A spotted owl fix.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Brunch arrives for owl K1O/R at about 11:15 a.m. in the form of a small white mouse, delivered via human to a log in a stand of old and middle-age trees in the Willamette National Forest.

The mouse, born and raised in a cage, knows nothing of its peril. It has a few seconds to sniff the bark of the downed log before the northern spotted owl swoops in on silent wings, grabs it in outstretched talons, flies up to a tree limb and tears it to pieces.

It's a spectacular spring day in the forest: sunlight dappling through Douglas fir and hemlock branches, cool air, the last remnants of winter snow on the ground, the sound of a woodpecker hammering nearby and the distinctive hooting of owls. Steven Ackers, a researcher who heads up the crew tracking the birds in this particular neck of the woods, gets out a notebook to jot down his observations.

Similar outings are taking place at about 1,200 sites from Washington to Northern California.

Northern spotted owls may be the most studied bird of the Pacific Northwest. Listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990, they are a lightning rod in the tempest over whether we preserve our oldest trees or log them.

Since the implementation in 1994 of the Northwest Forest Plan - a regionwide management strategy that set aside large blocks of forest reserves on public lands - it has been almost continually present in the nation's courtrooms.

Environmentalists argue that land managers haven't done enough to save the big trees that the birds need to thrive.

The timber industry argues that they were never allowed the minimal logging - 1.1 billion board feet per year from public lands - the Clinton administration promised them. In the past decade, they've logged an average 0.3 billion board feet per year.

But despite 13 years of conservation-minded management, northern spotted owls are still in trouble. A 10-year study of their populations published in 2006 noted an average annual decrease of about 3.7 percent. The birds are doing worse in Washington, slightly better in Oregon and California.

Prompted by litigation from environmentalists and the timber industry, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has written a new recovery plan for the owls. The draft of the plan is open for public comment and the plan's flexibility is fanning the flames of the spotted owl debate.

Some say it's the next step in a continuing Bush administration effort to dismantle the Northwest Forest Plan.

Others hail it as a fresh opportunity to respond to changing conditions on the ground.

Stacks of bird data

Ackers sets out another mouse for owl K1O/R, and the tiny creature shrieks piteous mouse cries as the owl ferries it to a low branch.

Because owls are night hunters, researchers bring live mice to entice the birds during daylight hours.

The owl hoots, and soon an answer comes from higher up in the canopy. Then owl G4W/R, a female, flies down, takes the offered prey and eats it. Ackers can tell from the agitated way the female acts she won't linger once she's eaten. He stashes his notebook in his backpack and prepares to track her over downed logs and through tangled vines to discover her nest.

He's familiar with this nesting pair. The two have been found together near this location every spring since 2003. Some years they produce young. Some years they don't. They're nowhere near the oldest birds in this survey area. That honor goes to female ORN/R, a 22-year-old that was first banded by researchers in the Salem area in 1986.

She moved over to the Willamette National Forest in the 1990s, where researchers dubbed her "the home wrecker" because she turned up every few years with different males, unusual in a species that tends toward monogamy.

This year, Ackers thinks baby owls are on the way for K1O/R and G4W/R. Whatever happens, it will be noted by researchers who will visit the site four or five times between April and August.

The information researchers have amassed through this kind of close observation since 1994 mostly confirms previous owl studies. But some of it stands the old wisdom on its head and some raises challenging new questions.

"We've got a much better understanding of what the birds are doing," said Eric Forsman, a Forest Service biologist and Oregon State University professor who has studied spotted owls since graduate school in 1972.

Owls like nesting in big old trees - the perfect site might be a Douglas fir with a busted crown and side branches that have grown up around it to provide a bit of shelter from the elements.

They dine on flying squirrels, red tree voles and wood rats, depending on where in the Pacific Northwest they hunt.

They have little fear of humans - "They look at humans the same as they look at elk: big lumbering beasts they ignore," Forsman said.

They don't travel far when looking for new spots to nest and breed; 10 to 20 miles is the norm.

But if you'd asked Forsman about habitat in the 1990s he'd have said old growth, old growth and old growth.

Today he knows the picture is a bit more complicated. In California, for example, research suggests the owls thrive where old growth meets open areas of younger trees or clear-cuts.

Wood rats, their primary prey in that region, feed on the leafy greens of open spaces.

Studies conducted on privately owned forests in California where the logging has been fairly heavy have shown owls holding their own in the disturbed landscape and younger forests, contrary to expectations, Forsman said.

He attributes that surprising discovery to the fact that Northern California's warmer, wetter climate creates more complex forests of redwoods and hardwoods that develop canopies more quickly.

"After 40 or 50 years, those stands have structure," Forsman said. "Up here, when you clear-cut, what you get back is a conifer stand."

But for all researchers have gleaned over the years, there are still gaping holes in their arsenal of information. The biggest question mark hanging over recovery efforts is the influence of the barred owl.

An eastern bird similar in appearance to the northern spotted owl, the barred owl has been moving west and taking up habitat traditionally occupied by spotted owls. There are more barred owls in Washington, where the spotted owls are doing worse, than in Oregon, where declines aren't quite so steep.

Slightly larger and more aggressive than spotted owls, barred owls may be contributing to their decline.

The trouble is, nobody really knows for certain. Forsman, like many other researchers, has seen the aggression. He once watched a barred owl slam into a spotted owl, knocking it off its perch. Others have come upon newly dead spotted owl fledglings, a barred owl perched nearby.

While there are plenty of anecdotes, there's little in the way of hard data, Forsman said.

"What is frustrating to me is, we have spent 30 years trying to better understand spotted owls and northwest forests so we can have a better understanding of how to manage, but this barred owl is a huge monkey wrench thrown into the works," he said.

Teasing out the role of the barred owl among the other factors influencing spotted owls isn't easy. Loss of habitat from logging, wildfire and insect defoliation also have an impact. So do climate change and disease.

"We could do research for the next 50 years, dump a huge amount of money into it and still not understand what's going on very well. We're studying a moving target," Forsman said.

Planning for recovery

You'd never know there was lack of clarity about the barred owl, judging by the recently released recovery plan created by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Prepared by a team of scientists, environmentalists and timber representatives, the plan paints the barred owl as the guilty party in the owl's declining numbers, calling it the greatest current threat to spotted owls.

While the plan calls for studies to better understand the relationship between the two species of birds (they occasionally mate), it also calls for removal of barred owls. It would be done by luring the owls close and shooting them.

But that may not be the most controversial part of the recovery plan, which lays out two options. The first would set aside networks of managed owl conservation areas on federal land that would support breeding pairs of owls and allow for movement of the owls across the networks.

Similar to the land reserved for owls in the Northwest Forest Plan, this option appeals to environmentalists.

Timber industry activists prefer the second option: Instead of mapping specific reserves for the owls, land managers would decide where best to apply the conservation strategies.

"If your goal and objective is to manage for the recovery and continued existence of the owl and healthy and resilient forests, you need the flexibility," said Chris West, spokesman for the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group.

"But if your objective is to end the harvest of public timber or try to force the landscape to become all old growth, you don't want that flexibility."

Chuck Meslow, the now-retired wildlife biologist whose initial research on spotted owls eventually led to its listing, believes the second option lacks accountability.

`It's saying, `We're not going to show you a map but trust us, it's out there.' I'm sorry. I don't think the federal agencies that manage that land have demonstrated that you can trust them based on past records,' he said.

Forsman, who was briefly consulted about the recovery plan, hasn't read it and prefers not to be drawn into a conversation about which option might be best for the owls.

He's well aware that every new piece of information researchers uncover in their efforts to understand spotted owls will be seized on by people trying to sway the management debate.

"With spotted owls you're always kind of in a fishbowl," he said.

"You try to be really clear about what you think the results mean and you try to say things in a way that they can't be twisted or confused by either side of the debate, so that both sides know what the limits of the data are."

The fact is, the battle isn't really about the spotted owl, he said. It's about the culture, about what people want from public lands.

"The spotted owl is a bit player," he said. "It really has more to do with the social decisions and value judgments of people," he said.

"It's forests and old growth trees and how we're going to manage those forests on federal lands."

AN OWL TIMELINE

The northern spotted owl weighs less than 2 pounds and stands about 17 inches. A mid-size owl, it's had an enormous impact on land management and fiscal realities in the Pacific Northwest. Here are some of the key events in its recent history.

1988: The Portland and Seattle Audubon societies file suit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for failing to list the species under the Endangered Species Act.

1990: U.S. Fish & Wildlife lists the bird as threatened under the ESA.

1991: A federal judge halts all logging of old growth forests on public lands.

1993-94: The Clinton administration develops the Northwest Forest Plan for public forests managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management. It sets aside 24.5 million acres for spotted owls.

1993: Concern about loss of revenue to counties - which traditionally received 25 percent of the money from logging on public lands - prompts the federal government to begin an annual subsidy to counties hardest hit by the loss of income from logging.

2000: The federal timber guarantee is replaced by the Secure Rural Schools guarantee, which over the next six years provides $2.9 billion to 800 counties. Lane County's take in 2006 was $47 million. The bill expired last year. Congressional efforts to reauthorize it for another five years were stymied last week when Bush vetoed a spending bill.

2002: Timber industry threatens to sue U.S. Fish & Wildlife over a long-neglected but legally required status review of the northern spotted owl. The review confirms that its numbers are still declining.

2005: Seattle Audubon files notice of intent to sue U.S. Fish & Wildlife for failing to produce a legally required recovery plan for the northern spotted owl.

2007: U.S. Fish & Wildlife releases a draft recovery plan.