Decades-past logging still threatens spotted owls in national forests

While California spotted owls (left, adult; right, juvenile) typically perch and roost in smaller trees like this incense cedar, their nest trees are often several feet in diameter. Photo: Danny Hofstadter Logging of the largest trees in the Sierra Nevada's national forests ended in the early 1990s after agreements were struck to protect species' habitat. But new research reported Dec. 6 in the journal Diversity and Distributions by University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologists shows that spotted owls, one of the iconic species logging restrictions were meant to protect, have continued to experience population declines in the forests. Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology graduate student Gavin Jones , Professor Zach Peery , senior scientist R. J. Gutiérrez, and their colleagues say the owls in the area may still be paying an "extinction debt" that was created by historical logging of large trees. These large, old trees the owls rely on are slow to grow back, meaning the owl population could still be showing the effects of logging that ended decades ago.