Protection--at Last

Even if the federal government had not decided to list the northern spotted owl as a threatened species, the timber industry would have to stop cutting the Northwest’s publicly owned ancient forests within about a decade because all the old-growth trees will be gone. So said Rolf L. Wallenstrom, former regional administrator of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland, Ore. “The owl has become a scapegoat,” Wallenstrom added.

As it is, though, the Fish and Wildlife Service finally did the proper thing last week by giving the 14-inch, dapple-brown owl official protection under the Endangered Species Act. The service needed two tries to get it right. Back in 1987, regional officials under Wallenstrom were prepared to list the owl as endangered when suddenly they reversed themselves and said the listing was not warranted.

The reversal came after at least one ranking Department of the Interior official in Washington declared that the owl should not be listed under any circumstances. Scientific evidence of the biological problems facing the owl were suppressed. Economic factors were emphasized, contrary to the law.

The process established by the Endangered Species Act was perverted in the 1987 ruling. The Fish and Wildlife Service reversed itself this week largely because of legal rulings and pending court decisions. The law finally has prevailed over intense pressure from the logging industry. Now, the federal government must do what it should have done before, and not just to save an obscure owl that nests in the tops of 200- to 300-year-old Douglas fir, cedar, hemlock and spruce trees.

The nation needs to preserve portions of the ancient forest, not just snippets here and there in isolated parks, as has happened with the coast redwood in California. The spotted owl is considered an indicator of the health of the entire natural forest system. Timber companies have been cutting into the surviving stands at the rate of 60,000 acres a year. The U.S.Forest Service estimates that 2.7 million acres of old-growth trees are left in Washington and Oregon, but a Wilderness Society study indicated the figure is not much more than 1 million acres. As much as half the forest might be needed to protect the 1,500 pairs of owls, timber industry officials claim, meaning the loss of 130,000 jobs and costing the federal government $1 billion in timber receipts.

But Wallenstrom, the former wildlife official, said that land exchanges and modified logging procedures usually allow about 90% of the planned development in such cases to occur anyway. And Jeff DeBonis, a Forest Service timber planner in Oregon, said the job-loss claims are wildly exaggerated. Timber industry employment declined 15% in Oregon during 1979-1989 even though logging on federal lands increased by 18.5%. Most of the losses are because of industry modernization and automation, he said. If the loggers were barred from all the ancient forest left on federal lands in the Northwest, only 2,300 jobs would be lost, he argued.

There are a number of ways the industry can adjust, such as cutting more timber from private lands rather than the public forests. The spotted owl has no such options.