Debate Over Owls and Timber in Northwest

Your editorial “The Spotted Owl Is No Pussycat” (Sept. 20) was very appropriate. Forest management must return to a sustainable yield harvest for the benefit of all citizens. In the 1970s, the timber industry, successfully backed by Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield and other Northwest lawmakers, won legislation allowing the national forests to violate their longstanding policy of cutting only as much as they could cut for perpetuity.

The spotted owl, marbled murrelet, martin and myriad other species are merely a scapegoat for the cover-up of two decades of mismanagement and greed.

VANCE R. EWALD

Grand Terrace