Old growth is in the news again.

Almost a decade has passed since President Bill Clinton came to the Northwest and brokered the Northwest Forest Plan, fulfilling his campaign pledge to negotiate a truce in the spotted owl war. Because there was no legal protection for old growth, the spotted owl had become the icon—and for some, the effigy—of a shift in values when environmentalists used the Endangered Species Act as the legal vehicle to stop old–growth logging. At one time, it was estimated that 10,000 acres of land per nest site was needed to protect the owls, a notion that outraged those who were counting those acres in dollars, not owls.

The forest plan struck a compromise. For environmentalists, it pledged protected spotted owl habitat; for the timber industry, it promised about a billion board feet annually of sustainably harvested wood. From the inception of the plan, both sides were skeptical of its ability to contain the firestorm that erupted over the spotted owl, and they were right. Since 1994, skirmishes and battles have ensued, each side accusing the other of exaggerating losses and neither side claiming victory. Timber harvests dwindled, logging communities disappeared, endangered species habitat was destroyed, and timber sales of old–growth forests on federal land continued.

The Bush administration pledged to maintain the portion of the Northwest Forest Plan that will supply mills with the promised board feet of timber, but has not made a commitment to maintain the requirements for endangered species protections. The survey–and–manage requirements and the aquatic conservation strategy, integral components of the plan designed to protect endangered species, are being reconsidered and are likely to be left by the wayside in order to fulfill the promised trees to industry.

Though there are old–growth forests in other parts of the country, this issue of Forest Magazine focuses on the ancient forests of the Northwest and the iconic owl. William Dietrich, a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer for the Seattle Times and author of The Final Forest, a book documenting the fight, answers the question, Who won the spotted owl war?. Other key figures from the frontlines of the battle, both then and now, respond to that question throughout this special section and offer diverse answers.

The value of old growth can be measured in board feet, acres of habitat or recreation opportunities. As tree farms proliferate and wood–products substitutes come on the market, cutting old growth may seem an antiquated notion, but not to the operators of the few remaining mills that still process big logs. It's convenient to blame the owl war for diminished timber volume, but there are other economic factors at work. In The Incredible Shrinking Chain Saw, Rebecca Clarren takes a look at how the timber market, and with it the value of old growth, has changed in the years since the Northwest Forest Plan.

The U.S. Forest Service may have made a policy decision in defining old growth a decade ago, but images of majestic trees, pristine acres of virgin forest and complex ecology muddy a precise definition. Jessica MacMurray writes in An idea in Search of a Definition that the ways of defining old growth and the way these definitions come together, or conflict, reflect the public debate over the future of ancient forests.

Bob Van Pelt spent a lifetime looking for giant trees; he discovered and documented some of the largest in the world. Old growth may be difficult to define, but big trees are indisputable remnants of the past, a testament to what the forest might have looked like. Stalking Giants follows Van Pelt as he tracks a rumored contender for one of the top ten largest Douglas–firs in North America.

In other old–growth–related stories in this issue, the spotted owl is the subject of a new survey to be done by a group with strong industry ties and former Forest Service chiefs Jack Ward Thomas and Mike Dombeck claim that to continue to log old growth is folly.

Like it or not—and in the case of the Northwest Forest Plan, few do—the spotted owl war challenged a centuries–old perception that Northwest forests offered an inexhaustible supply of timber, replacing it with a new set of public values. The national forests will never be the same.