Then: Vice President, Forest Resources, for the American Forest and Paper Association

Now: Undersecretary of Agriculture, overseeing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service _________________________________________

Mark Rey has a simple answer to the question of who won the spotted owl war: no one.

The spotted owl war was a surrogate for old–growth protection. One side wanted statutory protection for old growth, protection that hasn’t occurred, and the other side has tried to maintain a certain level of timber harvest, a level that has been dramatically reduced.

“Neither side achieved what I think their objectives were.”

That isn’t to say that nothing good came from the battle. “The benefit, maybe the only benefit that emerged from the spotted owl war was the growth and spread of collaborative approaches,” Rey says. He cites resource advisory committees and the Quincy Library Group as good examples of groups that agree to work together on local issues.

“What you’re seeing as these kinds of collaborative efforts evolve and spread over the West is a perfect illustration of the old Winston Churchill quip that Americans can be depended upon to always do the right thing after they’ve tried everything else.”

_________________________________________

Then & Now: Professor at Oregon State University; Geologist, U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station,Corvallis, Oregon _________________________________________

Hey, they’re not over yet! It’s one thing to look at where we are ecologically, but we might look at where we are with policy socially: Is it sustainable? In general, we still are trying to come to grips with how we as a society are going to live with these incredible forests. There are a number of issues we haven’t figured out—fire and fuels, wood resources, human enjoyment and aesthetics. We still have a number of battles before us that we’re not quite square with yet.

_________________________________________

Then: President & CEO, Springfield Forest Products, Springfield, Oregon

Now: President & CEO, EcoAmerica Forest Products, Costa Rica _________________________________________

Some labeled it a resource crisis. By the late 1980s, it was apparent that a century and a half of stewardship of the Pacific Northwest forest had to be modified. A select team of scientists and technical experts were commissioned to find solutions and options. It was a mission impossible.

The plan that was adopted in the early 1990s was never successfully implemented. Strange vignettes of comedy and controversy followed:

• Northern spotted owl habitat had to be preserved in no-log zones. Two foresters concurrently called owls during the cool of an evening on a proposed federal timber sale. Each reported a forest full of owls, until they later discovered they were calling each other.
• A federally funded fire station was being built in a timber-dependent community at the same time homes were being abandoned for lack of jobs. Displaced woodsworkers, some thirty-year industry veterans, were trained for high-technology jobs that never materialized.
• The small amount of timber volume promised by the Northwest Forest Plan never came to market. What came instead were appeals and litigation and increased uncertainty for mill owners, employees and their communities. Some gave up and quit the business. Others retooled for the smaller logs available from private lands. Some struggled on while competitors purchased huge tracts of timberlands.

The journey became more important than the plan. The changing demographics and the changing public expectations of the forest forced the participants to find solutions. It’s a work in progress.

_________________________________________

Then: Conservation Director, Oregon Natural Resources Council

Now: Director of the National Public Lands Grazing Campaign and Senior Counselor to the Oregon Natural Resources Council _________________________________________

The war isn’t over.

The California spotted owl has yet to join the northern and Mexican spotted owl as protected under the Endangered Species Act. More than a million acres of virgin federal forest is scheduled for logging.

The Northwest Forest Plan changed a hot war into a cold war. As the Bush administration undoes the plan through rule changes, capitulation to meritless lawsuits, logging big, old fire-resistant trees in the name of Smokey Bear and clear–cutting the forest in order to make it healthy, this war will go hot again.

Ironically, most of the timber industry, the counties that were once addicted to federal timber revenues and the region’s elected federal politicians have moved on. During the first hot war, it was local elected federal officials who fought to deliver big timber to Big Timber.

As Bush’s reelection team seeks to solidify his support in Oregon by wooing special–interest groups, the war will heat up again.

And when the war goes hot a second time, a new generation of activists is fully prepared to put their lives between the chain saws and the felling of any more giants. Such was not the case the first time.

_________________________________________

Then: Special counsel to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service during the spotted owl exemption proceedings

Now: Professor of Law, Vermont Law School; Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic _________________________________________

From a legal perspective, several lessons can be gleaned from the past two decades. First, without the ability of citizens to go to court to stop the destruction of the old-growth forest, it would have simply disappeared, as have all the other virgin forests of the nation. Second, by holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the litigation fulfilled the promise of participatory democracy. Third, the judicial decisions actually produced a new field of law called ecosystem management. Using the spotted owl as the proxy for ecosystems, and with the help of conservation biologists and their bombproof population models, lawyers were able to put some teeth into the otherwise squishy concepts of ecosystem management and sustainable development. Finally, the legal victories helped galvanize broader public support for the conservation cause. They gave the owl, the murrelet, the salmon and other species that depend on old-growth forests and healthy watersheds a seat at the table. They helped unmask the truth that logging was not only destroying the forest but destroying the economy of the Northwest as well. In the end, the issue was not jobs versus owls; it was, and is, bad resource policies versus good resource policies.

The gains of the past can never be taken for granted. But wherever there are dedicated activists, talented lawyers and skilled scientists, there is at least the chance that truth will prevail.

_________________________________________

Then: Anonymous Douglas–fir

Now: Octopod, and home of a tree sitter named Resistance and others since summer 2003 _________________________________________

Octopod is a veteran of the spotted owl wars. The towering Douglas’fir, part of the Straw Devil timber sale in the Willamette National Forest, has been threatened by chain saws, subjected to lawsuits and injunctions, scouted for dimensional lumber and surveyed for red tree voles.

Most recently, Octopod and neighboring giants including Dworkin, Bridge and Trinitree have been named and occupied by members of Cascadia Forest Defenders. The tree sitters feared that the judge who ordered a preliminary injunction against logging at Straw Devil would reverse his decision, leaving the big trees at risk. Instead, a district judge in Portland, Oregon, ruled in favor of the activists, finding that the U.S. Forest Service prepared inadequate environmental reviews before issuing permits for the Straw Devil timber sale.