Posts in Science

By Teresa Platt

Spots versus stripes? Which do you prefer?

Our federal government prefers spots and is moving forward with a million-dollar-a-year plan to remove 9,000 striped owls from 2.3% of 14 million Western acres of protected spotted owl habitat. Our government is shooting wood owls with stripes to protect those with spots; to stop the stripes from breeding with the spots.

It had to come to this.

The 1990 listing of the Northern spotted owl under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) gave the bird totem status in management decisions.  

It didn’t work.  Spotted owls declined 40% over 25 years.  Timber sales on federal government-managed lands dropped too.  Oregon harvests fell from 4.9 billion board feet (1988) to less than 5%, 240 million board feet (2009).  Beyond the jobs and business profits from making lumber, the Federal and County  governments used to benefit from these harvests too.  Harvests down: tax receipts down.  Today, with cutbacks in Federal budgets and sequestration, the States are arguing about how much of your tax dollars the Federal government should give them to keep impoverished County governments afloat in timber-rich areas.

Read the full article...

Last Thursday, at a congressional hearing, Assistant U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Gary Frazer said that the Interior Department’s Office of Science Integrity would conduct an independent evaluation of the work of FWS biologists accused by a federal judge of being dishonest with the court and acting in ’”bad faith.”  As the Los Angeles Times reports, Frazer said the FWS stands behind the work of its scientists but the Department will seek an independent assessment from outside experts nonetheless.

Frazer’s comments were delivered at a House Science Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing on “The Endangered Species Act: Reviewing the Nexus of Science and Policy” at which I was also a witness. In my testimony, I focused on the broader issue of how science is and should be used in under the ESA, and made three basic points.

First, it is important to ferret out genuine instances of scientific misconduct or science politicization.  At the same time, it is essential to recognize that science merely informs, and does not dictate, policy. Species conservation is not – and cannot be – a wholly scientific exercise. Whether a given species is at risk of extinction may be a scientific question, but what to do about it is not. The likelihood that habitat loss or the introduction of an invasive species will compromise a species chance of survival in the wild is a question that can be answered by science. On the other hand, what conservation measures should be adopted to address such threats, and at what cost, are policy questions. Science can – indeed, must – inform such inquiries, but science alone does not tell us what to do. Insofar as debates over conservation policy are dressed up as scientific disputes — or instances of science abuse — we hamper our ability to assess competing policy options and pursue optimal conservation strategies.

Second, the structure of the ESA both undermines our ability to base conservation decisions on the best possible scientific information and creates substantial incentives to manipulate science so as to influence policy outcomes. The former occurs because the ESA makes the presence of endangered or threatened species a liability to private landowners. As a consequence, private landowners are often reluctant to allow government or other researchers to conduct surveys or engage in other species-related research on their land. This means the ESA makes it more difficult to know which species are most in need of help and where they are.

The ESA creates incentives for interest groups and others to try and manipulate science because certain science-based determinations, such as whether a species is “endangered,” are triggers for non-discretionary regulatory measures. This means that if an interest group wants to influence regulatory outcomes, it is in their interest to try and influence the initial scientific determination. This explains why there is so much controversy and conflict over species listing decisions. The Act itself turns what should be primarily a scientific inquiry — whether the best available science indicates that a species meets a given definition of what it means to be endangered or threatened — into a high stakes proxy battle over regulatory policy. This is not good for science, and further complicates the quest for optimal conservation measures.

For those interested, my full testimony is here. Portions of my testimony are based on my chapter in Rebuilding the Ark. An archived webcast and the written statements of the other witnesses should be available here, as are pictures from the hearing.

Originally posted at The Volokh Conspiracy.

From the New York Times in September:

Looking around the stand, Laurie Wayburn, co-founder of the Pacific Forest Trust, which manages this 2,200-acre forest plot for the Fred M. van Eck Forest Foundation, sees a variety of things: thick, straight trees that will generate millions of dollars for the foundation; a healthy forest that filters drinking water and stores carbon dioxide; and a maturing, complex habitat for a variety of animals, including the endangered northern spotted owl.

Science is the knowledge and inquiry of the natural world. Science demonstrates what is and what could be under varying conditions. Science does not, however, measure relative values.

Science cannot tell us whether timber jobs or acreage set aside for spotted owls is better. That is value based. Nonetheless, the Endangered Species Act makes it clear that species on the brink take precedence over other land uses.

In the early 1990s it was heartily argued that the northern spotted owl was competing with timber jobs. Indeed, it was determined that the primary threat to the northern spotted owl was decreased old growth as a result of timber harvest. A couple of decades later the forests have changed, the management has changed, the threat to the owl has changed, but policy argues for more of the same: preservation.

What does science tell us about the forest policy to protect the northern spotted owl?

• Owls like mature, old-growth forests. But they also like managed forests.

• In 1990 it was presumed that decreased old growth acreage in the Pacific Northwest was the primal threat to the northern spotted owl. In 2011 it was determined that the barred owl, a competing species that displaces the spotted owl, is the greatest threat.

• Under the 1994 Pacific Northwest Forest Plan, 24 million acres of federal land was designated as northern spotted owl habitat. Seven million of those acres prohibit timber harvest. Harvest in the Pacific Northwest has declined by more than 80 percent as a result. Timber consumption has not similarly declined, so timber is cut elsewhere to meet demand.

• Forests are dynamic and have changed between 1994 and 2003. About three percent of the habitat set aside for owls was lost to wildfire and insect infestation. Set aside forests are aging and becoming more vulnerable to fire and insect infestation over time. Newly matured national forest acreage suitable for owl habitat increased by about eight percent.

• The northern spotted owl population continues to plummet at about 2.9 percent per year. Scientists predicted it could take up to 50 years for the population to recover.

Science cannot provide the policy solution to saving the northern spotted owl. It is inherently preference based.

Originally posted at Environmental Trends.