Spots versus stripes? Which do you prefer?Our federal government prefers spots and is moving forward with a million-dollar-a-year plan to remove 9,000 striped owls from 2.3% of 14 million Western acres of protected spotted owl habitat. Our government is shooting wood owls with stripes to protect those with spots; to stop the stripes from breeding with the spots.
It had to come to this.
The 1990 listing of the Northern spotted owl under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) gave the bird totem status in management decisions.
It didn’t work. Spotted owls declined 40% over 25 years. Timber sales on federal government-managed lands dropped too. Oregon harvests fell from 4.9 billion board feet (1988) to less than 5%, 240 million board feet (2009). Beyond the jobs and business profits from making lumber, the Federal and County governments used to benefit from these harvests too. Harvests down: tax receipts down. Today, with cutbacks in Federal budgets and sequestration, the States are arguing about how much of your tax dollars the Federal government should give them to keep impoverished County governments afloat in timber-rich areas.
Beyond competition from barred owls, and after years of not enough logging, mega-fires fueled by too many trees now threaten spotted owl survival. An exhausted veteran of the spotted owl wars, who lives dangerously close to a federally-“managed” forest that is expected to go up in smoke soon, explained:
You have to realize that even moving a biomass project forward takes a court battle. No salvage of dead or burned timber - it just rots. Not much thinning or fuel reduction - without a two-year court fight the Forest Service usually loses. Hell, the agency is still fighting lawsuits over the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Amendment started in ‘97 - after four revisions and several court decisions - the Greens just keep suing until they get what they want.National forest growth, removals (million cubic feet)
Taxpayers pay for the conservation plans, recovery plans, and action plans, many stalled in court.
Taxpayers pay for all the lawsuits too, on both sides.
Taxpayers pay the salaries and pensions of government workers figthing fire and those shooting striped owls in order to give, temporarily, an advantage to ones with spots.
All this sacrifice and the spots just keep declining and the stripes just keep on coming.
The Northern spotted owl might very well be the most expensive avian sub-species on the planet.
That chart speaks volumes.
1 comment:
The early fight in the TE Act and the results of no action on the part of the citizens. Never let such Laws stand! Vote out the people who promote the and recall the law. Quit sitting on the couch and do something more than complaining!
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