Is that why Federal timber volumes in the West are down by at least an
order of magnitude since the Spotted Owl? Why didn't the timber
industry block the decision to voluntarily and radically reduce timber
harvests to protect the unlisted California Spotted Owl in California
(including the nearly universal ban on harvesting trees over 30" in
diameter)?

Oh they did much better! Since the 1981 seminal research report on
old-growth forests which indicated that some species may need
old-growth forests to survive, the Froest service immediately
responded to this hard question by logging as much old growth forest
as it could in the 1980's!

Indeed it was one ploy of the Forest Service to focus on the Spotted
Owl over all the other species of concern so that they could minimize
the view of the problem at hand = Thus minimizing the other species!

Finally in 1992, District Judge Bill Dwyer ordered the Forest Service
to end all such old-growth cutting until protection for all the
endangered species in the forests was considered!

A Panel set up by the Forest Service to study this concept found there
was little if any scientific information on the other species of the
area! This included 328 species which very little was known about!

The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan called for surveys that would protect
these old-growth species until it was established what specific needs
each would have to survive@!

However the Forest services response was to act as if no plan was to
be viewed. Biologists wer not allowed to go out and carry out these
surveys! Operations in progess were stopped! Even so the Forest
service sought to exempt species from protection until Judge Dwyer in
1999 ordered no such exemptions would exist without the surveys!

With Dwyer gone and the Bush regime in control, Bush is set to return
to the old 1980's clear cutting = especially after meeting in closed
door meeting with timber interests!

With Republicans in power, "preservationists" have now become so
alarmist that they are now saying that the forest's "sky is falling"
and destructive logging will again dominate. From my point of view,
the Forest Service cannot and will not go back to even the 80's style
of "overstory removal". Eco-forestry is here to stay in MY little
corner of the USFS. The "mouthy minority" team of the media and the
preservationists is wearing thin on the American public (as well as
the Chief of the Forest Service).

I've been watching that pendulum swing one way for so long and
worrying that when it swings back, it could go way too far back.

Larry