The coastal marten is at a high risk for extinction in Oregon and northern California in the next 30 years due to threats from human activities, according to a new study.
“The study, published today in the online journal PeerJ, will be available to federal and state wildlife agencies for their consideration to determine whether distinct geographic population segments of the coastal marten warrant state or federal listing as threatened or endangered, said Katie Moriarty, a certified wildlife biologist and lead co-author on the study.
Their population assessment revealed that the central Oregon population of coastal martens is likely fewer than 87 adults divided into two subpopulations separated by the Umpqua River. Using a population viability analysis, they concluded that the extinction risk for a subpopulation of 30 martens ranged from 32 percent to 99 percent.
In the short term, limiting human-caused deaths of the coastal martens would have the greatest impact on the animal’s survival, said Moriarty, who has studied the animals for several years. In the long term, the species requires more habitat, which perhaps could be accomplished by making the adjacent federal land in Siuslaw National Forest suitable for martens.”
So this isn’t just new information for use in the ESA listing process, but it also raises new questions about whether existing forest plans would provide conditions needed for viable populations. I look forward to seeing how the Forest Service answers this question. (And yes, the Forest Service does have the authority to limit trapping.)
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act requires a comprehensive river management plan for eight rivers and creeks in southern California that Congress designated under the Act in 2009. The law requires completion of river plans within three years of designation. The rivers flow through national forest and BLM lands. A complaint was filed March 27.
The North Fork of the San Jacinto River, for example, runs through lands managed by the San Bernardino National Forest and provides habitat for the critically endangered mountain yellow-legged frog, as well as other animals including California spotted owls and rubber boas.
Animals that live along Palm Canyon Creek include the southwestern willow flycatcher and Peninsular bighorn sheep. “We’re concerned that by not having a comprehensive management plan for this wild creek that the resources could degrade over time,” she said.
The complaint asks for “a permanent injunction, to prepare a Management Plan … by a date certain.” Seems like a good candidate for a settlement, no?
Even when I was more active in the field (lo these many years ago) there were many unexplained things about genetics and evolution. But we didn’t have the technologies to look at specific changes. Here are a few recent stories that you might not have seen (shout-out to New Scientist magazine!). I am not saying that we shouldn’t try to protect genetic and species diversity. But genetic variation is constantly being produced as the environment changes, and the argument that evolution is too slow to replace it.. may not be up with some current scientific findings. The best summary is this article from CBC.
We cannot know for sure that the Lake Constance sticklebacks will continue evolving until they become two non-interbreeding species, says Marques. But evidence for sympatric speciation is growing, from mole rats in Israel to palms on Lord Howe Island, Australia, leading some evolutionary biologists, including Bird, to think it could be surprisingly common.
There is another case where sympatric speciation seems to be occurring nearly as fast as in the sticklebacks, Bird points out: apple maggots evolved from hawthorn maggots within two centuries of apples being introduced to North America.
As for the speed of the sticklebacks’ separation, there are now innumerable other examples of recent evolution that show how fast it can happen, from cancers becoming resistant to drugs and bedbugs becoming resistant to pesticides, to fish getting smaller to avoid becoming our dinner. It’s possible that such rapid evolution may even be the norm, rather than the exception.
The saga began in 1981 when a young large male cactus finch of the species Geospiza conirostris flew more than 100 kilometres from Espanola island to Daphne Major. Peter and Rosemary Grant, two researchers from Princeton University, noticed his arrival because they had been studying the Galapagos finches for decades.
The foreign bird later mated with a local medium ground finch of the species Geospiza fortis. They produced offspring with such an unusual song that they couldn’t attract mates from any of the four local species on Daphne Major, so they mated among themselves. That kind of “reproductive isolation” is one of the very strong criteria that defines a new species, said Sangeet Lamichhaney, a postdoctoral researcher at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University
There is also this example of quick adaptation, but it looks like phenotypic plasticity and not genetic change yet.
If the terminology is getting in the way of your appreciation, ask your question in the comments below and I will do my best to explain.
Here is an interesting story from UCDavis via Treesource.
Remote sensing technology has detected what could be a win for both spotted owls and forest management, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and the University of Washington.
For 25 years, many forests in the western United States have been managed to protect habitat for endangered and threatened spotted owls. A central tenet of that management has been to promote and retain more than 70 percent of the forest canopy cover.
However, dense levels of canopy cover leave forests prone to wildfires and can lead to large tree mortality during droughts. Thus, the disconnect between two significant land management goals.
In the study, published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, scientists found that cover in tall trees is the key habitat requirement for spotted owls — not total canopy cover. It indicated that spotted owls largely avoid cover created by stands of shorter trees.
“This could fundamentally resolve the management problem because it would allow for reducing small tree density through fire and thinning,” said lead author Malcolm North, a research forest ecologist with UC Davis’ John Muir Institute of the Environment and the USDA Pacific Southwest Research Station. “We’ve been losing the large trees, particularly in these extreme wildfire and high drought-mortality events. This is a way to protect more large tree habitat, which is what the owls want, in a way that makes the forest more resilient to these increasing stressors that are becoming more intense with climate change.”
“The analysis helps change the perception of what is important for owls — the canopy of tall trees rather than understory trees,” said co-author and spotted owl expert R.J. Guitiérrez, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. “The results do not mean a forest should be devoid of smaller trees because owls actually use some of those smaller trees for roosting. But it suggests a high density of small trees is likely not necessary to support spotted owls.”
Here’s the study. Of course, the press release format doesn’t cover the usual scientific caveats like they only studied part of California and so on..
I’m interested in how this fits in with what our readers in California have observed.
The Court of Federal Claims (which reviews monetary claims against the U. S. government) decided a case in November that got a lot of attention in legal circles, but apparently not from the Forest Service. It held, in Sacramento Grazing Association v. U.S., that the Forest Service violated the Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution by “taking” (without compensation) water rights owned by ranchers using the Sacramento Allotment on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico. They did this by constructing exclosures to keep cattle from trampling two federally listed plant species in wet areas, and amending the allotment management plan to prohibit cattle from entering the exclosures.
After determining that historic grazing had established water rights for the ranchers under state law, the court held that the Forest Service physically took the water rights because it denied the ranchers all access to their property interest. The court seemed to base its decision on prior cases that involved entirely fencing off a lake or totally denying access to minerals. The court did not directly address arguments raised by the Forest Service that water rights do not entitle a user to a particular source of the water, and that the permitted number of cows had been able to find sufficient water without using the sources having exclosures.
The court ordered further discussion between the parties of locating alternative water sources, which had been unsuccessfully attempted earlier. If that is not possible, the Forest Service would be faced with continuing to pay the ranchers, or removing the exclosures, potentially leading to violations of the ESA. Or maybe they could not renew the permit or terminate the allotment. In earlier stages of the case, the court had held that the grazing permits are not a property right, and in this case, the number of cattle permitted to be grazed had also been reduced. However, the court’s reasoning in this recent decision would appear to also produce a “taking” if the historic number of cows were not allowed to graze the allotment because fewer cows could not use the historic volume of water ranchers are entitled to.
The case seems to be viewed as an aberration among “takings” scholars, this blog post noting that this outcome should be barred by a precedent set by the Federal Circuit in another recent case. It is therefore a good candidate for appeal, but who knows what the current Administration might think about that, and it should have happened by now. Here is a take from the ranchers’ perspective (which takes off from the court’s invoking of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation as a similar situation with different results).
This is a Wild Earth Guardians lynx map from 199-2007
Starting with the discussion of Extinction on National Forests here, John Persell and I have been discussing the ethics and morality of protecting endangered species. John gets many points with me for seeking common ground through dialogue and is a good model for respectful discourse.
Here’s his original question https://forestpolicypub.com/2018/03/01/extinction-on-the-national-forests/comment-page-1/#comment-434462
“Is it never morally or ethically wrong to let species go extinct in any circumstances, in your personal opinion? Even purposeful eradication? I’m trying to get a sense of where the common ground is if the only barrier to extirpation or extinction is legal. If those wishing to protect the diversity of species that exists or formerly existed across an area cannot appeal to shared values because those values are not in fact shared, legal action (litigation) may be the only tool available, a tool that you generally deem inappropriate for public lands disputes. So where might the common ground be found?”
Here’s my answer and here’s his response. The great thing about a discussion like this is that we can enter deeper into it and go in different directions and there is always time.
As I read his question again, I think it might be morally or ethically wrong in some circumstances and not in others. Here are some things I’d consider and weigh in making any judgment calls.
1) Reality of Differentness: “how distinct are these really?”. Is it generally agreed it is a subspecies or species? Do different measurements lead to different conclusions (say different physical and genetic measures?)
2) Total Number of Critters Black Footed Ferret (once 18?) is a different order of magnitude than, say, Sage Grouse or sugar pine. There is also the related question of “does Canada count?”. If the climate warms and creatures move to Canada, they’re not really extinct are they? Or is extinct relative, like extinct in San Juan County, extinct in Colorado, extinct in the US, and so on…
2) Likelihood of Intervention Efficacyy.How sure are we that our interventions will help? Say, stopping hunting fishers is very likely to boost their populations. But different vegetation interventions with or without fire scenarios? Harder to say. Do we get evidence from different kinds of scientific studies and models? Do they agree? If not, how can we trust which ones? If, say a species is the victim of an infectious disease, should we stop all changes to habitat to make things better for the species when they could potentially all die from the disease anyway? Similarly, if they are sensitive to climate change, we could stop all vegetation manipulation and it might not help.
3) Impacts on People. What are the impacts of the interventions on people? Which people? Will they lose jobs, or will their energy bills go up? Will the jobs/product production be transferred to our northern neighbor or some other country? Will that impact the ecosystem or species there? How? Are their security issues related to our country’s need for certain products (say, energy?).
4) Biological factors. Is this species the end of a rare lineage? (gene conservation) Is this species some kind of “keystone”, e.g. forms burrows that others use? (may take a while for another species to fill the niche and meanwhile other species may also suffer).
What do you all think of these? Do others have other criteria to apply?
One of the factors considered in listing a species under ESA is the adequacy of exiting regulatory mechanisms. One of the biggest payoffs from national forest and BLM planning may be the adoption of such mandatory mechanisms that would protect a species and reduce or eliminate the need to list it under ESA.
The Northwest Forest Plan included a requirement to survey for rare species prior to logging projects – “Survey and Manage.” BLM amended its Northwestern and Coastal Oregon Resource Management Plan in August 2016 (see prior discussion on this blog here). One significant change in the approach to managing at-risk species was eliminating the Survey and Manage requirement. Here is the statement regarding this change from the BLM:
“The Proposed RMP, like the action alternatives, does not include the Survey and Manage measures of the No Action alternative. The Survey and Manage measures were included in the Northwest Forest Plan to respond to a goal of ensuring viable, well-distributed populations of all species associated with late-successional and old-growth forests. This goal of the Northwest Forest Plan was founded on a U.S. Forest Service organic statute and planning regulation, which did not and do not apply to the BLM, and is not a part of the purpose for this RMP revision. As detailed in the analysis in the Proposed RMP/Final EIS, the Proposed RMP will allocate a larger Late-Successional Reserve network than the No Action alternative, will protect older and more structurally-complex forests, and will continue to provide management for many of the formerly Survey and Manage species as Bureau Sensitive species. The Proposed RMP can achieve the purpose of this RMP revision and respond the BLM’s statutory authorities and mandates without the Survey and Manage measures.”
Conservation groups Monday petitioned the government to list the rare Siskiyou Mountains salamander under the federal Endangered Species Act, claiming federal land managers’ apparent reneging on old “look before you log” provisions in potential future logging sales imperil the rare forest amphibian.
Since 2007, the BLM has been required to survey for rare species like the Siskiyou Mountains salamander and manage 110 high-priority sites for the benefits of salamanders and their habitats. This survey-and-management plan, was also known as the “look before you log” approach, generally includes logging buffers should sales move forward.
Conservation groups originally filed for Endangered Species Act protection for the salamander in 2004. The 2007 conservation agreement, as well as old-growth forest protections under the Northwest Forest Plan, were cited by the Fish and Wildlife Service when it denied Endangered Species Act protection for the salamander.
The Fish and Wildlife Service will now have to consider the effect of the changes in the BLM plan, and may decide that listing this species is warranted. That could lead to further restrictions on logging. Of course BLM could then blame someone else – for forcing it to recognize that protecting species and ecosystems is part of its mission.
Here is George Wuerthner’s take on livestock allotment planning on the Bridger-Teton National Forest.
The Upper Green Allotment is the largest Forest Service grazing allotment in the West. It is a mixture of aspen, rolling sagebrush/grassland, willow-lined creeks, intermixed with ponds, and springs.
It contains the best wildlife habitat outside of a national park. Home to grizzlies and wolves, endangered Colorado cutthroat trout, sage grouse, elk, moose, pronghorn, and various rare amphibians, among other outstanding wildlife values.
That is one reason why the BTNF Forest Plan has categorized 93% of the area as DFC 10 and 12 status where protecting wildlife values is the primary goal. Yet the FS manages it as more or less a feedlot for a few local ranchers.
Since 1995, 34 grizzly bears have been “removed” from the Upper Green River allotment. When I questioned why the public’s wildlife was being removed instead of private livestock using our public lands, I was shut down and told I wasn’t allowed to debate these issues.
The purpose of the project is to continue to authorize livestock grazing in a manner that will maintain
or improve resource conditions. The Bridger-Teton Land and Resource Management Plan … provides direction to support community prosperity in part through livestock grazing (Goal 1.1 and Objective 1.1(h),… in a manner that avoids unacceptable effects from livestock use on range, soils, water, wildlife, and recreation values or experiences …
The majority of the project area is in DFC 10 (approximately 66 percent). The area theme is an area managed “to allow for some resource development and roads while having no adverse, and some beneficial effects on wildlife.” The management emphasis is to “[p]rovide long-term and short-term habitat to meet the needs of wildlife managed in balance with timber harvest, grazing, and minerals development.”
Grizzly bear management objective is to minimize the livestock related grizzly bear mortality.
All of the alternatives would permit more cattle to graze than has historically occurred (Table ES-2). All of the alternatives would be likely to adversely affect grizzly bears, which also sounds like a conflict with the forest plan requiring management for no adverse effects. Arguably, a “no grazing” alternative would not meet the purpose and need, but it looks to me like they haven’t considered a reasonable range of alternatives to reduce impacts on grizzly bears.
He’s got some interesting comments about the bias of range “cons” who “deferred to the ranchers:” “I can also assure you that most range cons are “want to be” ranchers…” My experience was that they were more likely to be “want to be” wildlife biologists. In contrast my experience with foresters (other than myself) is that they like to manage forests, and “no-action” has never appealed to them much, maybe because “it would result in no reason for your position.”
Larry Harrell asked recently (with a *smirk* no doubt) if any species have gone extinct on national forests. Here’s a report(published in 2004) from the Center for Biological Diversity that documents 108 extinctions that occurred between the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and 1995. Two are noted on national forests. One was a mussel on the Carson National Forest. Here’s the other:
The San Gabriel Mountains Blue butterfly (Plebejus saepiolus aureolus) was known only from a single wet meadow within the yellow pine forest near the Big Pines Ranger Station, San Gabriel Mountains, Angeles National Forest, California [14]. Its host plant was Trifolium wormskioldii. At a minimum it was seen in 1970, 1980, and 1985. It has not been seen since 1985 [14]. It was not found in a 1995 survey which was a very wet year that would have encouraged reproduction if the taxon still existed [97]. The meadow was still wet, but had been made smaller due to the diversion of some of the water from the natural spring feeding it. The diversion of the spring by the U.S. Forest Service has been suggested as the cause of the species extinction [189].
And it’s been another 20 years since then. Another species that seems obvious, but its extinction probably pre-dates this study is the ivory-billed woodpecker, which ranged throughout the southeastern forests, and was killed off by logging. The Ocala National Forest in Florida was established in 1908, but ivory bills had apparently disappeared from there by 1940. The last confirmed sightingwas in 1944 in Louisiana. One of the unconfirmed sightings after that was on the DeSoto National Forest in Mississippi.
One rare desert plant has been removed from the endangered species list, and another has been “down-listed,” thanks to successful recovery efforts in Death Valley National Park.
National forest planning has been a contributing factor to the delisting of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem, and will be part of the consideration if Canada lynx are proposed for delisting.
Two years ago today, President Barack Obama created three new national monuments in the California desert: called Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains. Supporters held a community event to celebrate, noting that tourism to the area has increased significantly, as people come to see Joshua Tree National Park and then, go on to explore the new monuments.
Then there’s the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan.
Under Zinke, the Bureau of Land Management recently filed a notice of intent to reopen the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which sets aside land for conservation, recreation and energy development. “Lands that were set aside for conservation may now be open to inappropriate uses like mining and renewable-energy development, when there was already a consensus on areas where those sorts of uses would be appropriate,”
Another example of Trumpling the interests of locals in favor of reducing the “burdens on all domestic energy development.” Another case where the recreation industry (and others) will have to battle the resources of the energy industry (instead of working with the industry as they did in DRECP). Who is your money on?
