At 12:32 AM 11/19/98 -0800, S. Downes wrote:
>Since there has been alot of contoversy over this bird during
>the 90's ,my opinion is that why give people a chance to do something
>stupid like harassing it or shooting it.

Or, for instance, it becomes time to mow the median and the owls still
there. Do they get to mow? If they do, how many timber company missives
will be fired saying "we can't log around spotted owl nests, how come
they can mow?"

Or even more simply, if I were a timber industry lobbyist wouldn't I
quickly be asking "why isn't that road closed to traffic, we can't
log around active nests, blah blah blah".

It would all be bullshit, but the timber industry in this game has in the
past at least grasped at any straw in order to try and make F&W and
biologists at large as being a bunch of liars and hypocrits when it comes
to spotted owls. In fact, they say such things about urbanites at large,
and potentially this owl could become a negative political icon. They
claim that urbanites always force rural folks to pay the costs of
species protection, and again I at least, if I worked for the industry,
would be shouting "hey, see, they won't even close that road but they'll
close our industry because urbanites don't really care about owls, they
just care about 'locking up' our forests!"

So the more I think about it, the more removal seems reasonable.




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net