Spotted-Owl Protections Expanded to Private Land

Expanding spotted-owl protection to private timberlands for the first time, the California Board of Forestry has adopted emergency regulations forbidding logging within 1.5 miles of known owl nests.

The rules, the first adopted by any state since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the northern spotted owl to its list of threatened species last month, will remain in effect until federal officials develop a permanent conservation plan for the rare, mottled-brown raptor.

State foresters estimated that the temporary rules, approved 7 to 1 after seven hours of stormy debate at a meeting Wednesday in Santa Cruz, could slash state timber production by 30% to 50% and cost perhaps 960 to 1,900 jobs as long as the ban is in effect.

Dismayed loggers said the state disregarded scientific evidence that owls can live and breed in parts of California that have been harvested. “We wished they would have taken into account those studies . . . before making this kind of decision,” said William Dennison of the Timber Assn. of California.

But environmentalists, about 150 of whom demonstrated outside the meeting as part of their Redwood Summer anti-logging protests, hailed the decision as a courageous first step to reducing the destructive overharvesting of forests.

“We’ve just become the first state to shut the door on this destruction to preserve jobs, forests and a healthy planet,” Mark Heitchue, a follower of the radical environmental group Earth First!, told the Associated Press after the meeting.

Under the rules, timber harvest plans for private lands must be reviewed by a state biologist. Those scientists will reject any plan that would destroy an owl nest or encroach too far onto known owl habitat.

Biologists said that to conform to those standards, logging would be banned within 1.5 miles of known owl nests. The bans primarily would affect beautiful and valuable virgin or old-growth forests that are preferred by spotted owls and craved by loggers. However, all logging of “suitable (owl) habitat” will be reviewed, the California Department of Forestry said Thursday at the first of four workshops designed to familiarize loggers with the new rules.

State foresters estimated that about 450 timber harvest plans will have to be reviewed under the new regulations. Some of those plans had already been approved by the state, but will now be reconsidered.

The rules will be renewed every four months until federal officials develop a permanent conservation plan, a process that may take up to 18 months.

Dennison said it will take some days or weeks to precisely sort out how the new rules will affect loggers because of initially conflicting interpretations of what kinds of forest lands and what kinds of harvest plans will be covered by the regulations.

“We really won’t know exactly how this will go until the first THP (timber harvest plan) is submitted and reviewed,” he said. “But it doesn’t sound very good.”

Board of Forestry members were obligated to adopt some new rules before the federal threatened-species declaration takes effect July 23. Without such new rules, the state could have been sued for failing to take steps to preserve a federally protected species. The ban is similar to restrictions already imposed on national forests by the U.S. Forest Service.

Efforts to protect northern spotted owls are having a tremendous impact on logging in old-growth forests throughout the Pacific Northwest, the only place on earth where that particular subspecies is found.

Federal officials have spent at least three years setting aside habitat and rearranging hundreds of national forest timber sales to protect the estimated 1,700 nesting, or breeding, owl pairs left on public lands.

Depending on which long-term conservation plan is adopted by the Bush Administration, efforts to preserve the owl could reduce by 30% to 40% the amount of timber produced on federal lands--national forests and Bureau of Land Management timberlands--in Oregon, Washington and California.

Those three states, home of the northern spotted owl, also are the nation’s three top timber states.

Old-growth trees are preferred by the owls because their unique mixture of new, old and dead trees affords them protection from predators and plenty of prey. They eat primarily flying squirrels, voles and other small mammals.

The towering, ancient old-growth trees dominate many public forests in the region. Because of extensive cutting in the 1950s and ‘60s to fuel suburban sprawl, privately owned virgin forests are uncommon, except in California, where large pockets of virgin redwoods remain standing. Most of those trees belong to one company, Pacific Lumber Co., which has been criticized for speeding up its harvests to pay off junk bond debt incurred during a hostile takeover five years ago.

Recent studies commissioned by the timber industry indicate the owls may be able to thrive--at least in temperate California--in younger forests, the kind planted after an area of old growth is cut down. If confirmed by federal scientists, the studies could alter habitat preservation plans in the state.