PACIFIC REGION RECOVERY LEADER
Paul Phifer
Paul Phifer, a Ph.D. biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Region 1 Regional Office, is dedicated to the conservation and recovery of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) through his efforts as Project Manager for the northern spotted owl recovery planning effort.
The northern spotted owl inhabits structurally complex forests in the Cascade Mountains and coastal ranges from southwest British Columbia through western Washington, western Oregon, and northern California as far south as Marin County. The northern spotted owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act as a threatened species on June 26, 1990, because of widespread loss and adverse modification of suitable habitat across the owl’s entire range and the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to conserve the owl. Many populations of the northern spotted owl are declining, especially in the northern parts of its range. The main threats to the northern spotted owl are competition with the barred owl (Strix varia), loss of habitat quality and quantity as a result of past activities and disturbances, and ongoing and projected loss of habitat as a result of logging and conversion of habitat to other uses. The recovery of this species has been internationally infamous since the mid-1980s, engendering contentious legal battles, public appeals of Federal land management activities, and political stalemates at the highest national levels. As the basis for the Northwest Forest Plan, the northern spotted owl has impacted land-use planning at the landscape scale more than any other species of wildlife in the United States. The first Draft Recovery Plan for the northern spotted owl was developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1992, but was never finalized.
As Project Manager for the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Plan, Dr. Phifer successfully compiled, coordinated, and supervised an interagency technical team of eight staff members from USDI Fish and Wildlife Service, USDA Forest Service, and USDI Bureau of Land Management. He assigned and coordinated the content and timing of each team member's specific tasks to fully meet the high pressure and short timelines of this court-mandated project. He provided this leadership by fostering creative energy, dedication, and humor from his team. He also organized, supervised, and helped facilitate multiple expert panels of spotted owl researchers, scientists, and managers, that provided key information and evaluation of threats and potential conservation actions for recovering northern spotted owl populations, and identification of variables and threshold conditions for monitoring changes in owl habitats and populations.
In addition, he helped plan and coordinate all meetings of a large and diverse Recovery Team of 12 individuals that included Federal and state governments, environmental organizations, and the timber industry. He successfully fulfilled the role of mediator between team members with conflicting agendas during this consensus process. Dr. Phifer expertly facilitated many contentious discussions with Recovery Team members as they made decisions and came to consensus on issues that are important to the various agencies and non-governmental organizations they represented. This resulted in the Recovery Team reaching consensus on the overall recovery goal, specific recovery objectives, and detailed recovery criteria. Dr. Phifer significantly updated past approaches while devising new approaches to evaluate and address threats to species and their habitats. His actions and leadership have been a major reason for the Service, Department, and Administration to expect a peaceful and successful resolution to the quandary of northern spotted owl recovery.
In his role as Project Manager, Dr. Phifer has taken recovery planning to a new level of expertise and utilization of decision-aiding science that may be applicable to future recovery planning efforts. Under his guidance, the recovery plan incorporated scores of research studies and planning evaluations of the past two decades into a new synthesis, and established a set of scientifically credible and transparent methods to evaluate populations and habitats as the basis for a final recovery strategy for the northern spotted owl throughout its U.S. distribution. The evaluation and planning work he devised, coordinated, supervised, and implemented has received an unprecedented degree of acceptance among Federal and state government agencies, environmental groups, and timber industry groups.
Dr. Phifer’s work included development of a revised conservation strategy for northern spotted owl populations, consisting of the delineation of older-forest conditions throughout the range of the subspecies as local population centers, and also delineation of critical connectivity and corridor habitats to ensure the distribution and viability of the northern spotted owl across land ownerships and physiographic provinces. This strategy built upon the strengths of past conservation efforts and incorporated the recommendations and input of leading northern spotted owl biologists, forest scientists, and land managers. Under Dr. Phifer’s leadership, this input was collected through a series of three workshops in six weeks to capture the most current knowledge on the threats to northern spotted owl recovery, the actions necessary to combat those threats, and the efficacy of those actions. In these workshops the northern spotted owl Recovery Team met with leading researchers and scientists with expertise in northern spotted owl biology, population ecology, fire ecology and management, silviculture, climatology, and other realms. Dr. Phifer led the synthesis of expert panel evaluations of potential effects of land and forest management, and natural- and human-caused disturbances on northern spotted owl populations. The maps from this new conservation strategy will form the heart and basis for recovery of the owl, delineation of its critical habitat, and unprecedented cooperation among stakeholders, government agencies, and private landholders.
Dr. Phifer was initially given a truncated timeline of 5 months to complete the monumental task of developing a draft recovery plan for this controversial species. To reach this goal, Dr. Phifer managed and balanced often-conflicting views and opinions within the Recovery Team and between scientists, managers and policy-makers. He also coordinated and incorporated input from professional peer reviewers, a professional editor, the interagency technical team, the Recovery Team, other Federal officials and managers at the regional and national level, and the public while delivering the draft recovery plan to the USFWS on-time and under budget.
The work that Dr. Phifer led entailed close coordination with all recovery team members, public interest groups, and many state and Federal agency personnel and private landholders. Because the northern spotted owl occupies such a wide geographic area and public and private forests, its recovery necessitates working with a strikingly wide array of stakeholders. Dr. Phifer has helped foster partnerships--informal and formal--among all stakeholders, in the development of the recovery plan. All Recovery Team decisions were reached through consensus, often by members representing constituencies with conflicting interests.