Mexican spotted owl recovery team sees the forest for the trees

Mexican spotted owl recovery team sees the forest for the trees
Friday, June 07, 2002

By Ben Ikenson
Beneath a dome of stars in a canyon folded into southern New Mexico's Guadalupe Mountains, Sarah Rinkevich hears a distinctive, hollow-pitched, four-note call emerge from the surrounding forest: hoo ... hoo-hoo ... hoooooo. Although the sound has become familiar to her, she's always thrilled to hear it. A biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Rinkevich is on assignment to survey federally threatened Mexican spotted owls (Strix occidentalis lucida).

Rinkevich is one of 13 biologists and other scientists comprising the Mexican spotted owl recovery team, which in a 1995 Recovery Plan categorized the variety of habitats preferred by Mexican spotted owls to better conserve them for the owl.

The team's recommendations led to the serendipitous conservation of two other imperiled species: the Gooding's onion and the Jemez Mountain salamander, both of which might have required listing under the Endangered Species Act were it not for the actions recommended by the recovery plan for the Mexican spotted owl.

"It's not a coincidence that some of the needs of one species are shared by others," said Steve Spangle, the team's Fish and Wildlife Service liaison and co-author of the Recovery Plan. "If you can keep habitat for the owl, then you know you're probably helping other species that depend on similar habitat types."

The recovery goals for the Mexican spotted owl are based on what biologists call an "ecosystem approach." They involve management recommendations applied at a large, landscape scale, with each patch of ground managed according to its potential for use by spotted owls.

"The idea is that each forested habitat has a unique set of soil, water, and other characteristics that, taken as a whole, may support all, some, or none of the owl's biological needs," Spangle explained," Each is to be managed accordingly." Biologists approached owl conservation from an ecosystem perspective because, although precise population numbers and trends for owls were uncertain at the time it was listed, the habitat was known to be imperiled.

"Owl habitat is especially vulnerable because once lost, it can take centuries to recover," said Spangle. "Younger trees are not suitable for owls. So it was important to get habitat protection in place regardless of current status of the population." Other factors that made the ecosystem approach a practical solution are the wide geographic distribution of the owl and the variety of habitat it calls home.

Owl habitat was at risk due to the Forest Service's commercial harvest of timber in the late '80s and early '90s and plans to continue such potentially devastating operations into the future. Biologists feared that a population decline was imminent. While historic timber-harvest strategy often left in its wake even-aged stands of trees unsuitable for owls, it also disregarded the threat of catastrophic wildfire due to long years of natural fire suppression.

Fires used to occur frequently throughout the Southwest, keeping the understory composed of grasses and burning up most of the new pine seedlings. Management since the turn of the 20th century, particularly the policy of stomping on every fire as soon as it started, allowed dense stands of seedlings to establish. The woods became crowded by overly dense thickets which now provide "ladder fuels." They help fires ascend into the crowns of large trees, which would normally survive if they had only grass beneath them. Instead of experiencing "cool" underburns that pass through without harming the larger trees, forests now have explosive conditions that can wipe out every living tree on the landscape.

"The best analogy is trying to get a big log going in your fireplace with only pine needles," said Spangle. "You need a fuel ladder of increasingly larger wood to finally torch the big stuff."

In the past, owls could leave while fires swept through and later return to roost in the larger, unburned trees. Now, catastrophic wildfire threatens to leave nothing but a lifeless, lunar landscape.

After the subspecies was listed as threatened in 1993, the team's recommendations encouraged the Forest Service to reduce commercial logging of large trees and to concentrate on removing the abundant small trees and underbrush.

Biologists recommend prescribed burns in areas where fire can be controlled efficiently. Fire management policies are changing as land managers become comfortable with letting fires burn under the right conditions. But many areas are in such an unnaturally dense state that even natural fire starts can become stand-replacing fires unless the areas are first thinned mechanically.

Spangle describes owls as "perch-and-pounce" predators. Removing small trees and brush from the understory — material that would be periodically removed by natural fire cycles — allows them to settle in a tree and watch for prey. Thinning forests opens up the understory, not only keeping the forest healthy in general but also allowing owls to hunt more easily.

In addition to the serious threat of fire to owl habitat, study by recovery team members also revealed the complexities of Mexican spotted owl habitat in general. A subspecies of the spotted owl, the Mexican spotted owl occurs in naturally fragmented habitats in areas where prey bases and vegetative cover vary. Pockets of habitat stretch sporadically from the canyon lands of southern Utah and Colorado to the mountains of central Mexico. In Utah and Northern Arizona for example, the owl prefers deep, steep-walled canyons with little vegetation, such as those found in Zion and Grand Canyon national parks. In these areas, the owls are not threatened due to fire or forest management practices because they nest and roost in rock crevices or in the cool stringers of trees in canyon bottoms. However, upwards of 70 percent of the subspecies lives further south in the mixed conifer forests of central Arizona and west-central New Mexico and remains vulnerable to changes in forested habitats.

In the Guadalupe Mountains of southern New Mexico, where Rinkevich busies herself jotting down notes on her precise location by the glow of a tiny flashlight, the owl prefers mixed-conifer forest in a late state of "decadence," as she calls it. Ideal habitat here consists of a mixture of older-generation trees, some past their prime. In forested areas, such conditions are often in very small patches within stands of trees that the recovery team affectionately calls "freckles." Rinkevich explained, "The freckles on the landscape are what the owls like to roost and nest in."

Unfortunately for biologists, these freckles are usually located in extremely remote areas or on challenging terrain. "Most of the time it takes at least three hours just to hike into where you think there may be owls," said Rinkevich.

At dawn, hands cupped to her mouth, Rinkevich mimics the owl's call and listens intensely for a reply. Because owls are territorial, they will often call back, alerting the intruder of their presence. Since before the team was formed in 1993, Rinkevich has become something of an expert at finding owls, and her expertise has helped in updating the Recovery Plan.

"Our original plan was good," said Rinkevich, "but some of the recommendations were a bit too complicated, so we are clarifying some of the forest management prescriptions and other recommendations and adding new information about the owl that we have uncovered, such as our increased knowledge about a substantial population of owls within Grand Canyon National Park."

Spangle added, "The 1995 Recovery Plan outlined methods for monitoring owl population trends as well as criteria for delisting the owl if the population was found to be stable or increasing after 10 years."

But getting the necessary data was expensive and required extensive personnel. "Now, we are working on an alternative approach," Spangle continued, "one that will hopefully yield meaningful data without having to capture the owls, which is more reasonable in terms of money and duration of monitoring."

At last, Rinkevich hears a response emerge from a thick stand of fir and pine and spots her subject poised in a tree limb some 40 yards away. A glimpse through her binoculars reveals a clump of gray and two large unblinking orbs. Long held in folklore as an incarnation of wisdom, the owl seems frozen in a gesture of infinite patience, a sage contemplating the actions of a human student whose education may determine its fate. Ben Ikenson is a writer and editor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who's based in Albuquerque, N.M. His articles on wildlife conservation have appeared in regional, national, and international magazines, including Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine, North American Sportsman Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and American Indian Report.

Here in the north woods, when loggers take the canopy, when they remove the "ceiling" of leaves overhead, there is often a resulting jungle of whips that develop. I'm not as familiar with the forest the article talks about. Seems the article is pushing controlled fires, like some of the arguments in your book.

The woods became crowded by overly dense thickets which now provide "ladder fuels."
Due to the "stomping" on the fires. After they have burned half of Texas.
They help fires ascend into the crowns of large trees, which would normally survive if they had only grass beneath them. Instead of experiencing "cool" underburns that pass through without harming the larger trees, forests now have explosive conditions that can wipe out every living tree on the landscape.

Does a forest go through a "life-cycle"? Have forests gone through a cycle of small dense forests to old sparesly populated? I suspect they have.

I've heard that there wouldn't be a tree on the prairie if the settlers hadn't gone through and made "two-rut-rohs" with their wagon wheels, constructing an effective fire-break, allowing trees to grow on the prairie whereas before prairie fire stopped their growth.

What are the odds of mechanical thinning there in your county?

I don't know how to do it, (post picture) but the article had a photo of our beloved owl in a virtual jungle of leaves and branches, seemingly right at home there in Sherwood.

Two hundred years ago, the founding fathers intended a separation of Church and State; James Madison wrote, “religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

Today, it is acceptable for Government to employ scientists who plant false lynx data, who for all intents and purposes have as much of an agenda as the priest denied a connection with government.

The Founding Fathers intended a separation of church and state, not only for the social coercion that was seen with the misuse of religion, but to keep out of the hands of those who govern a tool to coerce individuals and deny liberty.

Today, subjective science is the new tool to coerce. Science has ceased to be enlightening.

I'm not as familiar with the forest the article talks about. Seems the article is pushing controlled fires, like some of the arguments in your book.

I don't pretend to have a preferred method for managing land. Every site is different, and the problems are different from year to year. What I really want is a change in motivational architecture so that owners would be testing the limits of their ability by doing good scientific experiments in order to stay competitive. Owners have a stake in succeeding, consider contingencies carefully, and must fix it if they are wrong. That tends to keep plans honest. That means getting rid of government land ownership where there is no accountability.

As an example, the notable missing element in the recommendations I see in this case is grazing, and it's missing because of politics. Herbivores including cattle, can do a lot to browse the understory, soften and fertilize soils, consume weeds, and produce an income to support other management activities. They don't mention it because it is politically incorrect.

The plan to avoid stand replacement with frequent fire is fine and has its place in most plans as long as they don't provide too much of an advantage to spreading weeds. One has to be very careful about that and cattle or sheep can do a lot of good there. There are even people who have developed the technique of teaching sheep to prefer specific weed species! As I understand it, the expert on range and forest balance in that area is Alan Savory.

Here in the north woods, when loggers take the canopy, when they remove the "ceiling" of leaves overhead, there is often a resulting jungle of whips that develop.

Sounds nasty. Is that clearcutting or do they use group selection? Do they burn?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.