Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl - DRAFT

In general, the harvest of timber in the Pacific Northwest has occurred earlierand more rapidly on private forestlands than on public forestlands. Significantharvesting of timber in the national forests did not begin until after World WarII. Several consequences of this pattern affect the preservation of owl habitatand its economic effects. First, because most of the private old-growth forestlandhas been harvested, most of the remaining forestland that provides thebest owl habitat is on federal forests. Second, it was expected that the totaltimber harvest in the Northwest in the next few decades (while the regrowth onprivate lands matured) would be sustained by harvest from federal forests.Sustained yield or nondeclining flow concepts being used in setting the rate oftimber sales from federal forests were applied to the substantial areas of oldgrowthtimber in these forests. The removal of a substantial portion of thistimber inventory from the timber resource base will reduce the federal harvestlevel during a period when private forests are not capable of sustaining asignificant increase in harvest.IV. Economic and Social Cost InformationConsidered in the Formation of theRecovery PlanIn addition to the economic principles discussed earlier, the Recovery Teamconsidered several types of economic information. These included:* The estimated costs of previous owl conservation proposals,* Indicators of the dependency and sensitivity of local economies to timberharvest,* Indicators of the effects of various elements of the recovery plan and other owlconservation proposals on timber harvest, revenues, and employment,* Estimates of the costs and returns of various silvicultural practices.The first two categories of information were used to provide a context thatwould facilitate the design of lower cost options for consideration. The thirdwas used in the assessment of the various management actions the RecoveryTeam considered for inclusion in the recovery plan. Most of the evaluationcriteria were intended to help the Recovery Team evaluate the likely contributionof various options toward recovery. Harvest and employment effects wereincluded to show whether various options were substantially different in theircosts. The Recovery Team also reviewed estimates of the costs and revenuesfrom silvicultural practices that might be used to promote development of owlhabitat.The Recovery Team also considered information on the social costs of implementingowl conservation measures from several sociological studies.When the Recovery Team completed formulation of the draft recovery plan, itprepared preliminary estimates of the economic costs of its implementation.These are described in section IV. Section IV also provides a discussion of theconcepts and analytical methods used to estimate the indicators of employmentand revenue effects.543