A Report to the Agriculture Committee and the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Scientific Panel on Late-Successional Forest Ecosystems. Existing resources and data from the Forest Service, Bureau of Land and Management, state agencies, Audubon Society, the Wilderness Society, and the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Laboratory at the College of Forestry at Oregon State University were used to create a series of maps for the west side of the Cascades in Washington, Oregon, and northern California, showing suitable habitat for the northern spotted owl.
Supplementary data is provided in the appendix to the report.
Lands administered by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in Washington, Oregon, and northern California within the range of the northern spotted owl were considered for the report. The authors suggest that existing forest plans may not maintain enough habitat for old-growth forest dependent species to be viable. The authors suggest that it is not appropriate to use the northern spotted owl as an indicator species. The analysis conducted for the report suggests that the indicator species concept might not be valid. The old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and the wildlife and fish associated with them increasingly have been the subject of controversy and litigation.