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Adaptive Management
Central to implementing the Northwest Forest Plan is a dynamic process termed "adaptive management". Adaptive management involves continuous hypothesis testing and monitoring and reevaluation of management strategies and practices, so that adjustments can be integrated into current management practices as new findings become available. The Record of Decision (ROD) [ United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service; United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management. 1994. Record of decision for amendments to Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management planning documents within the range of the northern spotted owl. [Place of publication unknown]. 74 p. [plus Attachment a: Standards and Guidelines].] for the Northwest Forest Plan sets forth the Standards and Guidelines for managing ecosystems and conserving certain species throughout the range of the northern spotted owl. As part of the adaptive-management process, Standards and Guidelines in the ROD are periodically reexamined to determine if management changes are needed. In this document, we review the current information on the great gray owl [ Strix nebulosa] and make further recommendations to manage this species within the context of the Northwest Forest Plan.
Great Gray Owl
The great gray owl is one of the largest owls in North America. It inhabits dense conifer forests that are interspersed with open spaces, mostly throughout the boreal regions of North America and Eurasia. The distribution of the great gray owl reaches its southern and western limit within the area of the Northwest Forest Plan. In the ROD, the great gray owl was identified as locally endemic. It had been given special nesting habitat protection buffers and was required to be surveyed to locate occupied sites before ground-disturbing activities such as harvesting of trees.
Issues
On June 2, 1995, soon after the survey protocol for the great gray owl had been completed, the Regional Interagency Executive Committee (RIEC) formally requested assistance from the Pacific Northwest Research Station to review both the status of the great gray owl and the initial survey protocol in the context of the Northwest Forest Plan. As the survey protocol was developed, the following questions were raised: (1) Relative to its current status, does this species require an intensive protocol throughout the entire range of the northern spotted owl?; (2) Is the initial survey protocol effective for locating the great gray owl, and does it sufficiently address provincial variation in habitat use?; (3) Are the specific habitat protection measures in the Standards andGuidelines needed and appropriate for this species?; and (4) In the context of management from an ecosystem perspective, limited resources (presumed, financial), and the many survey and management species identified as needing attention in the Northwest Forest Plan, is the overall strategy for this species appropriate and justified?
Objectives
In this document, we review the current status of an endemic population of great gray owls, a species identified as needing specific management guidelines in the area covered by the Northwest Forest Plan. We provide information necessary to evaluate the current management direction for this species including survey methods and areas specifically targeted for surveys. The document begins by summarizing the great gray owl management guidelines in the ROD, followed by our approach to respond to the issues, a summary of remarks on these issues by a great gray owl expert panel, and our recommendations.
This document synthesizes and provides new information relevant to the issues raised by the RIEC and responds to the questions they proposed. By responding to these information needs, changes to the current Standards and Guidelines for the great gray owl are likely to be considered. Changes to the current Standards and Guidelines will require either amending the current strategy and survey protocol or developing a new decision document. Even though changes are suggested in this document to improve the management situation for this species, this is not a decision document. Rather, any changes to the current Standards and Guidelines for this species need to be approved by the appropriate decisionmakers. Once changes are selected and approved, additional work is needed to refine material presented here to implement the changes effectively. The function of this document, therefore, is to assist decisionmakers. We assumed that an implementation document was outside the scope of our objectives, and that it was not the intent of the RIEC’s request.
