Eugene weekly., August 30, 2007, Page 18, Image 18

founded, the Cascadia Wildlands Project,
proposed a plan to triple logging in the
Coast Range by thinning the second growth
forest that are pretty much all that’s left
instead of logging the last of the old growth.
That proposal would probably be law today
if it weren’t for the Bush administration.
The Bush administration’s lovely part-
ing gift to Oregon, the just released Western
Oregon Plan Revision (WOPR), opens up
the old-growth forests set aside for spotted
owls in the Coast Range for logging — the
few, scattered islands of old growth awash
in a sea of clearcuts. The plan, says Curry
County Commissioner Georgia Nowlin,
“meets all requirements of the Endangered
Species Act and the Clean Water Act.”
Jim Frick, chairman of the Southern
Oregon Resource Alliance, one of a dozen
or so “grassroots groups” (with no mem-
bers and funded exclusively by timber dol-
lars) that’s sprouted up to push the WOPR,
says, “The Clean Water Act and the
Endangered Species Act were put into the
equation.”
These folks are reading from a small
card handed to them by the timber industry
hatchet men. They may believe their lines,
for all I know.
The plan isn’t legal, and it wasn’t
intended to be legal. Spotted owl popula-
tions continue to decline, the owl’s habitat
continues to decline and logging more of
their habitat will lead populations to decline
still further. Duh.
This from the Associated Press: “The
Bush administration’s plans for saving the
northern spotted owl from extinction have
flunked a peer review by scientists. Under a
18 AUGUST 30, 2007
Not a single forest
I remember, not one,
is still standing.
contract with the administration, the
Society for Conservation Biology and the
American Ornithologists’ Union said the
government did not consider all the best
available science, a requirement of the
Endangered Species Act, before making
room for more logging in old-growth
forests.”
Court injunctions against logging spot-
ted owl habitat are so predictable, the
papers can explain the legal arguments
before the lawsuits even get filed.
I know the timber wars inside and and
out. Mostly, though, I know the Coast
Range. A “vexation of the spirit,” that’s
what Ken Kesey said about it. Sometimes I
think the place is a wound that’s got no
hope of healing.
The Bush plan may actually lead to
some more old-growth logging, just enough
to kill a few more spotted owls but not
enough to bring a bit more prosperity to the
people living there. I know the Coast
Range. The WOPR was meant to fail, to
whip the yahoo base of the Republican
Party in this state into a frenzy just in time
for ’08. To bleed Barack a little bit, to
remind Rudy who he works for.
Your last stop on the Coast Range tour is
an upscale restaurant on K-Street in
Washington, D.C., where a guy in a suit
quietly pushes a check across the table.
Sound too cynical? Another guy in a suit
smiles and lifts it off the table, soundlessly.
The conversation turns to something else.
Welcome to the Coast Range.
The WOPR is open to public comment until
November (at www.blm.gov/or/plans/wopr/).
It’ll be raining by then.
ew