Word: owls
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...Dale Page has been a cutter of trees, as was his father before him. He may have cleared as much of the ancient Northwest forest as any man. This day he is clear-cutting a three-acre patch of old growth. The area is designated as a possible spotted-owl habitat, but Page has never seen one of the birds. He stands among rhododendron, sword ferns and buckbrush, his body testimony to the perils of his work. The pitch of his chain saw screaming at 13,000 r.p.m. has left him hard of hearing, an upended log cost him part...
...earth. When the cloud of detritus and needles settles, the ancient forest of the Pacific Northwest has retreated one more step. Tree by tree, acre by acre, it falls, and with it vanishes the habitat of innumerable creatures. None among these creatures is more vulnerable than the northern spotted owl, a bird so docile it will descend from the safety of its lofty bough to take a mouse from the hand...
...contrast extends to the hours they prefer, even their table manners. Bush bounds eagerly out of bed at 5:30 a.m., and always has. Sununu is a night owl who, when studying engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would organize a marathon bridge game or keep fraternity brothers awake while thwokking a lacrosse ball off his wall, then handle his homework in an hour or so before class. Bush is so exquisitely considerate that at meals, without breaking conversation, he will shift his water glass to give the waiter more room as he arrives with the soup. When Sununu...
...recommendation should heavily influence a decision in June by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whether to formally declare the owl an endangered species. The designation would make it a federal crime to disturb the bird's habitat -- the woodlands that have succumbed to chain saws at the rate of 55,000 acres a year. Only about one-tenth of the original forests in the continental U.S. remain undisturbed...
Loggers argue that court injunctions have already deprived them of much of their prime lumber -- and their livelihood. Protecting the owl, they warn, would silence the mills once and for all, and drive at least 9,000 jobs into extinction. Environmentalists believe that may be a price worth paying for preservation -- not just of the 14-in. owl but also of the 300-ft.-high Douglas firs, the western hemlock and the Sitka spruce that predate Columbus' arrival...