State Trust Lands Habitat Conservation Plan
Northern Spotted Owl Surveys in the Olympic Experimental State Forest
Our northern spotted owl monitoring program in the Olympic Experimental State Forest (OESF) was developed in 1995. Spotted owl monitoring in the OESF follows the standardized federal protocol for gathering data on occupancy and reproduction (Forsman, 1995).
What are the goals of this project?
- To provide baseline data about the abundance, distribution, survival, reproduction and movements of owls in the OESF area.
- To help evaluate the success of DNR management techniques in integrating conservation with commodity production.
- To compliment the ongoing federal demography study in the Olympic Peninsula study area - one of the 14 study areas throughout the spotted owl geographic range that provide information on species survival and fecundity rates used to estimate the annual rate of population change.
What are the project activities?
- The initial number of surveyed areas was 25.
- Three of the areas were located in the territory of the Olympic National Park.
- Four of the areas had multiple spotted owl sites.
- The number of surveyed sites (and areas) varied through the years, based on a prioritization system developed by the survey team (highest priority was given to sites either occupied by banded owls or important to the HCP spotted owl conservation strategy).
- The highest number of sites (32) was surveyed in 1997.
- The number of surveyed sites in 2001, 2002, and 2003 dropped significantly because of staff shortages and because most of the sites were found not occupied by spotted owls for several consecutive years.
What have the results shown?
Table 1. Spotted Owl monitoring data from the Olympic Experimental State Forest 
* The small number is due in large part to not surveying the Queets Corridor, where numerous barred owls had been detected in previous years
Figure 1. Survey effort and spotted owl detections in the Olympic Experimental State Forest for the period 1995-2001.
Literature Cited
Forsman, E. 1995. Spotted Owl Monitoring Protocols for Demographic Studies. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Pacific Northwest Research Station. Corvallis, OR. 11 pp.