Word: timbers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...controversy is on everyone's mind there, and the owl gets much of the blame. A banner headline in the local paper declared: SAVING SPOTTED OWL SEEN AS THREAT TO SCHOOLS. Douglas County may lose more than $13 million a year in timber revenue that the Federal Government returns to the county to help pay for public administration, roads and schools. At the local Ford dealership, the only owls that are welcomed are those made out of ceramic, which stand on the roofline warding off swallows intent on building nests under the eaves. Cars and trucks are not selling...
Mill town after mill town is buried beneath an avalanche of contradictory statistics tossed out by timber-industry officials and environmentalists. "To put it bluntly, we don't know what the hell is going on," says Burson. "We're being blackmailed and threatened from both sides. Industry is saying 'Support our side, or you'll lose your jobs.' Environmentalists are saying 'Support our side, or you won't have clean air to breathe.' People are scared to death...
...farmer growing a crop and do it better than nature," he says. "I can remake the old forest the same way nature did, only quicker." Talk like that riles environmentalists, who see the forest as more than just another fungible asset. Steve Erickson, whose father was in the timber industry and whose brother works in a mill, is writing a book about hiking trails. But Erickson finds it hard to share his vision of the forest. "It's like being in an artery in God's body," he says. Biologists and botanists speak in more scientific terms. They...
...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...
...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...