Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl - DRAFT

Investments that would improve the timber productivity of forestlands arediscouraged by the uncertainty regarding whether the additional timber supplythat results will be available for harvest or whether it will be unavailable owingto future owl conservation measures. Thus one aspect of providing incentivesto increase timber growth, especially on private lands, is to reduce this uncertainty.Policies that make clear what forestland can be harvested and whenwill reduce the uncertainty that impedes investment.Various forest management practices have the potential to increase the productivityof owl habitat or to allow some timber harvest within owl habitat withless damage to its value as habitat. Uncertainty about the effects of suchpractices prevents their use and increases the costs of owl conservation.III. Relationship Between Spotted Owl Habitatand the Timber Resource BaseThe high costs of protecting northern spotted owl habitat result from the factthat its range largely coincides with the most valuable timber resources on theforestlands of the Pacific Northwest. Spotted owls appear to concentrate theiractivities in old-growth stands or in mixed-age stands with both old-growthand mature trees. Recent owl surveys have located owls in a wide variety ofhabitat conditions. However, until research has shown that owl populationscan thrive in areas that do not have classic old-growth characteristics, oldgrowthstands will be needed as the primary source of the owl habitat neededto assure its survival and recovery.Northern spotted owls not only prefer old-growth and mature forestland, butthey use a great deal of it. Studies of the home ranges of owl pairs in variousprovinces showed that owls use areas as small as about 1,000 acres and aslarge as 27,000 acres. Median home ranges of 3,000 to 9,000 acres weretypical. A further factor that accounts for the large amount of habitat neededto support owl populations is the need for numbers of owl pairs and individualowls to occupy a contiguous habitat area within which they can interact. Thelong-tenn survival of a species depends not just upon the survival of individualsbut also upon successful mating, raising of young, and dispersal of newadults. For owls, this requires relatively large contiguous areas of habitatwithin which individual owls can interact.The need to preserve large areas of old-growth and mature forestland bringsowl conservation into direct conflict with timber harvesting. For decades, oldgrowthtimber has been the primary source of logs for the timber and woodproducts industries of the Pacific Northwest. Stands of large trees provide alarger volume of high quality wood at lower cost than do younger stands.Unfortunately, many of the forest management practices that have been usedto increase the returns from timber harvesting and growing have been detrimentalto owl habitat. Not only does the practice of clear-cutting remove oldgrowthtrees from the land, but the regenerated forests grown on cleared landare often even-aged, single-species stands with little habitat value for owls.The patchwork of regenerated clear-cuts distributed across the landscape afterdecades of timber harvesting breaks up the continuity of the habitat availablefor owls. Although owls are often found in young or mature stands, theirsuccess in mating and raising young appears to be reduced by habitat fragmentation.Furthermore, the harvest of old-growth allows cleared land to beused to grow new trees. Younger trees grow more rapidly than old trees. Fromthe standpoint of long-term timber supply, the more rapid growth in youngerstands helps to support higher levels of sustainable timber harvest.541