Word: forester
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Oliver is enchanted by the owls' trusting ways, their grace and their attention to their young. He worries about their future, seemingly dependent as they are for both prey and nesting sites on old-growth forests. But Oliver and others have observed that it is not the age of the forest that appears to be critical to the habitat of the owl, but rather the structure and character of the forest. He and other biologists hope that one day they will be able to identify those key components and, by preserving them in reforested tracts, both widen the owls' habitat...
...dispute over the owl has festered more than 15 years, a period in which the ancient forests receded ever farther and the timbering continued largely unabated. Efforts to find a solution were thwarted by the power of the timber industry, the bungling and inertia of the federal bureaucracy and the stridency of an environmental movement as quick to alienate as to persuade. But the conflict should never have reached the current crisis point. Forest ranger Schindler believes the coming economic turmoil might have been averted if the Government had weaned industry from its dependence on old growth by gradually reducing...
...Forest Service biologist Eric Forsman, who has studied the owl since 1968, believes it was the strategy of the federal agencies to stall for time by continually asking for more studies on the owl. "I've seen how the games are played," says Forsman. BLM in particular ignored repeated alarms. As < early as 1976, BLM biologist Mayo Call warned his superiors that unless swift action was taken to protect the owl, it might one day have to be put on the endangered-species list, curtailing timber harvests on federal lands...
...General Accounting Office discovered that Fish and Wildlife officials had rewritten portions of a major study, expunging critical references suggesting the owl was endangered. One biologist said he felt pressured to "sanitize the report." For years, economics and politics, not biology, have controlled the decisions of BLM, the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife...
...controversy offers the U.S. an opportunity to reassess the cost of past profligacy and salvage what remains of a treasured legacy of wildlife and ancient forest. Neither the owl nor the timbermen are served by further governmental inaction or sham solutions. What is gained by waiting until the last fir topples, the owl slips closer to extinction, or the mills finally retool or shut down because there are no more old-growth trees available? The lesson of the owl is not that environmental and economic concerns are incompatible, but that the longer society lacks the political courage...