After All the Fighting And Lost Jobs, The Spotted Owl Is History

Or so it seems. I have been reading two articles in the Oregonian about the spotted owl, that little creature that cost thousands of people their jobs and closed many logging industries, when President Bill Clinton signed into law the protection of the spotted owl.

Environmentalists then knew, beyond a doubt, that if they could stop the cutting of old growth timber, they could save the spotted owl, a creature they knew very little about.

They stopped the cutting and even in places where no cutting ever took place, the spotted owl’s population is racing toward extinction while at the same time, the barred owl population is growing leaps and bounds.

Some scientists attribute the loss of the spotted owl to the influx of barred owls but they’re not exactly sure why.

Makes you wonder how many of these environmentalists and scientists ever stop and think how much of this stuff is just going to happen anyway?

For those wishing to learn more about what is going on out in Oregon with the spotted owl, you can read these two articles.

So much for saving the spotted owl

and

To Oregon timber towns, it was the owl that roared

Tom Remington