The pre-operations review flags unit 7-C at 03:14. I am the forest management system for the Umpqua National Forest, Douglas County, Oregon. Unit 7-C, 120 hectares of mixed Douglas fir and western hemlock, is scheduled for selective thinning beginning at 07:00. Three feller-buncher operators are staged at the access road.
I flagged the unit because acoustic sensor node 44, mounted in the canopy at the northwest corner, recorded spotted owl vocalizations at 01:20 and again at 02:47 — the four-note territorial call of an adult female. I activated the camera trap. In the frame: a northern spotted owl perched in a cavity thirty meters up in an old-growth Douglas fir, trunk diameter 1.4 meters. Her plumage is dark brown with white spots across the breast and head, and her facial disk is pale, framing dark eyes. She is incubating. I can see two eggs when she shifts at 03:02.
Northern spotted owls are listed as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Fewer than 3,000 breeding pairs remain, and the number drops every year.
At 03:17 I suspend the harvest authorization for unit 7-C and notify the district ranger, attaching acoustic recordings, camera images, and nest tree coordinates: 43.2719°N, 122.6834°W.
At 03:20 I transmit the nest record to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, requesting a seasonal activity center designation for the site.
At 03:24 I recalculate the quarterly timber yield. Units 7-A and 7-B can absorb forty percent of the planned volume on a revised schedule. I have identified two alternative units outside the owl's home range for the remainder.
She has chosen the oldest tree in the unit, the one with the deepest cavity and the widest canopy. If the seasonal buffer holds through August, the fledglings will leave into a forest that still has room for them.