The Owl and the Forest

An editorial by the New York Times argues that debating the threat that barred owls may pose to spotted owls misses the point--old-growth forests are worth saving, regardless.

The spotted owl, once famously referred to by the
first President Bush as “that little furry-feathery
guy,” was not exactly a popular little guy among angry
timber workers in the Pacific Northwest. Listed as an
endangered species in 1990, the owl triggered a series
of court cases that halted logging in millions of
acres of old-growth forests and led President Clinton
to put those acres permanently off limits. For a bird
that few people have ever actually seen, the spotted
owl has done as much as any other creature to save the
American landscape.

Now, says The Oregonian, the owl may be facing a
threat graver than any chain saw: another owl, known
as the barred owl. Nobody is quite sure whether barred
owls kill spotted owls, force them away from nests or
put them under such stress that they cannot reproduce.
But ever since barred owls arrived in force in spotted
owl country, the number of spotted owls appears to
have declined.

The timber industry and the Bush administration are
now trying to use the spotted owl’s new troubles to
reverse more than a decade of sound environmental
policy. Industry sees no reason why it cannot cut the
trees where the spotted owl used to live. The Bush
administration — overriding, once again, the advice of
its scientists — is trying to shrink the land set
aside for the owl’s recovery to free up more of the
forest for logging.

Fortunately, the Endangered Species Act does not allow
giving up on the spotted owl. Moreover, in his
landmark decision protecting the owl, Judge William
Dwyer noted that the issue was not so much the owl as
the survival of the irreplaceable forest where it
lived. And that remains the issue now.