Is “Fuel Reduction” Justified as Fire Management in Spotted Owl Habitat?

The California spotted owl is an imperiled species that selects mature conifer forests for nesting and roosting while actively foraging in the “snag forest habitat” created when fire or drought kills most of the trees in patches. Federal agencies believe there are excess surface fuels in both of these habitat conditions in many of California’s forests due to fuel accumulation from decades of fire suppression and recent drought-related tree mortality. Accordingly, agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service are implementing widespread logging in spotted owl territories. While they acknowledge habitat degradation from such logging, and risks to the conservation of declining spotted owl populations, agencies hypothesize that such active forest management equates to effective fuel reduction that is needed to curb fire severity for the overall benefit of this at-risk species. In an initial investigation, I analyzed this issue in a large 2020 fire, the Creek Fire (153,738 ha), in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains of California. I found that pre-fire snag density was not correlated with burn severity. I also found that more intensive forest management was correlated to higher fire severity. My results suggest the fuel reduction approach is not justified and provide indirect evidence that such management represents a threat to spotted owls.

Early detection of rapid Barred Owl population growth within the range of the California Spotted Owl advises the Precautionary Principle

Biological invasions are most practical to manage when invasive species population densities are low. Despite a potentially narrow window of opportunity for efficient management, managers tend to delay intervention because the cost of prompt action is often high and resources are limited. The Barred Owl (Strix varia) invaded and colonized the entire range of the Northern Spotted Owl (S. occidentalis caurina), but insufficient population data contributed to delays in action until the Barred Owl posed an existential threat to the Spotted Owl. The leading edge of the Barred Owl expansion has since reached the Sierra Nevada, the core range of the California Spotted Owl (S. o. occidentalis). We conducted passive acoustic surveys within 400-ha grid cells across ~6,200 km2 in the northern Sierra Nevada and detected a 2.6-fold increase in Barred Owl site occupancy between 2017 and 2018, from 0.082 (85% confidence interval: 0.045–0.12) to 0.21 (0.14–0.28). The probability of Barred Owl site colonization increased with the amount of older forest, suggesting that Barred Owls are first occupying the preferred habitat of Spotted Owls. GPS-tagged Barred Owls (n = 10) generally displayed seasonal and interannual site fidelity over territories averaging 411 ha (range: 150–513 ha), suggesting that our occupancy estimates were not substantially upwardly biased by “double counting” individuals whose territories spanned multiple grid cells. Given the Barred Owl’s demonstrated threat to the Northern Spotted Owl, we believe our findings advise the Precautionary Principle, which posits that management actions such as invasive species removal should be taken despite uncertainties about, for example, true rates of population growth if the cost of inaction is high. In this case, initiating Barred Owl removals in the Sierra Nevada before the population grows further will likely make such action more cost-effective and more humane than if it is delayed. It could also prevent the extirpation of the California Spotted Owl from its core range.

Whole-genome sequences suggest long term declines of spotted owl (Strix occidentalis) (Aves: Strigiformes: Strigidae) populations in California

We analyzed whole-genome data of four spotted owls (Strix occidentalis) to provide a broad-scale assessment of the genome-wide nucleotide diversity across S. occidentalis populations in California. We assumed that each of the four samples was representative of its population and we estimated effective population sizes through time for each corresponding population. Our estimates provided evidence of long-term population declines in all California S. occidentalis populations. We found no evidence of genetic differentiation between northern spotted owl (S. o. caurina) populations in the counties of Marin and Humboldt in California. We estimated greater differentiation between populations at the northern and southern extremes of the range of the California spotted owl (S. o. occidentalis) than between populations of S. o. occidentalis and S. o. caurina in northern California. The San Diego County S. o. occidentalis population was substantially diverged from the other three S. occidentalis populations. These whole-genome data support a pattern of isolation-by-distance across spotted owl populations in California, rather than elevated differentiation between currently recognized subspecies.