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FRAYED SAFETY NET S ......................................,.."........,................,....,.......................,...,..............................'..'..'...............................: the protected areas to sustain breeding individu- als. In order to accomplish this, management actions must be based upon a summary and analysis of life history information, foraging ecol- ogy (including understanding the relationship between foraging habitat and reproductive suc- cess), nesting or breeding requirements, preda- tion and disease (natural threats) and human- caused threats. Unfortunately, there is often not enough information about the requirements of species to determine whether a given plan will address these factors. Moreover, because habitats vary geographically, cookbook habitat prescrip- tions for particular species are inappropriate, and planners must often gather specific information for particular conservation plans. This difficulty in establishing preserves based on scientific information is obvious in planning for two comparatively well-studied bird species: the northern spotted owl and the red-cockaded woodpecker. For the spotted owl, controversy has persisted for years about how much area is required to sustain a typical breed- ing pair of owls. In the early 1970s, the Oregon Endangered Species Task Force asked leading spotted owl biologist Eric Forsman what minimum area would be required for owl pairs. He said: Well, all we know is we have yet to find a pair of them in an area where there is less than about 300 acres of old growth. That's how scientific it was.... It was the biggest mistake we could have made, because it turned out in the late seventies, after we started looking at some telemetry data, it was obvious that 300 acres wasn't even dose to being enough in most areas. (from Yaffee 1994) Since then, numerous studies using radio telemetry were performed to determine what acreage the owls use, and what acreage defines a "core area" that owls use most intensively (e.g., Carey et al. 1990, Zabel et al. 1995). Today, landowners (without HCPs) avoid taking owls by maintaining proper late successional habitat for owls in a circle with a radius of 1.8 to 2.7 miles from an owl nest. Unfortunately, even this information is insufficient in determining what minimal area owls require in order to breed suc- cessfully, given that habitat requirements vary dramatically according to geographic regions (Bingham and Noon 1997). A similar heated debate over habitat require- ments for red-cockaded woodpecker groups has occurred as well. Jerome Jackson, a professor at Mississippi State University who has been study- ing red-cockaded woodpeckers for 30 years, has observed that woodpeckers utilize 100 to 1,000 acres of forest. Nevertheless, there is little bio- logical information on the minimum foraging requirements of breeding woodpeckers (necessary to avoid take), and a peer-reviewed study found no association between woodpecker nesting suc- cess and the availability of pine trees or degree of fragmentation (Beyer et al. 1996). Amidst this controversy, in 1985 the U.S. Forest Service adopted the recommendations of the 1985 Red- Cockaded Woodpecker Recovery Plan for 125 acres of habitat for each group, combined with other requirements (USFS 1985). In 1992, in response to a demand from private landowners for information on what would be required for them to avoid take, FWS produced a manual for private lands (FWS 1992a). Without scientific e ........................................................................................................................ .............................................................................. ..........................