The California Spotted Owl's cousins are the Northern and Mexican Spotted Owls.They all live in old-growth forests, but many of those forests have grown a lot smaller by over a century of logging, roadbuilding, and development. This owl is found in the Sierra nevada and southern coast ranges. It has declined 10% annually throughout the 1990's causing it to be in danger of extinction.The old-growth forests it lives in have declined by 70-80% on national forest lands and have been nearly eliminated from private lands. The Forest Service still hasn't come up with a plan to protect this owl's habitat. The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a petition to list the California spotted owl as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, so they will be protected in the entire range. It might not seem like much, but this is even more action already taken for this owl than there are for so many other endangered species out there in the world and we must make it our duty to protect them since it is mainly our fault for destroying their habitat. |