Scientists Urge Logging Curbs to Protect Rare Owl

Logging on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest is driving a rare owl species to extinction and should be significantly restricted, government scientists told Congress Wednesday in a recommendation that loggers say could have a devastating impact on the region’s economy.

The scientists’ report, which suggests banning logging on 30% to 40% of available publicly owned timberlands, was requested by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is to decide by June 23 whether to formally classify the northern spotted owl as a threatened species.

That designation would restrict logging on millions of acres of some of the world’s most productive softwood forests, setting the stage for a political fight between environmentalists and loggers over the potential loss of thousands--maybe even tens of thousands--of jobs in rural Oregon, Washington and Northern California.

Larry Tuttle of the Wilderness Society said setting aside the preserves called for in the report--areas ranging from less than 100 acres in Northern California to 600,000 acres on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington--would slash by 25% the total harvest available in the U.S. forest lands in the three states. The owl thrives best in old-growth forests, the type most valued by loggers.

“For a forest-based economy, it (the conclusion of the scientists’ report) is the worst thing that I can imagine,” said Kevin Eckery of the Timber Assn. of California. “For Oregon, it’s the equivalent of Boeing closing in Seattle. I can’t even imagine something equivalent in California. It’s terrible.”

Federal officials cautioned in the report that a great deal more study will be needed to determine the proposal’s true economic impact. “The issue is more complex than spotted owls and timber supply--it always has been,” concluded a summary of the report.

Environmentalists said the process of formally listing a species as “threatened” is based only on science and that economic considerations are factored into decisions about how extensively an animal should actually be protected.

Both environmentalists and loggers say the recommendation is likely to greatly influence the Fish and Wildlife Service when it decides how to protect the owl. “Make no mistake about it, this is a very influential document,” said Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.).

The report itself drew a mixed reaction from environmentalists. Rick Johnson of the Sierra Club in Seattle said he was “particularly happy” with it, but National Audubon Society policy analyst James Pissot in Washington was disappointed.

“They are continuing to allow short-term, high-risk (timber practices in unprotected lands) in exchange for long-term expectations (of a spotted-owl revival) on a wing and a prayer,” he said.

Loggers and lawyers agreed that the spotted owl will prove as controversial a test of the 1973 Endangered Species Act as the snail darter, the three-inch-long fish that delayed construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee for two years in the late 1970s. After much debate, that dam was exempted from the law and the fish was successfully transplanted to another location.

The northern spotted owl does not lend itself to as facile a solution. Each breeding pair of owls require a large amount of old-growth timber in which to forage for prey, and the several hundred pairs known to exist already inhabit most of the remaining virgin forests from California to Canada.

John Kunzman of the Oregon Lands Commission, a grass-roots group of loggers and mill hands opposed to broad protection for the spotted owl, said Wednesday that his group plans to rally enough pressure on Congress to “throw that law on the table and dissect it.”

Johnson of the Sierra Club said that fears of a backlash against the law are real, but he said he doubts that Congress will make any significant changes.

“The Endangered Species Act is still one of the more popular major pieces of environmental legislation,” he said. “It enjoys wide support with people, and Congress knows that.”

The report made public Wednesday was co-authored by scientists from the Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the three major federal public lands agencies--the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service.

The committee of scientists concluded that the medium-sized, mottled-brown owl subspecies is “imperiled over significant portions of its range because of continuing losses of habitat from logging and natural disturbances,” such as fire. It said that “current management strategies are inadequate to ensure (the owl’s) viability.”

Central to the committee’s recommendations is the abandonment of relatively small existing preservation zones called “spotted owl habitat areas” in favor of much larger “habitat conservation areas” encompassing thousands of acres each.

These new, larger preserves would be fewer in number, but have room for at least 20 breeding pairs of owls. The report said the maximum distance between the habitat conservation areas should be 12 miles, allowing easy migration.

In contrast, existing owl preserves are smaller, scattered parcels usually designed to accommodate one to three pairs of the birds. Environmentalists argue that the small preserves are vulnerable to being wiped out by fire or wind, and the distances between them discourage the interbreeding needed for a healthy owl population.

“The large blocks of forest are a significant improvement over the smaller (habitat areas),” said Pissot of the Audubon Society.

“It is good to see the scientific committee--this time without political interference--come to a rational, science-based conclusion,” said Johnson of the Sierra Club, referring to a controversy that developed in 1988 when Reagan Administration appointees in the Fish and Wildlife agency blocked an effort by scientists to protect the owl.

“It is basically a doubling of the (size of) preserved lands in Oregon and Washington,” complained Chris West of the Northwest Forest Resource Council, an industry lobbying group in Portland, Ore. “When we laid it out on a map, we saw communities lose their entire forest base; entire ranger districts were put off-limits.”

“Oregon is being turned into a giant wildlife sanctuary for the spotted owl,” said Kunzman, who owns a logging-equipment supply house in Sweet Home, Ore.

Under the committee’s proposal, Oregon would have 48 of the larger habitat areas and Washington state would have 43. California, with lusher forests better able to support owls, would have 99 such areas, but each would be markedly smaller in size.

The scientists also suggested allotting at least 80 acres of suitable land around the nests of all known owl pairs in public forests devoted to logging. These birds would be relied on to re-establish owl populations in those areas between harvest cycles.

An exception to that provision was included to allow the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to honor sales already contracted out under a short-term compromise agreement hammered out last year by Oregon lawmakers. That pact sought to defuse the crisis atmosphere that was closing some mills and forcing up the cost of uncut trees because of fears of future log shortages.