Northern Spotted Owl Controversy - Mercurial Essays.
The northern spotted owl is a threatened species native to the old-growth cloud forests of the province of British Columbia, Canada, and the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and California. (This breathtaking photograph was taken in Northern California's redwood forest in 2008.) In the 1990s, the owl became a symbol of the bitter conflict between conservation efforts and economic activity.
A Forest Service study did however find the California Owl to be declining at a considerably faster rate than that of the listed Northern Spotted Owl. Several other studies have also observed similar declines in this subspecies population numbers causing concern over the future viability of the subspecies. One study even stated that the California Spotted Owl could potentially face extinction.
Northern spotted owls are one of three subspecies of spotted owls. The other two are the Mexican spotted owl and the California spotted owl. Each of these owls is brown with white spots, but the northern spotted owl is the darkest brown with the smallest spots and has darker facial disks (the feathers surrounding the eyes). Northern spotted owls are about 1.5 feet (0.4 meters) in length with a.
The Northern Spotted Owl has been the focus of political controversy surrounding its association with high value commercial timber. The Northern Spotted Owl population has declined as old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest started to disappear over the past several decades. This decline resulted in the 1990 designation of the Northern Spotted Owl as a threatened species under the federal.
The Northern Spotted Owl Controversy Jobs Vs Environmental Protection The mere mention of the creatures name brings shudders to loggers and some local inhabitants, fear over its existence has incited rallies, garnered the attention of three government agencies, and caused people to tie them.
The northern spotted owl is found primarily in the so-called Douglas-fir region, running west of the Cascade Mountains, and south from southern British Columbia, Canada into northern California. Until the mid-1970s, very little was known to science about the owl, yet early surveys suggested its nearly unique dependence on relatively large, contiguous areas of old-growth forest. A key reason.
The first record of the spotted owl was made in 1858 in the western portion of the Tehachapi Mountains in southern California and it was first documented in the Pacific Northwest in 1892. Though observed only occasionally prior to the 1970's, the northern spotted owl since that time has been found to be more common in certain types of forested habitat throughout its range.