Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl - DRAFT

Estimated acres of forest landbase:Estimated acres of suitable habitat:4,475,000 743,000State 12.6%Private 56.8% Unsuitable 84.8% Tribal 0. 0%BLM 17.2% Private 2.0%State 1.6%BLM = U.S. Bureau of Land ManagementFS = U.S. Forest SenviceTribal 0.3% ES 5.5%FS 13.0%Figure 2.4a. Land base and suitable habitat, Oregon Coast Range.less than 40 years of age). Research is needed to determine if the population ofowls is self-sustaining. Owl populations elsewhere in the province are insignificant decline.Surveys for owls were conducted on 38,000 acres of state land in the centralportion of the province (west of Corvallis) during 1990 and 1991. Only 6.1percent of this state land (6,257 acres) contains trees older than 75 years ofage; mean stand size is 26.2 acres (+sd 20.2; range 1 to 120 acres). Only onespotted owl response was noted in 1991, with that owl being from a siteadjacent to, rather than within, state lands. Although these state lands likelysupported owls in previous years, owls no longer exist in this landscape.The Tillamook State Forest in the northern portion of the province contains480,000 acres of forestlands, 3 percent of which currently support trees olderthan 80 years. Large fires in 1933, 1939, and 1945 burned a total of 345,936acres. Subsequent reforestation has created a relatively homogeneous forest,with stands 30 to 50 years of age. Older forest stands outside of the burnedarea, now isolated due to timber harvest, contain the remaining owls andhabitat. As of September 1991, 25 owl sites were present on state and federallands north of Highway 18.Declining Populations. Based on demographic data gathered in the Roseburgstudy area from 1985 to 1991, the finite rate of increase (lambda) forCoast Range study areas is 0.941 (Appendix C), indicating an annual populationdecline of about 6 percent.Limited Habitat. Suitable habitat within the Oregon Coast Range is extremelylimited and poorly distributed, especially north of Highway 38. Fragmentationof remaining habitat within this province is of significant concernand is due largely to timber harvest and land-ownership patterns. The lack ofsuitable habitat is particularly acute in the northern part where federal landsare virtually nonexistent. Habitat quantity and quality have been reducedseverely due to: 1) extensive timber harvest, 2) fragmentation and isolation ofremaining stands, and 3) catastrophic fires and the resulting salvage of liveand dead trees. As of August 1991, only 37 percent of the federal lands (Neitropers. comm., Mellen pers. comm.), 12 percent of the state lands (Johnson pers.comm.), and 3 percent of the private lands (Greber et al. 1990) in the province49