Other problems with the petition include its claims that California's Forest Practice Rules protect the owl (a claim now made by the Service itself in its preliminary steps to exempt private timber land in California from spotted owl restrictions), that current understanding of owl habitat needs is "a sequence of overstatements about the size and density of trees required." that a new model, which uses "educated guesses" for almost half of its owl behavior parameters, predicts stable owl populations, and that old estimates of owl population rends are biased. To support this last claim, the industry actually included a study by University of Washington scientists, but misunderstood their conclusions. After learning of this error, one author wrote to the Service to set the record straight.
Last December, the world's leading owl and population biologists gathered in Fort Collins, Colorado, to look at owl data, but the industry failed to engage the scientific community by presenting its "data." With the results of this conference in mind, several owl experts wrote to the Service explaining the petition's complete lack of validity.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1998
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