 In 1985, environmental lawyer Andrew Stahl presented mathematical biologist Russell Lande just this question Yaffee (1994: 98). He showed Lande the US Forest Service’s “regional guide” which was their plan to protect the northern spotted owl and asked Lande to determine if it would be sufficient. Using a variety of data, he devised the following metapopulation model to try to answer this question (Lande 1988a but see Lande 1988b as well). Let \(\epsilon\) be the probability that a juvenile female inherits her mother’s territory, \(m\) be the number of territories a juvenile can disperse through before dying, \(h\) be the proportion of habitable territory, and \(p\) be the proportion of occupied habitable sites. Therefore, the probability of a female not finding habitable territory in \(m\) trials is,