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--> --> California owls mingling with Oregon's population PORTLAND (AP) - The flight of immigrants from California to Oregon doesn't just include just high-tech transplants and retirees. Spotted owls seem to be headed north, too. Scientists examining the genetic makeup of owls from as far north as the Siuslaw National Forest west of Corvallis found that about 13 percent were California spotted owls. It's not clear why the scarcer California owls, native to the Sierra Nevada and Southern California mountains, are flying north. And scientists aren't sure what interbreeding will mean for the genetic makeup of northern owls. "It's somewhat confusing because we're not seeing owls here that look very different from northern spotted owls," said Eric Forsman, a spotted owl biologist with the U.S. Forest Service in Corvallis and a co-author of the studies. If the proportions seen in the Siuslaw study carry through to the rest of the nearly 10,000 northern spotted owls in the Northwest, about 1,000 may actually belong to a different subspecies. Conservation groups have asked that the California owl get the same Endangered Species Act safeguards as the northern spotted owl - which could mean the Northwest may find a second protected spotted owl in its forests. Researchers suspect the northern migration began fairly recently, because the owls remain distinguishable through their DNA. Some mixing between the subspecies is normal. The findings, however, could revive an argument that the owls are similar enough to be combined into a single subspecies. Scientists are trying to gauge the differences among three subspecies of spotted owls: northern, California and Mexican. They found the Mexican spotted owl of the Four Corners states clearly distinct, but they had a more difficult time identifying the other two subspecies. "We were not expecting there to be this much mixing," said Susan Haig, a U.S. Geological Survey conservation genetics specialist in Corvallis who was lead author of the new studies. But almost as many California spotted owls appeared to belong in the Olympics, Cascades, Coast Range and Klamath region of Oregon and Washington as in California. Haig said there is no evidence that the northern spotted owl is moving south into California, perhaps because logging in California's mountains might have disturbed the habitat of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 California spotted owls more than it has the range of the more numerous northern spotted owl in the Northwest. Both species rely on relatively undisturbed, mature forest. "If things aren't so hot in California, the California owls may be going out of their range to a new area that can provide some qualities they're not getting at home," said Patricia Foulk of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Sacramento, Calif. Conservation groups have petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the California subspecies. The agency ruled that a listing may be warranted but has put any action on hold for budget reasons. Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing