Posted on 04/20/2005 12:08:42 PM PDT by The_Victor
PORTLAND, Ore. - A decade after the Clinton administration reduced logging in national forests in the Northwest, scientists have concluded the forests are growing, but the population of the threatened northern spotted owl has declined.
Scientists reported Tuesday that the Northwest Forest Plan, adopted by the Clinton administration in 1994, resulted in an 80 percent reduction in logging on 24 million acres of land in western Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
Since the plan was adopted, medium-aged to older forests have increased by 606,000 acres to 7.9 million acres, or to about 34 percent of all forest land in the region, said Melinda Moeur, program leader for old-growth monitoring for the U.S. Forest Service.
The plan also aimed to protect the threatened northern spotted owl, of which there are about 8,000 pairs in the region.
Officials expected an average annual decline in owl numbers of 3.1 percent until enough habitat grew to stabilize populations. But the actual decline has been steeper in some areas.
Four areas in Washington saw an average 7.1 percent annual decline for the dark brown owls that inhabit forests from central California to Canada. Two study areas in southwestern Oregon saw a slight increase.
Owl populations fared slightly better on lands covered by the Northwest Forest Plan than on state or private lands, said Joe Lint, a Bureau of Land Management wildlife biologist.
Scientists are not sure what is causing the declines, but possible factors include invasion of the spotted owl's habitat by the barred owl, an aggressive cousin from Canada that often drives them off, Lint said. Habitat lost to past logging, as well as wildfires, climate changes and insect infestations are also factors, he said.
The plan also failed to provide the expected timber supply and replace lost timber jobs with jobs in small towns near federal forest lands as promised, said Thomas Quigley, director of the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station.
"Many of the impacts were different than predicted," he said.
The forest plan produced an average of 421 million board feet each year — just 54 percent of what was expected, said Susan Charnley, an environmental anthropologist with the forest service.
Charnley said only 400 of the 11,000 timber jobs that have been lost since 1994 can be blamed directly on the fact that less timber has been cut on federal lands in the region. The rest were caused by restructuring in the timber industry, she said.
Compounding the economic impact of lost timber jobs has been the loss of U.S. Forest Service jobs, Charnley said. In the past 10 years, the agency's budget has shrunk, resulting in 36 percent fewer positions.
it also annoys me that the original directive was to replace jobs lost in the lumber industry with government positions.
I mean, what brilliant individual decided to remove profitable, productive workers, contributing to the GDP, and make them public workers.
.... oh yeah, it's a Clinton thing. Forget I said anything.
Maybe they died of old age?
Who gives a hoot?
I love spotted owl gumbo.
of course they're dying. the only reason they were spotted in the first place was because they were already sick.
Oh, but you KNOW what they'll say:
"OH, My! **Snif** We were too late, the damage had already been done... boohoohoo..."
Or .. could it be that the owl's decline is due to the dense forest - which maybe the owl's don't like.
Wasn't part of the environmentalist whackos obstruction of thinning the forests - to protect the owls ..?? And .. now the owls don't like the dense forests ..?? Which should prove to people that these environmentalist whackos - DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT.
Well, duhhh!
The wood products industry in the Northwest supports a lot more jobs than just loggers, sawmill and papermill workers. Each job in the wood industry supports something like 5 other jobs in the area from hospitals to service stations to insurance salesmen.
Does the Forest Service really need to hire enironmental anthropologists to tell them that?
Followed by, "We need more taxpayer funds and increased restriction on property rights. Just a few $bil more and could turn this all around."
How do you know when a LibeRaT is lying?
It's lips are moving
If you stop and think about it, spotted owls eat small rodents. Rodents eat seeds. In really old growth forest, the forest floor is almost bare of the plants that provide seeds for rodents. However, in new growth forest, there isn't much for the owls to nest in. As a result, the owls really prefer medium growth forest, where there is both nesting and lots of plants to feed their prey. Instead of following this logic, the Forest Service prohibited logging in medium growth forests as well as in old growth.
As medium growth forests age into old growth, they become less hospitable to spotted owls. However, since the old growth is no longer being logged off, there is no opportunity for new growth to start and age into medium growth. As you'd expect, then, spotted owl population is declining.
In reality, spotted owls also grow well in scrub desert in the Southwest, and in oak savannahs in the Cadcade Range. The whole argument over spotted owls was an attempt by the envirofascists to end logging, using the owls as an excuse.
I've explained this in much more detail in my chapter "Science and Public Policy," in Michael Gough's book POLITICIZING SCIENCE, published by Hoover Institution Press. (shameless plug)
Friendly editing suggestion. Your ending question, while good, could be stated more succinctly...
"Does the Forest Service really need to hire enironmental anthropologists?"
As per usual, I didn't feel any compelling need to read the article. However, the decline in Temple Football has nothing to do with logging and everything to do with bad decisions and ineptitude by the TU Administration.
Peter J. Liacouras put trust in Ron Dickerson to be able to recruit top athletes, and to some extent he was successful (Stacy Mack, Tre Johnson, etc.) but his replacement, Bobby Wallace, has been completely over his head for the last seven years. It's not enough to recruit, you have to develop and coach at this level. For this, I blame erstwhile homosexual, President David Adamany. Adamany and his flunky AD Bill Bradshaw, have been either asleep at the wheel or slowly trying to kill the program despite what the board of directors say.
Dropping N.C. State for Wisconsin and Dropping MTSU for Western Michigan, puts us in line for the ultimate embarrassment, a no win season.
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Correct!!
I like vermilion snail darter stew as well.
I like vermilion snail darter stew as well.
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