* Metric Name: California Spotted Owl  

* Tier: 2  

* Data Vintage: 2023  

* Unit Of Measure: Binary, 0 (Low Suitability), 1 (High Suitability)

California spotted owl is distributed in the central coast region from
Monterey County to Santa Barbara County and inhabits elevations ranging from
1,000 to over 7,000 feet. It is a Region 5 Forest Service “Sensitive Species”
and a “Management Indicator Species” (representing late seral closed canopy
coniferous forest). In 2023, the USFWS issued a 12-month finding on a petition
to list the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act and
determined listing to be not warranted at this time (USDI Fish and Wildlife
Service 2023).The species is declining throughout much of its range and faces
continued threats due to wildfire, habitat loss, and competition from barred
owls. A conservation assessment for California spotted owl was conducted in
2017 (Gutiérrez, Manley, and Stine 2017). This was followed by the development
of a conservation strategy to guide habitat management on National Forest
System Lands (USDA Forest Service 2019). The conservation strategy for the
California spotted owl throughout its range, including the Central Coast, aims
to balance the need to conserve essential habitat elements around sites
occupied by California spotted owls, while simultaneously restoring resilient
forest conditions at the landscape scale (USDA Forest Service 2019).

The USDA Forest Service designates a 300-acre protected activity center (PAC)
around each known nesting area or activity center. PACs are a USFS land
allocation designed to protect and maintain high-quality California spotted
owl nesting and roosting habitat around active sites.

* Creation Method: CWHR classifications are based on a combination of FVEG canopy cover, FVEG size class and vegetation data. The vegetation data includes a variety of tree, shrub, grassland, and water dominated habitats. Species are considered present, and habitats considered suitable for each 30m cell for which the canopy cover-size-vegetation combination have been deemed suitable for the reproduction of that species in the California Wildlife Habitat Relationship database. Habitat that meets the following criteria is considered suitable:

  * CWHR size and density of 4D, 4M within CWHR vegetation types of DFR, MHC, MHW, MRI, PPN, RFR, SMC, WFR
  * CWHR size and density of 5D, 5M, 6 within CWHR vegetation types of DFR, EPN, JPN, LPN, MHC, MHW, MRI, PPN, RFR, SMC, WFR

CWHR high suitability values have been used to create separate data layers
which identify suitable nesting and suitable foraging habitat. These data have
been combined to create the identified “suitable habitat” layers.

  

* Credits: FVEG \--CALFIRE, CDFW, LANDFIRE, California Forest Observatory (SALO), USDA Forest Service California Department of Fish and Wildlife CWHR version 9.0 (CDFW); 2014 Conservation Strategy for the California Spotted Owl in the Sierra Nevada, US Forest Service, 2019