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Scientists scan for rare critters Photo from Bureau of Land Management Baby red tree voles would fit inside a 35mm film canister. Court ruling or not, forest surveys go on By PAUL FATTIG Photo by Bob Pennell Mary Lou Schnoes, a Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist, checks the treetops for the nests of the red tree vole, a species experts believe could be at risk if its tree homes are logged. Peering through a pair of black binoculars, Mary Lou Schnoes scans the Douglas fir canopy high above the forest floor. The Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist spots a ball of dried fir needles, potential evidence of a red tree vole nest, on the shoulder of London Peak just south of Wolf Creek in the BLM's Medford District. "See on the downhill side of the tree?" she asked. "About 50 feet up? That's the remnants of a red tree vole nest. "They only eat fir needles," she said of the tree-dwelling rodents. "They get the water they need out of the needles. They very seldom leave the trees." Over in the Siskiyou National Forest headquarters in Grants Pass, forest botanist Maria Ulloa peers into a microscope, looking for a little-known bryophyte moss. In the Rogue River National Forest, wildlife biologist Mario Mamone has been poking around the rocky slopes of the upper Applegate River drainage, searching for evidence of the elusive Siskiyou Mountain salamander. The three scientists and countless other specialists and contractors in the region are part of Uncle Sam's army whose mission is to seek out little-known plants and animals as part of the survey-and-manage requirements in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. Experts believe the species they are surveying would be at risk if logging took place in their habitat. Last week, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer in Seattle temporarily halted 25 additional BLM and Forest Service timber sales, citing the agencies for failing to meet the requirements. Earlier this month he halted 22 federal timber sales for the same reason. He is expected to rule on a permanent injunction in October. His decisions have blocked the logging of nearly 300 million board feet of timber in the region. Dwyer's actions are the result of a 1998 lawsuit filed by 13 environmental groups in an attempt to force the agencies to meet the survey and protection guidelines. They have argued that the agencies had had five years to complete the task. But timber industry officials, acting as interveners for the agencies in the case, warned of the potential economic harm caused by blocking the sales. The agencies, which had admitted in court that the surveys failed to occur on dozens of sales sold in recent years, didn't contest the injunction request. Outside the courtrooms and beyond the continuing debate, the researchers continue pounding the ground. Noting that "the devil is in the details," Schnoes, like many surveyors, carries a 3-inch-thick volume of papers filled with information about the plants and animals being surveyed. She also carries her own version of the bible -- a copy of the Northwest Forest Plan. Surveyors say the work is constantly challenging, often frustrating but always interesting. "We have one fungus that maybe comes up once in every five years," said Lee Webb, forest wildlife biologist for the Siskiyou. "How do you survey for that? It's difficult." Then there is the blue-gray tail-dropper, a slug found on both forests and the BLM district. "I've probably stepped on them before, but I've never really seen them until we started looking for them," Webb said. "It appears they are fairly common. But we didn't know that before we began looking." But getting a handle on the lives of the largely unknown plants and creatures is the reason for the surveys, he said. As for the "manage" part of the requirement, that's another matter. "We don't have direction yet on how to protect for some of the terrestrial mollusks," Webb said. "But it'll get here. And we'll deal with it." A 20-year veteran of biological work, Mamone says the huge scale of the task has forced researchers to take a common-sense approach. "For instance, with the (Siskiyou Mountain) salamanders, we typically do a habitat survey," he said. "If the habitat is suitable, we assume the animals are there." Otherwise, the lengthy surveys would be vastly more time-consuming, he said. Researchers trying to find creatures like seldom-seen land-based salamanders have a small window of opportunity in the spring and fall when the temperatures and humidity are just right, he explained. For instance, the scientific protocol for a proper Del Norte salamander survey requires recording 30 variables, including air and soil temperature, humidity, elevation, slope and weather conditions. A survey that doesn't meet protocol requirements isn't valid. Although there are red tree voles in the Applegate Ranger District where Mamone is based, there are no surveys under way there for the tree-dwelling rodents. "If we have 40 percent habitat within a watershed, we don't need to survey for that species," he said. Like many others involved in the surveys, Mamone gained valuable experience during the northern spotted owl studies in the 1980s and early 1990s. While those surveys were often frustrating, requiring researchers to visit random sites where no owl in its right mind was expected to be found, finding them in suitable habitat was not difficult, he observed. "With spotted owls, once you were in the right habitat, you'd give a hoot and you would see them or hear them," he said. "Here, you are often on your hands and knees looking for specific snails or salamanders or lichen. "It's a whole new group of things we don't know a lot about," he added. "From the biological standpoint, it's fascinating." Under the business end of Ulloa's microscope is a 4-inch-long stick covered with green moss. Peeking up out of its mossy bed is a tiny brown fruiting body. Commonly called a "bag on a stick," the bryophyte moss body about the size of a match head is officially known as a Buxbaumia viridis. "This is its habitat," Ulloa explained. "You can see the fruiting part sticking up. The main organism is in the wood." It takes an expert well-versed in mosses to tell the difference between a common moss and an uncommon one, she said. "After four years, we can go out in the field and recognize maybe six species," she said. "Everything else, you have to bring back to study." Schnoes is looking for the bigger picture when she is out in BLM's Medford District in search of red tree voles. She often checks the ground near her feet for evidence of their existence high in the trees above. She's searching for what looks like coarse elk hair: dried needles that have been eaten and dropped by voles, she said. In addition to the red tree vole, she has surveyed for Del Norte salamanders and a variety of mollusks. "You find all kinds of stuff out here -- scorpions, spiders," she said. "Sometimes you'll get lucky and you'll find a salamander when you are doing a mollusk survey." While the management requirement of some species is still on the drawing board, the survey requirements are largely in place, Schnoes said. "People who are considered authorities for a species and (land) managers have reviewed the survey so the academics aren't asking for the moon," Schnoes said. "We're not a research agency. We are a management agency. Everything has to be doable with our budget." Is it doable? "We are doing it," she replied, "so I guess it must be doable." What the surveyors are looking for By PAUL FATTIG When it comes to the survey-and-manage requirements for rare plants and animals covered by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, wildlife biologists like to say the devil is in the details. And they are quick to add that the details are as complex as they are confusing. In the 24 million acres covered by the plan livee more than 400 old-growth-resident species identified by scientists as at risk. None of those species is covered by the Endangered Species Act. Of those 400, the current survey applies only to 77 species in Category 2, which is roughly defined as areas where habitat is present and where planned activity is likely to affect or disturb that habitat. The lists were compiled by specialists with expertise in everything from amphibians to slugs. The broad categories included bryophytes (mosses and liverwort), fungi, lichen, mollusks (snails and slugs) amphibians, vascular plants, one bird (great gray owl) and mammals (lynx and red tree voles). For instance, a partial list includes eight mollusks on the BLM's Medford District. Those includes two terrestrial slugs known as the blue-gray tail-dropper and the papillose tail-dropper. The agency is also surveying for four terrestrial snails, including the Oregon shoulderband, Oregon Megomphix, Siskiyou sideband and the Crater Lake tightcoil. In addition, BLM surveyors are looking for two aquatic snails -- the Klamath Rim pebblesnail and the Fredenburg pebblesnail. The Siskiyou forest list has five terrestrial mollusks while the Rogue River forest list has eight mollusks, including seven terrestrial and one aquatic. In the fungi category, both the Rogue River and Siskiyou forests have seven on the survey list. They also have one liverwort and three bryophyte mosses each. A group known as the Regional Interagency Excutive Committee has been chartered to oversee management of the survey and manage aspects of the plan. The committee includes members of federal and state agencies as well as scholars. The agencies have also assembled a committee of experts for each species, creating groups such as the Red Tree Vole Committee and the Mollusk Committee. Each group, through a lengthy process, is charged with reaching a consensus on the survey and management of each species. There are 32 species of rare mushrooms, mosses and mollusks that scientists have initially had difficulty identifying, officials acknowledge. However, during the past year, survey protocols have been developed for 19 of those species. Last year, the two agencies surveyed for 48 species on more than 150,000 acres in an effort to meet the plan's requirements. Nearly 20,000 sites identified through the survey-and-manage requirements are now protected. In the past four years, federal officials have developed similar guidelines for more than 300 other species. The estimated cost of survey-and-manage work in the BLM's Medford District for fiscal year 1999, which ends Sept. 30, is $2.1 million. The district expects to spend $3.5 million on survey-and-manage species for the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. In the Rogue River National Forest, the survey-and-manage cost for the current fiscal year is estimated to be about $280,000, compared with about $215,000 for the Siskiyou forest. The total spent on survey-and-manage species for western Oregon this fiscal year by the two agencies is about $8 million. The two agencies are jointly working on a draft environmental impact statement for all 400 survey-and-manage species. The draft is expected to be completed next month, followed by a three-month public comment period. The final EIS is expected to be released in the spring of 2000. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA