decisions? The Endangered Species Committee has been part of the Act since 1978, and they already ruled once on spotted owls after a request by the BLM, but that action was withdrawn when Clinton took office. The ESC's composition is so tilted against species conservation (let's see, we have the Sec's of Interior, Agriculture, and Army, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, the head of the EPA, the head of NOAA, and a representative from the state or states within the species current range...I see a lot of votes going against the listed critter by default) that anything going to them under administrations like Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 will be granted an exemption, and that will be necessary to get real ESA reform.