21st Century Problems

Canada (BC) and US (Tongass) Forest Policy Comparisons: Nie and Hoberg

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Check out these videos from Policy Issues in the Pacific Coastal Temperate Rainforest of North America On April 19, 2012. I thought it was extremely interesting to compare what happens in our system of court-governance compared to Canada’s and the way they work and results in neighboring and connected forests. Props to Bruce Botelho (City and Borough of Juneau) for organizing, moderating and posting such an interesting panel.

In Part 1, Nie and Hoberg compare the governance, processes and products of policy between countries.

In Part 2, Nie and Hoberg are part of a larger panel.

If you only have a small amount of time, about 16 minutes into Part 2 is a discussion of the role of litigation. About 47 minutes in is a discussion of Forest Service culture.

In response to a question, Martin suggests a land law review. I’ve got some links to the Natural Resource Law Center’s of the University of Colorado Law School’s progam, powerpoints and videos of its conference on that topic in 2010. but some appear to be broken so I’ll post those once I contact folks there and get them fixed.

They also touch upon jobs, local communities, and other topics.

One thing of interest to me (there were many) was when Hoberg said that he didn’t feel that 30% protected was “enough” because of the importance of that area. It is interesting how rainforests can be all about old growth and protection, while it is harder to make that same case in areas of frequent fires. Maybe we need two separate ways to think about conservation..clearly delineated so that rainy ideas are not projected onto non-rainy areas and vice versa. Also discussion on collaboration and comparing Alaska and other collaborative efforts, and Martin Nie gives his opinion on the new planning rule.

We hobbyist policy wonks usually don’t have funding to get out and about, and the video plus any discussion here seems like a great way to expand the mind and the dialogue with new ideas. Here is a link to the whole session program. Some of those look interesting as well, would appreciate any comments from folks who have viewed the other sessions.

I’d be interested to hear from you all anything that strikes you about these discussions, and if the contrast between US and Canadian systems provides any thoughts for you about improving our processes in the US.

Owls and Fish and Science, Oh, My!

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Here’s an article on the new critical habitat plan to be posted next week.

GRANTS PASS, Ore. –

The last building block of the Obama administration’s strategy unveiled Wednesday to keep the northern spotted owl from extinction nearly doubles the amount of Northwest national forest land dedicated to protecting the bird by the Bush administration four years ago.
Still, conservation groups that went to court to force the overhaul said key gaps remain, such as an exemption for private forest lands and most state forests.

Following a directive last February from the White House, officials revised the latest plan to make room for thinning and logging inside critical habitat to reduce the danger of wildfire and improve the health of forests.
Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity said it appeared the critical habitat plan and the previously adopted owl recovery strategy were back in line with the Northwest Forest Plan adopted in 1994 to protect owls and salmon.
“In restoring extensive protections on federal lands, today’s decision … marks the end of a dark chapter in the Endangered Species Act’s implementation when politics were allowed to blot out science,” he said. “The owl has continued to decline since its protection under the Endangered Species Act. Part of the reason for that is the loss of habitat on private and state lands.”
Dominick DellaSala, chief scientist for the GEOS Institute and a former member of the spotted owl recovery team, objected to plans to log and thin forests inside the critical habitat area, saying no studies have been done on how that may harm owls, which favor old growth. He added that one study shows it reduces the amount of prey available.
The federal government has been trying to balance logging and fish and wildlife habitat since the late 1980s.
The designation of the spotted owl as a threatened species in 1990 triggered a 90 percent cutback in logging on national forests in the northwest, and similar reductions spread around the nation.

Meanwhile here in Colorado, we have finally figured out which fish is which (see paper here and this piece by Bob Berwyn) and there is a settlement agreement with CBD that stops motorcycles only from the trails in the area.

As in this article, inquiring minds might wonder if all those activities are on the same trails (which I don’t know) is there a scientific reason that motorcycles were singled out? Part of this question could be that there is another layer of complexity not revealed in these news stories.

And despite the fact that this occurred in a settlement agreement behind closed doors, couldn’t either the feds or CBD (same organization as noted above) show how they used “the best available science” to come up with this agreement?

And if they can’t or won’t, doesn’t it make you curious about how policy is really made, the involvement of the public and how public the process is? Sure the scope and impact of this tiny drainage is nowhere near the spotted owl, but one could argue that at least the level of documentation (with citations) in a decision notice for a CE or so and some sort of public process should take place.

I’m hoping the explanation of best science is in a legal document somewhere (the formal settlement agreement?) but just not easy for folks to access. It seems to me that if we are going to acknowledge that court is where important federal lands policies get made, then the public should have the same right of access to those documents (for example, posted on the forest website) as they would to CEs, EAs and EISs.

Those who know more about the spotted owl story, please comment.

AWR: The Rest of the Story on the Little Belts Lawsuit

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The Little Belt Mountain Range on the Lewis and Clark National Forest in central Montana as seen from overhead on this Google image. As anyone can clearly see, nearly the entire mountain range has been heavily roaded, clearcut and mined. Ask yourself: is this tremendous fragmentation good for native wildlife or native fish?

The following opinion editorial is written by Mike Garrity, Alliance for Wild Rockies. It appeared in today’s Great Falls Tribune:

The Tribune’s article on Nov. 18 about the Lewis and Clark National Forest left out some important details and readers deserve to know why the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Native Ecosystems Council went to court to protect the Little Belt Mountains from the proposed “Hazardous Trees Reduction Project.”

First, it is important to bring some perspective to the scope of the project. Logging will take place on a whopping 575 miles of roads. If you were to jump on I-15 and head south, you’d have to go all the way to Salt Lake City to cover that many miles. But remember, all those miles of road to be logged are not spread out through three states from Great Falls to Salt Lake — they’re located in just one Montana mountain range.

The project would change those small roads and two-tracks to look like landing strips since all the roadside trees would be cut down for hundreds of feet. As a result, any elk that cross roads won’t be quickly sneaking across two-tracks, they’ll be fully exposed in an open area as long as a football field. That the project includes this kind of logging in wilderness study areas, research natural areas, inventoried roadless areas, and old growth also deserves explanation by the Forest Service, not obfuscation.

Widespread herbicide spraying is also proposed in several watersheds and streams that are already rated impaired due to sedimentation. More logging will dump even more sediment into these degraded streams, which is antithetical to state efforts to preserve Westslope cutthroat trout and keep Montana’s state fish off the Endangered Species list. The bottom line, however, is that the Forest Service is required by law to produce an environmental analysis for public review and comment.

While Forest Supervisor Bill Avey claims the agency wants more early public involvement, his attempt to use a categorical exclusion does just the opposite – it excludes the public and is the primary reason for taking the agency to court. The Forest Service has prepared an environmental analysis for all similar projects in Montana. Had this proposal been allowed to go forward, it would have set a terrible precedent not just for Montana, but nationwide.

Categorical exclusions were intended for purposes such as mowing lawns at ranger stations or painting outhouses, not logging over 17,000 acres along 575 miles of roads. Had Avey followed the law, the public would certainly have raised questions about the proposal. For instance, environmental analysis would reveal that massive infestations of noxious weeds such as thistle, knapweed, and hounds tongue already exist along these roads. The Forest Service admits it can’t control them now, but didn’t want to admit that logging will only make the situation worse.

Or how about the fact that Canada lynx, wolverine, black-backed woodpecker, Northern goshawk, Western toad, and Northern three-toed woodpecker are all known to occur in the Little Belts and that their numbers will be further reduced by these massive clear cuts? Or maybe Avey didn’t want the public to know that the Forest Service’s own studies show that logging wild lands has little effect on wildfires and that they even might make fires burn hotter because logged forests are hotter, windier, and drier than unlogged forests. Or perhaps Avey didn’t want to explain why the Forest Service wants to log these so-called hazardous trees at a cost of over $2 million to taxpayers when there isn’t a hazard.

Firewood cutters have already done a good job removing beetle-killed trees next to the roads — and they did it without a subsidy from taxpayers. And finally, the public might want to ask why Avey waited until he was sued in federal court to agree to follow the law and write an environmental analysis on this timber sale.

We explained to Avey at an appeal resolution meeting that the Forest Service was illegally excluding the public from having input on this proposal, but unfortunately, he ignored us until we sued, and then he pulled the project. We firmly believe that in America the public should have a say in the management of our public lands. It is unfortunate that we had to go to court to get it.

Governor Kitzhaber’s Forest Vision

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All: I have received NO responses to my visualization request here. OK, maybe that was too right-brained. How about sharing your visions for the future and submitting them to me for future posts ([email protected])?

To get you started, here’s one from Governor Kitzhaber of Oregon. Thanks to a colleague for this contribution. Oregon is an important place for many reasons, not least of which is that the current chair of the Senate subcommittee on public lands and forests. Senator Wyden has the same history as many of us, watching the the public forest debate over time from a front-row seat.

You can read the entire piece here in his testimony before the Oregon Board of Forestry in 2011.

Moving Forward

The answer to meeting these challenges is not to expect that the private industrial sector is suddenly going to shift away from a timber production framework as its primary focus. Nor is it to expect that federal land logging will return to the levels of the 1980’s and early 90’s. That is not what I’m saying. Clearly there are different histories, legal frameworks and standards applicable to private versus state forest management; and state versus federal forest management.

What I am saying, however, is that the three symptoms I just described are just that – symptoms; symptoms of a larger underlying problem: the fact that the status quo in terms of our economic, community and conservation values does not represent a sustainable or, quite frankly, a defensible balance. We are mired in ongoing conflict: timber sale by timber sale; forest by forest – rather than engaging in a more holistic strategy that can move us toward a collaborative solution that balances our environmental, economic and community values in a sustainable manner.

To achieve this vision, new and innovative approaches are needed across many areas tied to public forest management. This includes diversification of product lines and business models, including ties to community-scale biomass energy. Examples of this can be found in John Day and the partnership between Malheur Lumber and the local hospital and airport; and in the integrated wood product campuses from Wallowa County.

Innovation also includes the expansion and diversification of revenue sources for counties, for the Department, and for the health of forest lands and affected communities. We need to examine responsible ways to increase revenue options, including community forests, carbon sequestration markets, and other market-based approaches that help avoid the conversion of forest lands to non-forest uses.

This also includes expansion of state-forest ownership – and I would like to applaud the Board and the Department’s work on the Gilchrist State Forest and your help in keeping a working forest active in a place that needs working forests. I am also interested in looking at innovative new loan programs, funding partnerships, the use of bonding authorities or the expansion of voter-backed funding in support of conservation-based working landscapes and rural economic development around forest management.

Innovation also includes considering the establishment of a signature research center (like ONAMI and BEST) dedicated to innovation in the use of wood – perhaps a partnership between the Forestry Department at OSU, the School of Architecture at U of O; and the proposed Sustainability Center in Portland.

Finally, we need to support pathways that lead to consensus in management, particularly on the federal landscape. Since my last term as governor– and my work on the en libra principles — the good work of collaboration has grown significantly across many Oregon regions and communities closely linked with federal forests. In many places, projects have not been appealed or litigated for years. This is a positive trend. Gaining collaborative agreement across diverse constituents on public forest management provides stability, and in a world of increasingly limited funding, the consensus these local forest collaboratives produce represents a sound place to invest. That said, the ecological, social, and economic needs we face today demand restoration work at a larger scale. I will continue to support forest collaboratives – but will also challenge them to advance project work at a pace and scale that is meaningful for forest and community health.

We have an opportunity to break the mold of conflict and polarization by how we choose to move forward on our state forests. I believe you join me in wanting Oregonians and the nation to look at Oregon as a model for public forest management. To do so, two things are required.

First, we must view our state forests not in isolation but rather in the context of the larger forest landscape of which they are a part. This means that in addition to the management policies set forth by the Board of Forestry for state lands; we must aggressively pursue the latitude to engage in environmentally sound active management to restore the health of our federal forest lands;through our Congressional delegation, through the US Forest Service via channels like our Federal Forest Advisory Committee, and through our network of community-based forest collaboratives.

It also means we must develop polices and strategies that will result in logs harvested off private lands being as valuable here in Oregon as they are in Asia. In short we need to be exporting value added products, not our natural capital and our jobs. Both of these efforts will be priorities for my administration.

Second, the management of our state forests must reflect the kind of sustainable forest policy which can help inform the management debate across Oregon’s larger forested landscape.

What do you think of Governor Kitzhaber’s vision? Can you send me your own visions? Let’s see how different they are (and can we stick to not saying negative things about people who think differently in our vision; these would be positive visions).

Musings on the Forest Service Cut and Sold Report

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Here’s a guest post from Derek Weidensee, which started as a comment here in a previous thread, but the whole idea of what’s in the cut and sold report, and what it means, I think is worth its own post and discussion.

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 USFS “cut and sold” report has just came out. The nine forests in Montana have sold the least amount of timber since 2007, and 40% less than 2009. When one looks back 10 years, one can see an inverse curve between “timber sold” in Montana and “money raised” by the Alliance of Wild Rockies. In 2007, when only 109 Million board foot was sold (MMBF), the AWR raised $255,000. The Wildwest Institute raised $136,000. There was much litigation then wasn’t there. In 2009, the AWR budget dropped to $83,000 (barely enough to cover Garrity’s salary) and the WWI to $33,000. In 2010, because of a “gift” from Carole King, the AWR budget bounced up to $380,000. Now here’s some research for you. Graph this one out. How many lawsuits were filed in the last few years, or more importantly, how many MMBF is currently litigated. How much of the 40% decline in volume is attributed to litigation? Why can’t the USFS tell us that? They know, and they could, but why wait for the Missoulian to get around to asking them. You can argue that it’s all about following the law, but who could be opposed to the public’s right to know. Let’s stop the dance here, we all know the litigation is all about soaking up person hours so less timber can be cut with the available budget, and with holding timber supplies in the hope some more mills will close. A tactic that has worked quite well in the past 30 years.
Here’s a few more fun “stat’s” from the cut and sold. Out of the 122 MMBF “sold” 25% was personal use firewood. Of the “commercial” timber, only 38%(47MMBF) of the 122 was “sawtimber” and 35%(43MMBF) “non-sawtimber,” in other words, trees less than 9″ DBH(there’s your hazard road timber sales). The mills can cut down to a 7″ DBH. In 2007, 70% was “sawtimber”. That means that in 2007 75 MMBF was sawtimber while in 2012 only 47MMBF was.
–Meanwhile,the Ouachita in Arkansas sold 90MMBF of which 65MMBF was sawtimber. One forest in the east sold more sawtimber than all nine in Montana.
–The three NF’s in Michigan sold 150 MMBF. Three million acres in Michagan sold more than 20 some million in Montana. Guess there ain’t much litigation in Michigan.
—The White Mountain NF in New Hampshire, barely 100 miles from Boston, sold as much timber as the Bitteroot in Montana.
—Colorado sold 105 MMBF, almost as much as Montana, when it has one mill just out of bankruptcy and another opening soon, while Montana has what, 7 mills of comparable size.
—The two one million acre forests in Minnesota sold 105 MMBF.
Keep in mind, that the above forests sell very little “personal use firewood”.
The whole Northern Region sold 206 MMBF. If the Obama administration wants to sell 350 MMBF as Tidwell talked of, they’ve got their work cut out for them.

Matthew, feel free to repost your comments on this on this thread.
Here’s the link to the Cut and Sold report.

Forest Service withdraws controversial CE Decision Memo

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Two months ago we had a discussion about the appropriate, or inappropriate, use of a Categorical Exclusion (CE) relating to the Lewis and Clark National Forest’s “Little Belt Mountain Hazard Tree Removal Project” in central Montana.  This followed other debates on this blog about the use of CE’s (here and here).

According to the Alliance for Wild Rockies, the use of a CE for this project – which they contend would result in logging over 17,000 acres of national forest lands, including logging in Inventoried Roadless Areas, Wilderness Study Areas, Research Natural Areas, and old-growth forests – was inappropriate, so they sued.

On Thursday, Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor, William Avey, sent out this letter to interested parties, letting the public know he was withdrawing the CE Decision Memo and intending “to prepare an environmental assessment to provide evidence and analysis for determining whether to prepare an environmental impact statement or a finding of no significant impact for the Little Belt Mountains Hazard Tree Removal Project.”

Ranchers, Sports”men” Propose Buy-back of Oil and Gas Leases

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This photo is not from the Thompson Divide, but there are many places in the Interior West in which grazing and oil and gas development appear to coexist.

Props to these groups for seeing a different path to meet their objectives than litigation, plus the taxpayer will be off the hook for the costs of litigation, no small thing.

Here is a link to a story in the Denver Post today. Below are a couple of excerpts.

It’s interesting how diverse groups can bond when gas development comes up:

A combination of funds from foundations and coalition board members, including Sue Anschutz-Rodgers and Avalanche Ranch owner Chuck Ogilby, easily could raise $50 million if the leases were worth that, Kessler said.

Preserving the high country “is critical for our operations,” said rancher Bill Fales, whose family has run the Cold Mountain Ranch near Carbondale since 1924. Ranchers anchoring the region’s agricultural economy rely on federal permits allowing sustainable grazing in the high-country — grazing that they say could not be done amid drilling.

“We would have nowhere to go with our cows,” said Fales, whose wife, Marj Perry, is on the coalition board.

The area also includes a key migration corridor for lynx, moose, bear, deer, elk and mountain lions — and two Colorado Parks and Wildlife game units in which 14,000 big game hunting licenses are sold each year. A Sunlight to Powderhorn snowmobile route traverses the forests. Rock climbers, cross-country skiers and fishermen flock here for recreation.

Note the reference to sustainable grazing.. vis a vis our discussion yesterday here. Also snowmobiles (italics mine).

I also noticed that the author of the article states:

The U.S. Forest Service owns the surface land — located south of the Sunlight ski area and west of McClure Pass — much of it designated “roadless” under a recently upheld national rule aimed at protecting pristine forests.

It seems odd to me that the Colorado Roadless Rule, which is currently the law of the land in Colorado, is not mentioned (I don’t know offhand if there are any boundary differences between the rules in this area.)

Climate change increases stress, need for restoration on grazed public lands

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The following article was written by David Stauth.  The entire scientific study is available here.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Eight researchers in a new report have suggested that climate change is causing additional stress to many western rangelands, and as a result land managers should consider a significant reduction, or in some places elimination of livestock and other large animals from public lands.

A growing degradation of grazing lands could be mitigated if large areas of Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service lands became free of use by livestock and “feral ungulates” such as wild horses and burros, and high populations of deer and elk were reduced, the group of scientists said.

This would help arrest the decline and speed the recovery of affected ecosystems, they said, and provide a basis for comparative study of grazing impacts under a changing climate. The direct economic and social impacts might also be offset by a higher return on other ecosystem services and land uses, they said, although the report focused on ecology, not economics.

Their findings were reported today in Environmental Management, a professional journal published by Springer.

“People have discussed the impacts of climate change for some time with such topics as forest health or increased fire,” said Robert Beschta, a professor emeritus in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, and lead author on this study. “However, the climate effects on rangelands and other grazing lands have received much less interest,” he said. “Combined with the impacts of grazing livestock and other animals, this raises serious concerns about soil erosion, loss of vegetation, changes in hydrology and disrupted plant and animal communities. Entire rangeland ecosystems in the American West are getting lost in the shuffle.”

Livestock use affects a far greater proportion of BLM and Forest Service lands than do roads, timber harvest and wildfires combined, the researchers said in their study. But effort to mitigate the pervasive effects of livestock has been comparatively minor, they said, even as climatic impacts intensify.

Although the primary emphasis of this analysis is on ecological considerations, the scientists acknowledged that the changes being discussed would cause some negative social, economic and community disruption.

“If livestock grazing on public lands were discontinued or curtailed significantly, some operations would see reduced incomes and ranch values, some rural communities would experience negative economic impacts, and the social fabric of those communities could be altered,” the researchers wrote in their report, citing a 2002 study.

Among the observations of this report:

• In the western U.S., climate change is expected to intensify even if greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.

• Among the threats facing ecosystems as a result of climate change are invasive species, elevated wildfire occurrence, and declining snowpack.

• Federal land managers have begun to adapt to climate-related impacts, but not the combined effects of climate and hooved mammals, or ungulates.

• Climate impacts are compounded from heavy use by livestock and other grazing ungulates, which cause soil erosion, compaction, and dust generation; stream degradation; higher water temperatures and pollution; loss of habitat for fish, birds and amphibians; and desertification.

• Encroachment of woody shrubs at the expense of native grasses and other plants can occur in grazed areas, affecting pollinators, birds, small mammals and other native wildlife.

• Livestock grazing and trampling degrades soil fertility, stability and hydrology, and makes it vulnerable to wind erosion. This in turn adds sediments, nutrients and pathogens to western streams.

• Water developments and diversion for livestock can reduce streamflows and increase water temperatures, degrading habitat for fish and aquatic invertebrates.

• Grazing and trampling reduces the capacity of soils to sequester carbon, and through various processes contributes to greenhouse warming.

• Domestic livestock now use more than 70 percent of the lands managed by the BLM and Forest Service, and their grazing may be the major factor negatively affecting wildlife in 11 western states. In the West, about 175 taxa of freshwater fish are considered imperiled due to habitat-related causes.

• Removing or significantly reducing grazing is likely to be far more effective, in cost and success, than piecemeal approaches to address some of these concerns in isolation.

The advent of climate change has significantly added to historic and contemporary problems that result from cattle and sheep ranching, the report said, which first prompted federal regulations in the 1890s.

Wild horses and burros are also a significant problem, this report suggested, and high numbers of deer and elk occur in portions of the West, partially due to the loss or decline of large predators such as cougars and wolves. Restoring those predators might also be part of a comprehensive recovery plan, the researchers said.

The problems are sufficiently severe, this group of researchers concluded, that they believe the burden of proof should be shifted. Those using public lands for livestock production should have to justify the continuation of ungulate grazing, they said.

Collaborators on this study included researchers from the University of Wyoming, Geos Institute, Prescott College, and other agencies.

“Local Questions Decided On Local Grounds”: Not in This Century?

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This is a guest post from Bob Zybach (photo above). It carries forward from Matthew’s and my discussion about local people, and is the national government of the US treating its’ own local folks views differently than, say, international conservation organizations recommend. This previous discussion can be found here.

The question is whether each taxpayer should equally get to decide what happens on national forests, or to what extent local people, and local and state governments should have “more” of a voice.

Here is Bob’s piece.

When Pinchot and Roosevelt first put the Forest Service together under the auspices of the USDA, Pinchot authored the Congressionally-approved 1905 “Use Book,” intended to provide for management of the federal forest reserves. The very first sentences in this manual were:

“TO THE PUBLIC. The timber, water, pasture, mineral, and other resources of the forest reserves are for the use of the people. They may be obtained under reasonable conditions, without delay. Legitimate improvements and business enterprises will be encouraged.

Forest reserves are open to all persons for all lawful purposes.”

And it becomes more explicit thereafter:

“We know that the welfare of every community is dependent upon a cheap and plentiful supply of timber; that a forest cover is the most effective means of maintaining a regular stream flow for irrigation and other useful purposes; and that the permanence of the livestock industry [Note: this is before automobiles and McDonalds] depends upon the conservative use of the range.” (p. 7)

“The administration of forest reserves is not for the benefit of the Government, but of the people.” (p. 12)

And in a letter from the Secretary of Agriculture to Pinchot, in conjunction with the Act authorizing the transfer of the forest reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture:

“‘You will see to it that the water, wood, and forage of the reserves are conserved and wisely used for the benefit of the home builder first of all, upon whom depends the best permanent use of lands and resources alike . . . In the management of each reserve local questions will be decided upon local grounds . . . and where conflicting interests must be reconciled the question will always be decided from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run.” (p. 11)

The part that keeps getting left out by modern-day “conservationists” is that it is “the greatest number” of LOCAL people that Pinchot is talking about: i.e., “the local demand is always considered first.”

This is what people are talking about,when they speak of indigenous people; local homebuilders and their businesses — only now it is other people in other countries in competition with our own that seems to draw this kind of attention — not US taxpayer “local” people. Somehow, their needs and interests don’t seem to count for much anymore when it comes to the use and management of their local lands.

We are the only country in history to encourage our forests to burn up in wildfires and then let the remnants rot in place until the next wildfire — and to spend billions of dollars making sure this happens! We must obviously be very wealthy to even allow such a condition to evolve.

What a stupid waste, is my opinion. I’m in favor of real conservation instead, and of local resource management — as described by Pinchot and promised by Congress.

New Research: California spotted owls and burned forests

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Photo of female and juvenile California spotted owl courtesy of University of California Cooperative Extension (http://ucanr.org/sites/spottedowl/).
http://ucanr.org/sites/spottedowl/

New research has just been published concerning the relationship of burned forests and California spotted owls.  “Dynamics of California Spotted Owl breeding-season site occupancy in burned forests“ – from researchers D. E. Lee, M.L. Bond and R.B. Siegel – was just published in the latest edition of The Condor, an international journal pertaining to the biology of wild bird species. 

Abstract.  Understanding how habitat disturbances such as forest fire affect local extinction and probability of colonization – the processes that determine site occupancy – is critical for developing forest management appropriate to conserving the California Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis), a subspecies of management concern.  We used 11 years of breeding-season survey data from 41 California Spotted Owl sites burned in six forest fires and 145 sites in unburned areas throughout the Sierra Nevada, California, to compare probabilities of local extinction and  colonization at burned and unburned sites while accounting for annual and site-specific variation in detectability.  We found no significant effects of fire on these probabilities, suggesting that fire, even fire that burns on average 32% of suitable habitat at high severity within a California Spotted Owl site, does not threaten the persistence of the subspecies on the landscape. We used simulations to examine how different allocations of survey effort over 3 years affect estimability and bias of parameters and power to detect differences in colonization and local extinction between groups of sites. Simulations suggest that to determine whether and how habitat disturbance affects California Spotted Owl occupancy within 3 years, managers should strive to annually survey greater than 200 affected and  greater than200 unaffected  historical owl sites throughout the Sierra Nevada 5 times per year. Given the low probability of detection in one year,  we recommend more than one year of surveys be used to determine site occupancy before management that could be detrimental to the Spotted Owl is undertaken in potentially occupied habitat.