By JIM PETERSEN
February 18,
2006; Page A9
Last month the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a call
for proposals to develop a recovery plan for the
northern spotted owl. It's about time: The owl
was added to the nation's burgeoning list of
threatened and endangered species nearly 16
years ago. That it took so long helps explain
why only 10 of the 1,264 species listed under
the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) have
ever recovered.
If my gut reading
is correct, the owl won't be No. 11. It is
already doomed across much of its range, and the
reason is well known among field biologists who
have been observing the bird for some 20 years.
More aggressive barred owls are pushing them out
of their 21-million-acre home range, or killing
them, or both. In any case, spotted owls are
fighting a losing battle, a fact that has me
wondering if the Fish and Wildlife Service isn't
whistling past the graveyard.
Barred owls, not
to be confused with common barn owls, migrated
from their native East Coast environs a century
or more ago. No one knows why, and until they
started killing already-threatened spotted owls,
no one cared. Now they do. Just how long it will
take the barreds to finish off their brethren
isn't known, but the situation has become so
precarious that a federal biologist recently
opined that shooting barred owls might be the
only way to save spotted owls.
How and why the
government failed so miserably in its costly
attempt to protect spotted owls is a sordid tale
that illustrates what happens when science is
politicized. Begin with the fact that protecting
owls was never the objective: Saving old-growth
forests from chainsaws was. The owl was simply a
surrogate -- a stand-in for forests that do not
themselves qualify for ESA protection. But if a
link could be established between harvesting in
old-growth forests and declining spotted owl
numbers, the bird might well qualify for listing
-- a line of thinking that in 1988 led Andy
Stahl, then a resource analyst with the Sierra
Club Legal Defense Fund, to famously declare,
"Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the
Northwest, for if it hadn't, we'd have to
genetically engineer it. It's the perfect
species for use as a surrogate."
Indeed it was. But
to back their play, the Sierra Club, the Audubon
Society and their friends in the Clinton
administration needed a good story for the
judge. They found it in three obscure reports: a
1976 master's thesis written by wildlife biology
major Eric Forsman at Oregon State University;
Mr. Forsman's 1980 doctoral dissertation; and a
1984 report written by him and two other
biologists. All three reports suggested a strong
link between declining owl populations and
harvesting in old-growth forests. Unfortunately,
the hypothesis has never been tested, so despite
16 years of research, no link between old-growth
harvesting and declining owl populations has
ever been established.
Moreover, we know
little about the relationship between harvesting
and owl populations. One such study -- privately
funded -- infers an inverse relationship between
harvesting and owls. In other words, in areas
where some harvesting has occurred, owl numbers
are increasing a bit, or at least holding their
own, while numbers are declining in areas where
no harvesting has occurred.
This news will
come as no surprise to Oregon, Washington and
California timberland owners who are legally
required to provide habitat for owls. Their
actively managed lands are home to the highest
reproductive rates ever recorded for spotted
owls. Why is this?
One possible
answer is that the anecdotal evidence on which
the listing decision was based is incomplete. No
one denies the presence of owls in old-growth
forests, but what about the owls that are
prospering in managed forests and in forests
where little old growth remains? Could it be
that spotted owls are more resourceful than we
think?
We don't know --
and the reason we don't know is that 16 years
ago federal scientists chose to politicize their
hypothesis rather than test it rigorously, to
flatly reject critiques from biometricians who
questioned the statistical validity of the
evidence on which the listing decision was
based, and to declare with by-god certainty that
once the old-growth harvest stopped owl
populations would begin to recover.
Some biologists
believe that spotted owls still have a fighting
chance for survival east of the Cascades in
Oregon and Washington, but there is a problem:
White fir is pushing native Douglas fir out of
these forests in the same way barred owls are
pushing spotted owls out of their home range.
Minus a long-term thinning program, opposed by
many of the same environmental groups that
pushed the owl's threatened species listing, the
birds will probably vanish from these forests,
too.
No doubt one or
more environmental groups will use the
government's call for recovery plans to demand
that even more habitat be set aside for spotted
owls. When that demand is made, someone ought to
remind Congress of a recent U.S. Forest Service
estimate that an additional 1.1 million acres of
federal forestland in the Pacific Northwest have
grown into old-growth status since the owl's
listing. But owl numbers continue to decline.
Perhaps the untold
story of the northern spotted owl will lead the
U.S. Senate to endorse changes in the Endangered
Species Act ratified by the House of
Representatives last fall. Among other things,
the House version mandates immediate development
and implementation of recovery plans for all
listed species. To avoid repeats of the spotted
owl fiasco, it would also be nice if the
scientists selected to peer-review listing
proposals represented all sides of inevitably
controversial questions.
It should not take
16 years to write a recovery plan. The fact that
it did ought to prompt some very pointed
questions about what went on behind locked doors
in the Portland, Ore., U.S. Bank Tower --
nicknamed the "Tower of Power" by government
scientists who gathered there, beyond public and
congressional scrutiny, in the spring of 1990 to
sift through the pieces of their story. Congress
ought to ask for their notes. I'm told they were
shredded daily.
Mr. Petersen is the founder of the nonprofit
Evergreen Foundation and the publisher of
Evergreen Magazine in Montana.
