Marijuana farms poisoning Spotted Owls

Wildlife species are being exposed to high levels of rat poison in northwest California, with illegal marijuana farms the most likely source point, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, with the California Academy of Sciences.

The study, released in the journal Avian Conservation and Ecology, showed that seven of the 10 Northern Spotted Owls collected tested positive for rat poison, while 40 percent of 84 barred owls collected also tested positive for the poison.

The study is the first published account of anticoagulant rodenticide in Northern Spotted Owls, which are listed as a threatened species under federal and state Endangered Species acts.

The study area encompasses Humboldt, Mendocino and Del Norte counties. It supports previous accounts that rat poison is contaminating the food web in this region, as the primary food source for owls—rodents—is being contaminated.

Timberland converting to marijuana farms
Driving the issue is the increasing conversion of private timberland into private, illegal and unpermitted marijuana cultivation sites. These sites often overlap with designated critical habitat for Northern Spotted Owls, and the owls feed at their edges.

Read more  

A win-win for spotted owls and forest management

October 4, 2017

Remote sensing technology has detected what could be a win for both spotted owls and forestry management, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis, the USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station and the University of Washington.

For 25 years, many forests in the western United States have been managed to protect habitat for endangered and threatened spotted owls. A central tenet of that management has been to promote and retain more than 70 percent of the forest canopy cover. However, dense levels of canopy cover leave forests prone to wildfires and can lead to large tree mortality during droughts.

In the study, published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management, scientists found that cover in tall trees is the key habitat requirement for spotted owl—not total canopy cover. It indicated that spotted owls largely avoid cover created by stands of shorter trees.

"This could fundamentally resolve the management problem because it would allow for reducing small tree density, through fire and thinning," said lead author Malcolm North, a research forest ecologist with UC Davis' John Muir Institute of the Environment and the USDA Pacific Southwest Research Station. "We've been losing the large trees, particularly in these extreme wildfire and high drought-mortality events. This is a way to protect more large tree habitat, which is what the owls want, in a way that makes the forest more resilient to these increasing stressors that are becoming more intense with climate change."

Read more at: 

Loggers Get the OK to Kill Endangered Spotted Owls

The Endangered Species Act exists to protect biodiversity. It can only work when species listed as endangered are actually afforded the protections guaranteed to them in the Act. Unfortunately these days, even earning classification as an endangered species doesn’t always mean safety from harm.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a plan that would allow Fruit Growers Supply Co. accelerate logging of occupied spotted owl habitat in California’s old growth forests.

The plan to raze trees that have been growing for hundreds of years is appalling enough, but the agencies also granted the company permission to ”take,” that is, harm or kill, more than 80 northern spotted owls living in those woods. This is nearly 50 percent of the total spotted owl population believed to reside in the area.

Owls of all types are vital to forest ecosystems, as they feed on rodents typically considered vermin. “Like its cousins the Mexican and northern spotted owls, the California spotted owl is a bellwether of old-growth forests,” explains The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). This owl’s classic four-note call was once commonly heard throughout the big trees of the Sierra Nevada and Southern California ranges, but logging, sprawl, and invasion by the barred owl…are silencing it.”

CBD is just one of three environmental organizations who filed a lawsuit [pdf] against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service for approving the logging plan last week.

“Fruit Growers’ 50-year plan targets endangered species and the forests that sustain them in the first 10 years in exchange for 40 years of empty promises to do good after the habitat and the species are gone,” said George Sexton, conversation director of the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, in a press release. “The plan fails rare species and is a big step backwards for healthy forests and rivers in Northern California.”

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/loggers-get-the-ok-to-kill-endangered-spotted-owls.html#ixzz2czpkkHWu