Northern spotted owl declines about 4% a year-

Throughout its range in the United States, the northern spotted owl has declined at nearly 4% a year from 1985 to 2013, according to a paper published in the Condor. The findings came from eleven study areas in northern California, Oregon and Washington. The owl also lives in southern British Columbia.

The major reason for this long term decline looks like the growing presence of the barred owl. It competes with the spotted owl in all aspects: prey, space, habitat. The spotted owl declined in all areas, except a relatively small area in northern California where the barred owl was recently culled to try to stop the downward spiral of the spotted owl. Loss of habitat and climate change was another, but lesser, factor in the dwindling of the population.

The northern spotted owl is limited to forests with large diameter conifers.

The larger barred owl has been spreading its territory westward for at least a century. Often called the “hoot owl,” the barred owl is not rare. It can occupy many kinds of habitat. Nonetheless, killing them to stifle their competition with the spotted owl has outraged some groups. Most environmentalists seem to be neutral or support the killing because they want to protect spotted owl numbers for biological, and especially political reasons — collapse of the spotted owl would weaken the fairly successful effort to retain the old growth forests. There are always calls to “open them up.”

The northern spotted owl was put on the threatened species list in 1990 after much acrimony. Logging in the old growth, a.k.a. “ancient forests,” of western Washington, Oregon and Northern California was greatly reduced in the 1990s due to court decisions and a new regional Forest Service plan designed to protect the habitat of the spotted owl. Environmentalists and the owl were blamed for a large loss of jobs in timbering that followed, especially in small sawmills and logging operations. It was a bitter political conflict.

Academic studies, however, generally showed that these jobs would have soon disappeared anyway because of the ongoing rapid liquidation (logging) of the old growth forests. This began in the 1950s on public lands. Retention of the remaining old growth forests also had economic as well as environmental benefits.

However, it is surprising and troubling how difficult and expensive it is to read these studies. Almost all of them can only be read after paying the high on-line toll of obtaining the article from the journals.

Environmentalists have informally argued that despite the decline in the spotted owl, the protection of the ancient forests far outweighed the owl issue because many other animals and plants were protected in the process. It would have been overwhelming to try to protect them one by one using the endangered species act and other regulatory methods.

There are two other sub-species of the spotted owl, the California spotted owl and the Mexican spotted owl. Neither is abundant or doing well.