Northern spotted owl marks 20 years on endangered species list

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Eric Forsman was a 21-year-old undergraduate working the summer at a Forest Service guard station in the Willamette National Forest when he first heard an odd barking call. Curious, Forsman scouted and listened hard, eventually realizing he was hearing a bird he had never heard before. Later that summer, his first northern spotted owl flew in.

The owl, characteristic of its breed, showed little fear. It gave Forsman a "big brown-eyed look." "Once I heard what they sounded like," he says, "I started looking for them." What Forsman and fellow researchers found after that summer of 1968 led to the owl's listing as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act on June 26, 1990 -- 20 years ago today.

Spotted owls are welterweights as owls go, averaging 1.3 pounds and 18 inches long. But their listing opened the Northwest's timber wars, a heavyweight slugfest between environmentalists and loggers, city and country.

The listing saved precious old-growth stands, repositories of clean water and diverse critters. But it sharply curtailed harvests on federal forests.

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After the 1990 listing, researchers saw signs that the spotted owl population might be stabilizing. Then the barred owl began its rapid rise. Barred owls, from east of the Rockies, are more aggressive than spotted owls and less finicky, eating everything from rodents to crayfish to snails.

Those traits help them thrive in a smaller range, quickly build their populations and win the competition for territory and food. Kristen Boyles, a Northwest staff attorney for the environmental law group Earthjustice, says the spotted owl would be far worse off without the listing.

It has also increased support for preserving old-growth forests, down to about 10 percent of their historical level, Boyles says. "The spotted owl has become our shorthand for that."

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/06/northern_spotted_owl_marks_20.html