This New York Times essay will be of interest to many of us TSW denizens….
A Dystopian Effort Is Underway in the Pacific Northwest to Pick Ecological Winners and Losers
Excerpt:
Very soon, the federal government may authorize the killing of nearly a half-million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest in a desperate bid to save the northern spotted owl. The killing could go on for decades.
As philosophers in Oregon whose work focuses on scientific and ethical issues regarding animals and the environment, we believe that the reasons given for this mass slaughter are deeply problematic. More broadly, this attempt to pick ecological winners and losers in a rapidly changing world shows how ill equipped the Endangered Species Act is to protect rare and important ecosystems.
…
We should strive to care for ecosystems given their current ecological realities. Ecosystems are dynamic and have always changed over time as organisms move around. And now, humans are inescapable drivers of ecological changes. Climate change and wildfire have accelerated the dynamism of ecosystems. Killing barred owls will not restore the forests to the way they were in 1850.
Here is a portion of an email I drafted to the authors of this piece:
As an environmental lawyer, I write to offer another perspective on barred owl invasion. In my work, I have defended spotted owls and their habitats for over ten years. Through this I have become deeply ingrained in the ongoing public debate over barred owl removal. After many years and deep consideration, I became first a reluctant supporter of barred owl removal and now, a vocal supporter of this hard work. I hope this email expands your thinking on the subject.
First, on the question of whether the barred owl is invasive, the weight of the scientific record supports that European Canadian settlement and associated habitat modification was what enabled barred owl range expansion. The genomic study you cite was not well done and is not held in high regard. (Check the number of citations as some kind of proof.) The paper did not use genetic samples from the most likely source population: barred owls from Canada near what was likely the edge of the barred owls population.
Invasive is an imprecise term. What is important to me is that the range expansion was almost certainly because of relative newcomers to the West, folks like my ancestors. We are culpable, and because of that, I think that we have a unique obligation to try to make things right, if possible.
Second, I think it is important to expand our thinking beyond “owl vs. owl.” Because the barred owl did not co-evolve with western forests, barred owls have the potential to disrupt entire West Coast forest ecosystems. Attached is a paper outlining some of the concerns, but here is a quick tl;dr: As generalists in both habitat and diet, barred owls are able to exist on the landscape in a far greater density on the landscape than spotted owls (which are both more finicky in terms of diet—they are rodentivores, primarily—and habitat). Because of that density and more varied diet, they are placing new strains on other life that may trigger a “trophic cascade” that could unsettle entire ecosystems.
Spotted owls are our canary in the coal mine. Because they are so well-studied, they serve as an indicator of West Coast forest health—if they are not doing well, that is a signal cautioning us that something is wrong. And something is desperately wrong. Other species, like the western screech owl, are also disappearing from the landscape, with declines coinciding with barred owl invasion. Many of the species commonly eaten by barred owls, including threatened amphibians, are poorly studied, so determining population trends is impossible. So, not only is barred owl removal to benefit spotted owls, it is to benefit frogs, salamanders, mollusks, birds—basically all forest life small enough to fit in the talons of a barred owl.
Third, barred owl removal is feasible and effective. We have the capacity to remove barred owls from a significant portion of the landscape at a reasonable cost. From the initial barred owl removal experiments, the rate of decline of the northern spotted owl in areas where barred owls were removed has effectively flatlined. Together with new habitat that is likely to come online in the coming decades because of the Northwest Forest Plan and other mature forest protections, the extinction of the northern spotted owl is not inevitable. Extinction here is a choice.
Lastly, I appreciate your point that too much conservation depends on the northern spotted owl and on the Endangered Species Act. We should protect rare habitats. But we don’t. And I am skeptical that we will. In the world that exists, the northern spotted owl and the Endangered Species Act are some of the few tools we have for ecosystem protection. The northern spotted owl acts as an “umbrella species”—protection of the owl means the protection of the habitat of other species reliant on mature and old-growth forests. Crudely, the loss of the spotted owl means the loss of a legal tool for conservation. The decline of the northern spotted owl means that we have fewer protections for vulnerable forests in the Pacific Northwest.
Thanks for this interesting perspective, Tom. About your last sentence: “The decline of the northern spotted owl means that we have fewer protections for vulnerable forests in the Pacific Northwest.” I disagree. About 83 percent of the federal lands covered by the NW Forest Plan are in LSRs or other reserves where little or no logging takes place. However, wildfire does not abide by the NW Forest Plan, and wildfire is the main threat to NSO habitat. I suggest that we have too many protections for NSO habitat, or the wrong kinds of protections. Either we take action to reduce the intensity and extent of wildfires, NSO (and barred owl) habitat will continue to decline. We’ll see if the revised NW Forest Plan takes this into account in a meaningful way.
Unravelling fire and owls is a difficult problem. Have you read Lesmeister, Damon B., et al. “Northern spotted owl nesting forests as fire refugia: A 30-year synthesis of large wildfires.” Fire Ecology 17.1 (2021): 1-18. (available at https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s42408-021-00118-z)? The heterogenous, high-density stand conditions (i.e., plantations) that really drive high-intensity, fast-moving fires are an area of common agreement. Let’s prioritize treating those.
That’s an interesting paper, Tom — thanks for the link. However, the authors looked at wildfires from 1987 to 2017. Since then, fires in NSO and CSO habitat have led to large losses of habitat. In 2020, 360,000 acres in Oregon alone. I reckon wildfire will continue to be the main threat to the owls. Perhaps the threat will increase.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/12/01/northern-spotted-owl-habitat-threatened-oregon-fires/6462923002/
And in California in 2021, “two megafires scorched more than half a million acres of owl habitat at high severity.
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/fire-major-threat-california-spotted-owls-could-it-also-help-save-them
Hi Tom, I thought plantations were not heterogeneous?
Ha! Yes, getting my hetero and homo confused again.
Hi Steve: I agree with you that the so-called “protections” of spotted owls have been the “wrong kind.” LSRs were referred to as “fire bombs” since their invention in the early 1990s. Passive management of our public forests has turned out to be the very biological and economical disaster that was clearly predicted 30 years ago. “Active management” should not include the systematic slaughter of innocent hoot owls, but rather the maintenance of our forests for the safety and enjoyment of people as well as wildlife — like what took place the previous 10,000 years. One more example of modern-day Lysenkoism.
What about the fire bombs that are the dense and geographically-dense industry plantations throughout CA, OR, and WA? What role do they play in fire ignition, spread, and intensity?
Plantations certainly can burn. But when they do, they burn at a lower intensity than older stands. There is less fuel to burn. The weight of the biomass in a 20 or 30 year old plantation is a small fraction of the weight of the biomass in a 100 year old stand. Imagine lighting 2 camp fires, one with 20 pounds of fuel and one with 200 pounds of fuel. In the plantation there is often little surface fuel — branches, brush, etc., unless brush has been allowed to grow between the trees,.
You know which fire produces more heat. That said, severity is another meaasure. A crown fire in a plantgation or an older stand is said to be more severe if all the trees are killed. Still, the intensity musr be less in a plantation.
Sorry to get into the semantics, but its important. In general, a fire in a plantation is not the same as a fire in an older stand,
In addition to the Lesmeister study Tom passed on earlier, try these 3 large landscape studies (again). The Levine study finds that the plantations are making adjacent lands more likely to burn at high severity. Yes, a fire in a plantation is not the same as an old forest, a plantation is a uniform sea of ladder fuels so tightly packed that surface fuels do not matter because canopy base height is zero and the tree crowns nearly touch each other to maximize economic return.
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/eap.1710?casa_token=xV-sQK_HzzgAAAAA%3AVkQylbbTLTy39ZXbG5FFh9Cezv2dvSsBxVcWULuPED_Q2qhHBwknckXzGxhDQY7zXf41gGoH0QAvUio
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/fee.2499
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecs2.4070
I am sure you all are going to ignore these, again, but the data keeps coming in that plantation forestry model used by much of the industry is at odds with landscape fire resilience.
Hi Anon: The answer is: “hardly any at all.” You’re welcome.
You’re points are right on target Bob. The so-called “environmental movement” that caused the almost total shut-down of active forest management on federal lands beginning in the early 1990’s ended up causing more environmental damage than all the unwise forest management had ever done in the 100 years before that. It’s time to start dealing with the realities of forest growth. There is a fix for the situation we are in. Instead of thinning barred owls how about we thin forests? The re-introduction of prescribed fire will not work in most stands without forest thinning happening first. This needs to take place on a grand scale. This isn’t the rocket science the anti-management types say it is. Sawmills and biomass plants are the forest’s friends. We need to be building more of them.
There are many who need to get over their hatred of what actually works. The crazy “environmental” regulations that have been handcuffing realistic management for over 30 years are very close to finally destroying the very forests they were supposed to protect. You’re over the target.
A travesty, pure and simple! I’ve seen invasives over my lifetime of everything from fire ants to armadillos. I know the fire ants were an import, first released in South Texas by accident. The horned toad and armadillos are just other species, naturally expanding their range. To pick and choose one species over another is just not right, in my book, and I’ll just use my traditional comment on such silly exploits – “horse manure”!