Marbled Murrelet IBA of the Month

Marbled Murrelet IBA of the Month
by Mary Coolidge

“Every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way in which it is interwoven with the rest of the universe”  --Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher, from Part II of the 1997 USFWS Recovery Plan for the Marbled Murrelet.

Marbled Murrelet IBA - tammi miller

Standing at the 1934 Civilian Conservation Corps shelter on the Cape Perpetua promontory, the view to the south is a showcase of forested ridgelines within the Siuslaw National Forest.  Eight miles south, the Heceta Head Lighthouse marks the southwestern edge of the roughly 80,000-acre central coast Marbled Murrelet Important Bird Area.  The IBA captures the largest intact stand of coastal temperate rainforest in the lower 48 states, a habitat of Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, and the massive Sitka Spruce whose moss-blanketed branches provide nesting platforms for the Marbled Murrelet.

Portland Audubon owns Ten Mile Creek and Pine Tree Sanctuaries, two forested parcels totaling 216-acres within the MAMU IBA.  The Ten Mile Creek property was a 2008 gift from National Audubon, which originally purchased it in 1990 to prevent logging plans and to get a tangible foothold in protection of old-growth forest, home to both the Marbled Murrelet and Northern Spotted Owl.  Paul Engelmeyer, Coastal IBA Coordinator, manages the land for Portland Audubon with a litany of land management goals: improve forest canopy, encourage wildlife habitat diversity, encourage succession to old-growth forest characteristics, create a model for community based protection and restoration efforts, and to influence Siuslaw National Forest land management programs to shift toward a protection and restoration strategy for the surrounding forest. 

The Ten Mile education program strives to instill a conservation ethic in citizens of the region.  Hands-on participation is the secret to this alchemy; Audubon members, Angel Job Corps Forestry students, local high school students, and local forest activists all volunteer on site.  They plant, they create snags, they conduct annual Marbled Murrelet surveys, and they connect with place.  Their work creating snags provides essential nesting, roosting and foraging habitat for woodpeckers, chickadees, nuthatches, wren, owls, bluebirds, bats, and flying and Douglas squirrels.  Planting Western Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce, Big leaf Maple, and Red Alder increases forest diversity and canopy cover. 

Species of Ornithological Significance

The highest concentration of at-sea Murrelets occurs between Florence and Newport (Strong, 2008) and the land included in the MAMU IBA contains more than 50 detected nest sites, located by intensive predawn land surveys conducted over the last 20 years.  Kim Nelson, OSU researcher and Murrelet expert, helped draw the boundaries of this IBA to capture some the best area for Murrelet with respect to both breeding concentration and contiguity of habitat.

Northern Spotted Owls also nest within the IBA, and both of these ESA-listed species continue to face significant threats throughout their Pacific Northwest forest habitat.  The Murrelet encounters additional threats in its seagoing ventures: oil spills, gill-net entrapment, water pollution, and overfishing.  Populations of both species have fallen precipitously due to a combination of development and forest management practices that continue to fragment already decimated old growth forest.  Though the Siuslaw Forest Service only practices plantation thinning of forest within the IBA, USFWS protection of both species is inadequate.

A piece of good news for the Murrelet: one of four Marine Reserve proposals slated for further study is situated just offshore of Cape Perpetua, and a proposed extension of the MAMU IBA boundary to include nearshore waters could offer an additional tool for advocating for protection of these already-listed birds.  This is the result of efforts to understand species and their habitats as whole, integrated, invaluable systems.

The forests of the MAMU IBA additionally host: Winter Wren, Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned Kinglet, Hermit Warbler, Black-throated Gray Warbler, Varied and Hermit Thrush, Hutton’s Vireo, Pacific-slope Flycatcher, Common Yellowthroat, Black-headed Grosbeak, Wilson’s Warbler, Cedar Waxwing, MacGillivray’s Warbler, Cooper’s Hawk, Sharp-shinned Hawk, Northern Flicker, Ruffed Grouse, and Hairy and Pileated Woodpecker.

Projects

If you’d like to participate in the annual July 14th and 15th Marbled Murrelet training and survey in the Yachats area, contact Paul Engelmeyer at 541-547-4097 or pengelmeyer@peak.org or Mary Coolidge at 503.292.6855 x 111 or mcoolidge@audubonportland.org.