The Owls vs. the Loggers. Those greedy rapists of the land against those stupid hooters who don’t even know a good tune. For environmentalists, the owls of the Pacific Northwest are vital denizens of the old forest. But they’re really just a convenient proxy for preserving our terrestrial heritage; after all, the Endangered Species Act isn’t broad enough to include saving ecosystems. For the timber industry, the owls may indeed symbolize what’s wrong with environmental regulation. But many jobs have already been lost to automation and Japanese mills.
With such overdrawn arguments, it’s no wonder that the battle between owls and loggers has become so intractable. Last week the Bush administration weighed in-and further confused a muddled picture. Most notably, the cabinet-level Endangered Species Committee voted 5-2 to allow logging on 13 tracts of federal land totaling 1,700 acres that had previously been designated as critical owl habitat; it was only the third time that the so-called God Squad had met in its 14-year history–and the first time it ruled against preservation. At the same time, it denied a request to open up 31 other Oregon timber parcels.
Yet right after the God Squad vote, Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan, the panel’s chair, announced a plan that, if adopted, would permit more logging. Under Lujan’s proposed amendment to the Endangered Species Act, 2 million acres would become available-at the expense of the owls. Environmentalists called Lujan’s proposal to Congress an “extinction plan,” while logging groups said it was too much of a compromise. It will compete against a Fish and Wildlife Service plan that would preserve far more habitat for the owl; federal law, as now written, required that plan to be submitted. The Bush administration thus put itself in the odd position of complying with the Endangered Species Act even as it moved to weaken it.
In the short term, none of the administration’s actions means that trees will fall soon or that owls will die. There is much uncut timber already contracted for that no one wants. Moreover, federal courts recently enjoined logging in most of the disputed forests until lawsuits are resolved. This “was squabbling among the spectators,” says George Frampton, president of the Wilderness Society. “The field now is Capitol Hill.” Various House bills provide far greater protection to the forests than the administration proposal.
Despite its practical insignificance, last week had symbolic importance. All the hooting came as Bush decided to attend the Earth Summit next month. The overarching theme: how to balance economic development with resource preservation. “For the United States to announce its intention to sacrifice a major portion of what remains here,” says Michael Bean of the Environmental Defense Fund, “sends a signal of inconsistency at best and hypocrisy at worst.” Bush has his work cut out to explain otherwise.
