Meeting a goshawk at Scott Peak

Dave saw it first, circling in from the southwest. The goshawk silently lit atop a big hemlock snag. It sat there, watching. Dave smiled, pointed up into the solid green tangle. "Here we go," he said. Needle in a haystack. The four of us stood on the snow, necks craned up to the forest canopy, captivated.  

The Goshawk was bigger than I'd expected. With proud, strong chest he cocked his head just a little to watch. He stayed on the branch just long enough for me to snap a photo to prove he exists, then lit off back up the hill. 

That goshawk encounter was the highlight of a recent groundtruth trip we took with fellow Alaskan conservationists Larry Edwards, Dave Beebe, and Don Hernandez, to the Scott Peak area of the Tongass National Forest north of Petersburg. The Forest Service is set on logging this place as part of its failing dinosaur of an old-growth logging program. They've decided to take the best buffers of old-growth that are left from a legacy of clearcutting in this valley. We were there to bear witness, learn from the land, and do what we could to help protect it. 

What we found was that wildlife were using the remaining patches of old-growth more than you'd expect. Contrary to assurances, from those who should know better, that the place was ruined anyway, we found the place has a beating heart of wildness yet. There were deer tracks in proposed logging units on North-facing slopes at 800+ ft. There were tracks of a pack of wolves on a gorgeous salmon stream only 100 feet from more proposed clearcuts. Marten were around, too, and sign of marten traps along the road. We looked at stands of gnarled, old hemlocks, useless as lumber, and wondered how much money they'd lose cutting them down. 

Because they are almost extinct, Queen Charlotte goshawks are one of the very few animals that are at all protected from logging by the Forest Service.  There are so few goshawks left that the Forest Service protects them individually, by buffering their nests with "no-cut" zones. The nest for this particular goshawk had been buffered. But, that buffer had recently been erased and a larger one rejected because, according to the Forest Service, the nest was no longer occupied.

We were guided to this particular bird in this particular spot, to prove them wrong, by Larry. Larry's the Greenpeace forest campaigner out of Sitka and a relentless sleuth. He'd unearthed a map showing the nest location from the labyrinthine Forest Service files through the Freedom Of Information Act. The map was put there by the late Forest Service wildlife biologist Glen Ith, truly one of the heroes of conservation and scientific integrity in the Tongass. Glen himself had planned to be with us here, today, but he died a sudden death in his sleep only a couple weeks before. Life is precious.

It was Glen who had recommended the substantial "no-cut" buffer around this goshawk's nest. His superiors overturned his proposal because it interfered with proposed logging units. The Forest Service science machine thus turned its service from the forest to industry, took Glen off the job, removed his wildlife analysis from the project file, tried to fire him (over vaster and not unrelated issues), and started claiming that the goshawk nest was no longer occupied, making it clear for logging.

So the four of us fanned out, checking the branches of every tree for signs of the nest or the bird. It's a ridiculously difficult endeavor, but amazingly, magically, Larry spotted the nest, nestled beneath the low branches of an ancient hemlock tree. 

Ferns hung from the big, old branches. But, no bird. No sign of the bird. This was still early in the season for them to be nesting. Goshawks tend to keep up several nests and rotate among them through various years. That is apparently what this pair has done. So, we'll have to return later in the season to find them in their nest. 

Then the goshawk called. He was laughing, I imagine. From somewhere just up the hill. Near the little creek and a temple of cedar snags. Laughing at us from his new, hidden nest.