Wow I know how I missed this cuz I was busy whacking down owl and mullet habitat this summer, okay not me personally but my contractors were. Anyways the article from Evergreen Mag was great and I think I have found a new site to frequent. As for the Murrelet article they still can't get crap strait; and I mean that in a literal sense. Murrelets do not just lay their eggs on flat mistletoe infected branches. They litterally crap a ring and lay the egg inside that. I went to a DNR meeting on Murrelets this summer. Without causing my brain to hurt too much; basically they have no idea how many Murrelets there are and once the plan is in place will not continue to do surveys of the population; this is DNR land private continues to do surveys where murrelets are. Anyways as for the predation aspect. Corvids, crows/ravens, are the primary target of the finger pointing. Granted they probably do eat some eggs and they say that clearcuts and smooth edges are what cause the attraction of corvids. You say what does clearcuts and edge effect have to do with attracting some damn birds that like to eat the other birds eggs. Well the berries and such attract the birds. Now for strait edges, here's where scientists infinite brilliance shines. They want ragged edges. Well this increases the amount of edge you have rather than decrease, think of filters, same principle that the brilliant morons can't figure out. Oh and they want tons of uncut forest without edge but the real truth is Murrelets do not fly and lite on branches. They are flying freakin potatoes; meaning when they go to lite they just fold their wings and fall to the branch unlike most birds. Hmm well it would seem to me that having edge could help them. Yes edge could expose them to more corvid predation but alas all the solutions are "techno fixes." These doctored eggs are a techno fix which we rely on to fix our environmental problems instead of trans-formative change. Granted I believe techno fixes are valid and definitely useful. Where we need the trans-formative changes are with our science and overcoming our tendency to overreact to problems or percieved problems before we have a good grasp of the problem. Owls would be a prime example and Murrelets will be another once we find out we screwed the pooch on it too. Hey species go extinct, the very nature of these bird species lends themselves to extinction and probably without human help. The original article, I believe, speaks volumes to this.
Wow I got fired up there. Anyways that's how I feel about all this. Take home message is junk in is junk out. Once we fix the problem of shoddy science then maybe we can truly come to understand the problems we face and how best to fix them.
Wes