McCloskey-Spotted Owl

My map show potential spotted owl habitat, forest harvest potential, and the core climate area gradient corridors. My circled area represents and area that has a projected potential for both the spotted owl habitat and for harvesting. You will also see the area around this site has highly normalized corridors, but the actual site does. If the potential harvesting happens around this area if will cause fragmentation lowering the spotted owls potential habitat area dramatically. This may lead to a decrease in genetic viability of the species. You can also see that their ability with the gradient for climate change could be limited. Spotted owls are especially sensitive to change and need old growth forest for reproduction and success of the species. Fragmentation through climate change and harvesting would be detrimental to the species, for this reason creating more protected areas and corridors is important.