Fall 2005. Minimizing management indicator species. Cutting spotted owl habitat.

HOLD THE CHAINSAWS hether management will affect the population of Baltimore orioles or northern parula warblers.

If only it were that simple. Tracking populations of major timber species or forest types is the prelude to designing a sustained-yield logging program, but is an ineffective method for predicting wildlife populations. It is true that orioles and parula warblers both prefer mature hardwood forests, but they prefer different parts of the forest, and management activities have a profound impact on the relative abundance of their habitats within the hardwood forest type. Orioles, as any suburban birdwatcher has seen, are edge species. They nest and forage in large hardwoods on the edge of fields, clear-cuts and suburban backyards. Their nests hang from trees and are inaccessible to predators or nest parasites such as the brown-headed cowbird, which are abundant in edges. The northern parula, by contrast, nests in the interior of large, structurally complex hardwood forests. Its nest is vulnerable to predators and nest parasites, and as a result it has been harmed by forest fragmentation in some parts of its range. A forest management plan that creates numerous small clear-cut patches would favor the oriole, while a plan with the exact same acreage of clear-cuts in large blocks would favor the parula.

Of course, it will never be possible to monitor all species all the time. The management indicator species concept was intended to help the U.S. Forest Service select species of great public or biological importance to focus monitoring efforts where they would be most valuable. Twenty years later, it appears as if the Forest Service is attempting to throw in the towel. Rather than selecting a representative sample of species, they are selecting no species, and going back to the old days of counting trees and disregarding the rest of the multiple uses the Forest Service is legally obligated to support.

Forest Service Chief Dale Bosworth likes to chide activists on all sides of the issues for being stuck in the timber debates of the past, rather than addressing more modern problems facing national forests. But if the shift toward an exclusive focus on timber species rather than on actually monitoring wildlife populations and water quality indicators doesnœt signify a return to the days of big timber, what does it signify? One thing is certain: the new proposals will reduce the amount of real information forest managers have available to understand the complex interactions of wildlife with management activities. While a well-designed monitoring program could provide valuable scientific information, the lack of a monitoring program will ensure that the Forest Service will be managing wildlife populations with closed eyes.

We are doing our best to counter this new trend. We have sent comments to each forest that we have found attempting to eliminate or scale back its management indicator species program, explaining why we think their proposals are both scientifically and legally indefensible, and we have had some success. The four northern California forests appear to be reconsidering their proposal—and we hope that the result may be a proposal that will better serve the preservation of wildlife.—Forrest Fleischman