Owls, Loggers, and Old-Growth Forests
Owls, Loggers, and
Old-Growth Forests
By Rich McCoy
Oregon’s Sawmills
Between 1991 – 2001 Oregon had witnessed the closing of
89 sawmills.
Prineville, Oregon the Ochoco sawmill closing in 2001:
- 180 jobs
- Yearly payroll of nearly $5 million
- $8 - $10 million to contract loggers and truckers
- Roughly $15 million annually paid into U.S.
Treasury for timber purchases on federal lands vanished
(25% of monies generated on federal lands is shared with local gov’t to support local schools & road construction – a loss to Prineville of $3.75 million a year)
Additional loss
Ochoco sawmill donations:
Prineville lost 50 scholarships given annually to college students, school stadium, and local museum.
Viles family lost 2 salaries after a combined 34 years.
Dan Viles aptitude test showed that he would be a good short-order cook or a brewmaster.
Supply and Demand
Prineville sawmill took trees from surrounding forests for producing boards & molding.
Its output was in high demand.
Lumber consumption in the
U.S. was rising.
Among the local Prineville businesses were cabinet makers as well as door & window manufacturers.
The lack of demand did not close the mill. The lack of raw timber did.
“I speak for the trees”
Clear-cutting was a common practice*.
Growing national debate about the uses of wilderness areas caused the Forest
Service to impose restrictive new rules.
Clear-cutting forbidden.
Thinning of stands in younger forests acceptable but resulted in smaller diameter logs.
Lawsuits by environmental groups in an attempt to protect the northern spotted owl forced the Forest Service to cut back further on timber sales.
Lacking the needed flow of saw timber, the mill closed.
Northern spotted owl
Lives deep in the forests of Washington, Oregon, and northern
California.
Since the 1800’s, timber cutting and land development have reduced the owl’s habitat by as much as 80%, threatening its extinction.
Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973 to prevent the demise of such creatures, and in 1990 the NSO was added to the list of species entitled to special protection.
Owls cost money!
Unfortunately for the wood products industry, the owls live in the most productive timber lands of the Pacific Northwest.
Their predicament has caused federal timber harvests to decline more than 90%. It is this decline that has starved the sawmills of raw material.
The territory of a mated spotted owl pair ranges from 1,000 to
27,000 acres.
Spotted owls prefer old-growth forests which are forests that are at least 200 years old. The old-growth forests are more structurally and biologically complex than younger forests.
Old-Growth
Have much richer biotic communities than younger forests and are repositories for species that have adapted to ecological niches created under old-growth conditions.
The spotted owl is one such species.
Owls nest in the cavities of standing snags (dead trees) and the fallen snags create conditions that support an abundance of prey.
The spotted owl plays a role in the old-growth ecosystem by culling small mammal and bird populations.
Loss of Old-Growth
The northwest coastal forest inhabited by spotted owls covered roughly 94 million acres in the 1860’s.
Today about 30 million acres of coastal forest remain with
7.7 million acres being oldgrowth and only 2.8 million are closed to logging.
Most old-growth is on federal lands managed by the Forest
Service and hold timber auctions*.
In 1989 scientists estimated that only 1,550 mated pairs of spotted owl existed. A mated pair produces an average of .50 young per year and juvenile owls suffer an
88% mortality rate.
Environmentalists & The Owl
Believed that the owl’s use of old-growth as habitat made saving owls a convenient pretext for saving these ancient forests from the logger’s ax.
Placed owl’s under the protection of the Endangered Species Act which also protects geographically defined “critical habitat” of a species.
Logging is now banned near known spotted owl nests. Even when a nest is found empty, there is a 3 year moratorium on logging to ensure that it is abandoned.
In 1991, timber sales virtually halted while a species recovery plan was developed for the spotted owl.
Environmentalists…
(continued)
Proved disastrous for the forest products industry which depended on timber harvests.
In 1990, the year before the recovery plan was set in motion,
10.6 billion board feet of timber were cut on federal lands. After the recovery plan was put into effect, only 0.7 billion board feet was sold.
Hardship in the Pacific Northwest
Hundreds of small-town economies built on jobs created by the logging industry spiraled downward.
In Happy Camp, CA the population fell from 2,500 to
1,100, and more than half that remained were on public assistance.
Clinton presided over a
“timber summit” where he listened to polarized views from environmentalists, scientists, and timber industry reps.
Solution sought
Clinton administration introduced the Northwest Forest Plan
(NMFP) which attempted to appease all parties involved.
Committed $1.2 billion to retrain workers, aid small businesses, and compensate for lost tax revenues in timber towns while permitting logging (as long as there were no owl nests present).
Republicans began to attack environmental laws and backed the landowners who demanded compensation for the potential monies lost to them due to the enforcement of these laws.
In 1997 an Oregon jury awarded a corporation $2 million+ for the value of 56 acres of timberland that it was unable to harvest because of spotted owl nests.
It doesn’t pay to be an owl
Debate continued in regards to the use of the timberlands.
New agreements with the landowners were put into place in which the landowners must voluntarily agree to take conservation measures and in return, the gov’t grants permission to log or use the property as the landowner sees fit. (Even if it means harm to an endangered species or its habitat).
Once a landowner receives a permit as a result of such an agreement, it is absolved from blame if any members of an endangered species is harassed or killed. Without such plans the land would be rendered unusable. This is known as an “incidental take permit”.
Environmentalists against these measures.
Believe that timber harvests have been inadequately surveyed or the presence of species.
Lawsuits by environmental groups tie down gov’t agencies forcing them to put more resources into litigation, leaving less resources for managing species.
In closing…
It doesn’t pay to be an animal.
Owl protection hurts the Pacific Northwest economy.
The problem is the increasing demand for natural resources due to the increase in the human population.
Because there are fewer environmental safeguards on wood production in other countries the environmentalists have, in effect, made species extinction and damage to forest ecosystems an export item.
