Kit Kwan

Hv6255

Management 4500

MWF 9:20-10:30

case report:

"Owls, Loggers, and Old Growth Forests"

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 Professor J. Riley

According to the textbook, the northern spotted owl is a reclusive, nocturnal

bird that lives deep in the forests of Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

Since the 1800s, timber cutting and land development have reduced the owl’s habitat

by as much as 80 percent, threatening its extinction. However, I am not in favor of

using the national forests of the Pacific Northwest to preserve the northern spotted

owl because the economic cost is too big to suffer. In fact, hundreds of small-town

economies built on jobs created by logging, milling, and related trucking and shipping

spiraled downward. The owl injunction came on the heels of a prolonged recession as

thousands of loggers, mill workers lost jobs along with adverse market forces and

technological modernization. Although the consumption of lumber in the United

States is still rising as the demand remains high, lack of the raw timber did shutter the

mills. Most of the mills closed because of lawsuits by environmental groups, to

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protect the northern spotted owl. The exact price of protecting the spotted owl is

elusive, yet high. One study looked at projections of wood prices, consumption and

production trends in the United States, and estimated changes in wood products

revenues, incomes, and costs to consumers caused by owl protection. The authors

concluded that measures to raise the survival odds of the owl to 91 percent would lead

to a $33 billion reduction in economic welfare, most of which would come out of the

pockets of workers and businesses in the Pacific Northwest. Moreover, enforcing the

Endangered Species Act in a way that would raise the owl’s survival odds to 95

percent would push the economic sacrifice up to $46 billion.

The textbook also mentioned about the catastrophic loss to the United States Treasury

for timber purchases on federal lands when the mills is going for closure. Such a loss

would make negative impacts on funding schools, road construction, etc. There is

about 25 percent of money generated on federal land is shared with local government

to support local facilities in Prineville, Oregon under the current revenues sharing

policy. Moreover, Owl protection hurts the Pacific Northwest economy by pushing

along the trend of mill closings and job loss in small towns throughout the owl’s

range. In addition, secondary manufacturers in there can no longer supply their need

for wood locally, resulting increasingly rely on imported timber from other nations

like Canada, Brazil and Chile.

When government prohibits logging near spotted owl nests, it violates the

rights given the landowners by takings clause of the Fifth Amendment which reads

“nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation”. In fact,

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the Congress passed the Endanger Species Act in 1973 to prevent the demise of

endangering creatures, and in the 1980s, environmental groups took up the cause of

the northern spotted owl. They believed that the owl had intrinsic, unlimited values as

a species; its extinction would be an irrevocable mistake. As the result, the northern

spotted owl was added to the list of species entitled to special protection in 1990. The

act was a boon for the owls, but it was a disaster for the forest products industry,

which depended on timber harvests. After the injunction, the number of board feet of

timber dropped dramatically. The owners of private timberland are entitled to be

compensated by the government for their losses. In 1997, an Oregon jury awarded a

lumber company more than $2 million for the unavailability of harvest in the

timberland. In addition, the burden of species protection would be fair to shift to

taxpayers, because all of them are responsible to the ecological crisis.

Environmental groups oppose the habitat conservation plans which brought by

the Clinton administration to negotiate between the government and private

landowners. Environmental activists have the correct values and ethical duty to

natural law; however, they brought hundreds of citizen suits over the last decade

challenging timber harvests. Most of the actions are based on the presence when the

endangered species in areas where to be logged. The activists also sit in trees, lie in

front of logging trucks, put metal spikes in trees scheduled for harvest so that saw

blades will shatter if the logs are milled. Additionally, they trespass and occupy sites

slated for logging. The environment litigators are abusing the privilege of citizen suits

since they filed too many lawsuits which tied down government agencies. Forcing

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them to put more resources into litigation and leaving less energy for managing

species.

The enforcement of the Endangered Species Act should continue to be more

flexible because of its nature. Lumber harvest becomes one of the most controversial

cases in the American history; there should be a balance in between environment

maintenance and economy development. The changes that the Endangered Species

Act should make should include more in depth concerns about negative impacts,

opinions from experts and public interests in both economic and environmental

aspects.