The Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) is an indicator species for old grow forest in the Pacific Northwest.  There were titanic legal battles fought back in the eighties and nineties   to preserve a  modicum of the old growth forest and thus preserve this species of owl.  It requires large tracts of old growth forest which is rapidly being depleted by logging.

 Spotted Owl from Wikipedia

      I just read an article in the paper today by Kim Murphy of the Los Angeles times entitled: Future looks dim for spotted owls.  The article tracks Scott Gremel who is a biologist studying the Spotted Owl in the Olympic National Park.  In these dense forests last year spotted owls were found only in 19 of the 54 sites they once had populated and have declined overall by one-third since legislation was passed in the nineties to preserve their habitat.   Their continued decline of about four percent a year has led some scientists to think that the main problem is not logging but the aggressive Barred Owl (Strix varia)which has moved into the territory from Canada in the past few years.  

 Barred Owl from Wikipedia

      The Barred Owl is bigger, has more offspring, and has a less finicky appetite than the Spotted Owl.  Now the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service are proposing to open up large forest tracts for logging that had been set aside as breathing space for the Spotted Owl–about 1.8 milliion acres. 

      Somehow this seems a singularly unwise decision.  The reasoning seems to go like this:  Since it is competition from the Barred Owl that is threatening the Spotted Owl, we will cut down the remaining habitat for the Spotted Owl.  Now get this:  all but 20% of these forest groves have already been logged!  Now they want to cut much of the remainder.  The significant thing here, in my opinion, is not just the survival of one species, the Spotted Owl, but the survival of an entire ecosystem of which they are merely an indicator.

      I love the common complaint by the timber industries that these forests are being overgrown, becoming bug infested and dangerously prone to fires.   How, I wonder, did the Earth’s forests manage before the logging companies came on the scene to “manage” them and to turn them into a monoculture crop of trees grown in rows?

       As far as the invasion of the Barred Owl is concerned, often when the habitat is drastically disturbed, other species move into the disturbed area.  I think that one answer to the diminishment of the Spotted Owl is not less habitat preservation but more.