In badminton the thing you hit to the opponent is called the “shuttlecock”. In the game of “blame something for the destruction of Northwest virgin forests and the subsequent loss of the old fashioned timber industry” the shuttlecock has been the indicator species, the Spotted Owl. It’s again back in play this year.
The Trump administration took the side of the rural timber industry, who has blamed the Spotted Owl on their industry’s decline, despite huge amounts of evidence to the contrary (i.e. starting with no real limits on old growth logging for the last 100 years until it was too late, the advent of the chain saw and other high yield mechanical harvesting starting in the 1940s, and the real death knell, the decision of Congress in the 1970s to allow raw logs to be shipped to Japan), the industry continues to believe that if only we allowed this indicator species to die off, we could return to the heyday of one log trucks plying highway 101. That idea flies in the face of the reality that less than 1% of old growth forest in the Pacific NW still exists. So what is the fight about, really?
Eight Democratic lawmakers called Tuesday for an investigation into “potential scientific meddling” by the Trump administration in its rule to remove critical habitat protections for the imperiled northern spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.
KNKX.ORG
Read the latest Spotted Owl badminton game overview and all it’s sordid details, here.
https://www.knkx.org/post/democrats-urge-investigation-removal-owl-protections
Filed under: Clallam County, Endangered Species, Environmental Law, Environmental Protection, Jefferson County, Olympic Peninsula |
Al, What in heaven’s name is Senator Van de Wege up-to with his Bill threatening the Orcas? Any idea? Best, Peter
>
There are a number of other at risk species related to clear cutting old growth forest beside the spotted owl.
The Marble Murrlet r2quires Old Growth trees to nest.
Lichen that requires 100+ years to mature in large enough amounts to fall to the forest floor and supply Nitrogen in sufficient quantiles to nurture the forest with this needed growth element notoriously missing from PNW rain drenched soils. Without which the logging industries’s meme of “trees forever” is total BS.
Rare species of fungi, some of which are proven to valuable no pathways into natural antibiotics and others needed for the neural networking in the forest floor required for the forest to “communicate” properly to survive as a functioning biosphere.
There is also mounting evidence that the Old Growth also helps to mitigate the adverse effects of heavy rain falls and to allow them to spread over far larger area as a “drizzle” instead of localized floods and land slides.
Then there is all the rest that modern science is just becoming to understand about the functions of large scale multi-thousand year old ecosystems both here in the PNW as well as others scattered around the world.
“The last great exploration on Earth is to survive on Earth.”
Robert Swann
Leif