Fish and Wildlife Service opens comment period for spotted owl plan

From Bob Zybach:
Here is what Oregonlive posted:

Fish and Wildlife Service opens comment period for spotted owl plan
Published: Thursday, April 21, 2011, 5:57 PM
Updated: Thursday, April 21, 2011, 6:07 PM
The Oregonian By The Oregonian

Debate on whether to kill barred owls to save spotted owls

The latest recovery plan for the northern spotted owl has been opened
for public comment after drawing a legal challenge and technical
questions months ago.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports the recovery plan is meant to guide
how forested areas from Washington to Northern California are managed,
to protect the threatened spotted owl.

A 2008 recovery plan was the target of a legal battle, and a report
found the Bush administration interfered politically in that plan.

But the timber industry has raised concerns about the latest Obama
administration revisions, and sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
over its planning process.

Now the federal agency is asking the public to comment on one of the
most controversial pieces of the plan - computer modeling. The comment
period closes May 23.

Here is my predictable response:

1) American hoot owls are not a threatened or endangered species. The
proof is that spotted hoot owls -- which are relatively uncommon --
can breed and produce viable offspring with barred hoot owls, which
are very common and have been actively expanding their numbers and
range for decades. To provide an appropriate analogy, their are more
differences in coloration, size, physiology, range, vocalization,
diet, and preferred habitat (by far) between a Pygmy and a Swede than
between a spotted hoot owl and a barred hoot owl. The differences
between a German shorthair and a French poodle are not so great as
those between a Pygmy and a Swede, but are still far greater than
those between a barred hoot owl and a spotted hoot owl.

2) Computerized modeling is not "science," it is gaming. Computerized
gaming is a useful tool for scientists, but is a poor and misleading
substitute for actual scientific methodology; which usually involves
observation, documentation, analysis, hypothesis, prediction and/or
experimentation as critical elements. Modeling is great for
engineering, but it has never shown itself to be useful for the life
sciences so far as predictive capabilities are concerned. Modeling
predictions for spotted (and barred) hoot owls in the 1980s, as
examples, have turned out to be as accurate as modeling predictions
for climate change. None of the predictions have come true. That means
that the assumptions and/or hypotheses used in the computer games were
erroneous. "Garbage in, garbage out," is what they used to say. Same
concept remains true to this time.

3) "Habitat," as typically defined by wildlife biologists or
"ecologists" of some ilk or another (I am an "historical ecologist,"
for example), does not provide a good basis for predicting wildlife
populations for favored species. Building more "habitat" for spotted
hoot owls over the past 30 years has resulted in reduced populations
of that animal, not greater, despite modeling predictions to the
contrary. To continue with the biped analogy, building more apartment
houses in Detroit will not likely result in a greater human population
in that city -- even with increased food supplies. Same with kennels
and dogs.

This is all politics, not science. People wanted to stop logging (and
jobs) on federal forestlands and rural communities, and they got their
way. Now we have widespread unemployment and catastrophic wildfires --
exactly as predicted in the 1990s by using traditional scientific
methodologies.