https://phys.org/news/2018-07-wildfire-owls-outdated.html > Spotted Owls are found in old-growth forests in the western United States and act as an indicator species, a measure of the biological health of an area, for public-land management. This species is particularly sensitive to logging, and when the northern subspecies of Spotted Owl was listed in 1990 as threatened—likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future—under the federal Endangered Species Act, about 90% of America's old-growth forest had already been lost to unsustainable logging practices over the previous 50 years. The listing of the Northern and Mexican Spotted Owls as threatened drew national attention to the dramatic decline of old-growth forest ecosystems and forced policy changes in the management of national forests. > In spite of these protections, populations of Spotted Owls have continued to decline outside of national forests over the last 38 years. Although many believe that wildfire has significantly contributed to this decline, there is little scientific basis for this assumption.