Wildlife Tree Tag STOC 321

Click on photo to enlarge

One of our tasks this morning was to place this USFS Wildlife Tree Tag on the oak the above owls are nesting in.

As a consequence of the recent 7 year drought---the resultant bark-beetle infestation, and also because of nearly a century of fire suppression that has allowed our forests to grow far too dense, and become extreme fire hazards---there is now a much needed thinning going on throughout the forest, and the people cutting the trees need to know which ones are critically important habitat for wildlife.

So that's what the tagging is for, and along with monitoring population stability, it's just another of many reasons that these owl surveys are important.