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Forest Journalism for a Sustainable Future

Native birds, animals thrive in burned forests, research shows

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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is blaming this summer’s large-scale wildfires on environmentalists, who he contends oppose “active management” in forests.

But the idea that wildfires should be suppressed by logging the forest is far too simplistic. Most scientists agree that large hot wildfires produce many benefits for North American forests. Notably, they create essential habitat for many native species.

Fifteen years of research on Spotted Owls – a species that has played an oversized role in shaping U.S. forest management policies and practices for the past several decades – directly contradicts the argument that logging is needed to protect wildlife from fires.

Wildlife biologists, including me, have shown in a string of peer-reviewed studies, that wildfires have little to no effect on Spotted Owls’ occupancy, reproduction or foraging, and even provide benefits to the owls.

[Read more…]

Study: Spotted owls prefer tallest trees, opening door to thinning undergrowth

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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. In 1994, the Northwest Forest Plan provided protections for the spotted owl and other species inhabiting late-successional forests in Washington, Oregon, and California. Photo: USFWS

Remote sensing technology has detected what could be a win for both spotted owls and forest management, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and the University of Washington.

For 25 years, many forests in the western United States have been managed to protect habitat for endangered and threatened spotted owls. A central tenet of that management has been to promote and retain more than 70 percent of the forest canopy cover.

However, dense levels of canopy cover leave forests prone to wildfires and can lead to large tree mortality during droughts. Thus, the disconnect between two significant land management goals.

In the study, published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, scientists found that cover in tall trees is the key habitat requirement for spotted owls — not total canopy cover. It indicated that spotted owls largely avoid cover created by stands of shorter trees. [Read more…]