Timber Workers Rally Against Latest Spotted Owl Safeguards

Hundreds of frustrated timber workers rallied outside a union hall Friday to protest the latest in a series of court rulings protecting an endangered owl species.

The rally preceded a hearing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on its plan to set aside 11.6 million acres of forests in three Northwest states as habitat for the threatened northern spotted owl. Friday’s hearing was the last of four in the region.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer in Seattle blocked the U.S. Forest Service from selling timber on more than 66,000 acres in Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

The hearing was called after a request by environmentalists, led by the Audubon Society, for a permanent injunction to halt the sales.

The turnout at the rally, estimated at 500 by organizers, was far smaller than the 2,500 who showed up at a similar protest in Olympia, Wash., on Thursday.

“We’re absolutely going down the tubes,” said Tom Hirons, who owns a small timber company in Mill City. He said he has been out of work for seven months.

Mike Draper, executive secretary of the Western Council of Industrial Workers, told the crowd that Dwyer’s decision “is going to shut down plants in the Pacific Northwest immediately.”

Dwyer ordered the Forest Service to develop a plan by March, 1992, to protect the owl.