Spotted Owl vs Loggers, Essay Example

The battle between the Spotted Owl and the loggers is an old one, and is based, in part, on the realization by wildlife biologists that the Spotted Owl is an indicator species, the canary in the coal mine. But the role of the Spotted Owl is an indicator species in more ways than that. My thesis is that it is also a political indicator species. By that I mean that the role of the Spotted Owl and other ‘star’ species in this kind of controversy serve as indicators of failure in the politics and economics of wildlife management.

Superficially it’s a classic argument with two sides, for or against. Environmentalists say area logging must be curtailed because the Spotted Owl is in danger of extinction due to its home ecosystem being destroyed. The logging industry counters that the loss of the Spotted Owl, if it should actually occur because of logging alone, is nothing compared to the human cost of the loss of jobs throughout the Pacific Northwest; and that there is already ample woodlands set aside for wildlife preservation. But both arguments are simplifications.

A forest has countless species and countless benefits, and indeed there have been large tracts of land protected. The problem with the Spotted Owl can also be seen in the battle against solar-energy projects in the deserts of southern California. There the endangered species is the tortoise, and much effort has been expended in protecting it (Cart, 2012). But there are far more species, and benefits, to an undestroyed desert. The political failure here is the environmentalists’ tendency to focus on one species, preferably one that appeals to people’s sense of protection (another example being the fight against the hunting of baby seals). They do this because focusing on governmental subsidies to loggers doesn’t simplify their message. They know they must simplify like the advertising industry simplifies its messages. The problem with that kind of simplification is that it opens itself up to counterattack, even by allies. For example, when the government proposed a program to cull the Barred Owl, an invasive species partially responsible for the Spotted Owl’s decline, some environmentalists opposed it on the grounds it would reduce pressure to protect forests from logging, thus inadvertently revealing their true (perfectly legitimate) agenda. Animal rights advocates opposed the cull on principle as well. In the case for the loggers, it probably is true that in the long run the loss of one species of owl cannot compensate for the loss of thousands of people’s livelihoods. The locals remember that the Pacific Northwest suffered through a significant regional depression after the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980 resulted (paradoxically) in a surplus of timber (Timowl). They know what massive unemployment feels like. However, it is also true that logging has been in decline for decades due to automation, forest depletion, and previous land-use protection laws. Furthermore, the timber industry receives substantial subsidies, both direct and indirect, from taxpayers: trees sold below cost, environmental cleanup, etc. The timber industry is also protected by the same level of governmental fire protection as exists in surrounding areas. So the logging economy is an artificial one that would be radically changed if it were less protected from market forces. A parallel example was Canada’s subsidy of its cod fishing fleet, which earned more money per fish in subsidies than it could get from the market (Jacobs, 2001).

Spotted Owls, desert tortoises, or cod, all are indicator species of political failure, a failure that has powerful economic effects, both directly and indirectly, on entire economic and ecological systems and their subsystems. But that’s not a brand. The issues are not yet resolved and probably will not be resolved by a single law or set of laws, but rather the way most natural-resources issues are resolved: gradually, through market forces that make the natural resource in question either too expensive to subsidize further, or irrelevant because of resource substitution.

References

Cart, J. (2012, March 4). Saving desert tortoises is a costly hurdle for solar projects. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/04/local/la-me-solar-tortoise- 20120304

Jacobs, J. (2001). The Nature of Economies. (p. 168). New York: Vintage.

Timowl. Timber owl and logging. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www1.american.edu/ted/TIMOWL.HTM