Oil prices were skyrocketing. Gerald Ford was stepping into Spiro Agnew’s tarnished VP shoes. The Exorcist was nominated for Best Picture. Such was the national landscape on December 28, 1973, when President Richard Nixon signed one of the country’s most …
favorite birds of the redwood forest
Endangered marbled murrelet chick takes flight at Big Basin Redwoods State Park
As controversy erupted in recent months over the protected status of the northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest, it was another reminder that California’s coast redwood and giant sequoia forests play host to many threatened and endangered wildlife species. …
Of all the plants and animals that occupy the coast redwood ecosystem, among the more fascinating is the marbled murrelet, a brown and white seabird that’s a little bigger than a robin. This otherwise nondescript bird – called “fog larks” …
This summer, the League protected Harold Richardson Redwoods Reserve, the largest old-growth redwood forest remaining in private lands. Many wild animals call the property home, including northern spotted owls, Townsend’s big-eared bats, foothill yellow-legged frogs, and Sonoma red tree voles!
In February, Oregon’s Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to reclassify the marbled murrelet from threatened to endangered. The vote is good news, considering that murrelets have lost an estimated 78,600 acres of nesting habitat in Oregon since 1993. By some models cited by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the species risks an 80 percent chance of extinction by 2060 in certain parts of the state.
The League’s Shady Dell property was a busy place on Monday. Armed with binoculars and aerial photo maps, four League staff members were joined by a couple of staff from the Department of Fish and Wildlife and a pair of consultants to search for potential nest sites for the marbled murrelet.
To prevent species extinctions it is necessary to take advantage of the window of opportunity for forest regeneration. Restored forests gradually recover species richness.
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