owl spotting

January 16, 2021 3:58 PM

Timber Wars is an eight-part podcast about the history of logging and environmentalism in the Pacific Northwest. It includes some great episodes on the spotted owl and the ecology of old growth forests. The series wrapped up in November, but just a few days ago, in the closing days of a failed administration, a new change to the federal rules placed 3 million acres of Northwest forests on the chopping block, removing protections for the spotted owl.

(Here's an additional text article that hits some of the history of people studying spotted owls.)

(And here's a previous post on a podcast about battles over a different species of iconic endanged birds.)

posted by kaibutsu (7 comments total)

Thanks. Bookmarked, as I'm nearly 3 weeks behind on my podcasts right now.
posted by neuron at 4:24 PM on January 16, 2021

It's really good, and has a surprising amount of overlap with the book The Overstory.
posted by LarryC at 5:24 PM on January 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thank you. This is about some of my lived experience and I look forward to listening to it. In the distant past I spent the first couple summers out of high school logging in eastern and southern Oregon. My father in law lived his entire adult life prior to retirement in a small WA logging town, now known for sparkly vampires. Can't wait to dive in.
posted by calamari kid at 7:05 PM on January 16, 2021

I've been reading a lot about forestry in the Pacific NW in the past year in my work as a volunteer for a climate org. The forests on the coast and on the Cascades in OR and WA have huge potential for storing carbon, but they're being cut down at a rate that drastically reduces their ability to do so. Forest practice regulations are much more lax in OR compared to WA and CA (which are not perfect either). On the one side, conservationists, climate activists, and members of impacted communities are increasingly engaged on this issue. On the other side, we now have groups like Timber Unity and the Proud Boys, and the OR Republicans walking out of the session and fleeing the state. So this could get ugly... Anyway, we're trying to learn from history, and this podcast is really good.

Other than The Overstory, this book has perhaps even more overlap: The Final Forest by William Dietrich
posted by bread-eater at 7:50 PM on January 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

I grew up in this region and a huge piece of my heart will always belong to it. My dad took me to my first protest when I was in 6th grade. It was aimed at saving some of these very same forests and the same species. This is both infuriating and heartbreaking, but thank you very much for the post. I'm downloading the podcast to listen to over the next week.
posted by diamondsky at 8:02 PM on January 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

During the Great Depression, a bunch of Oregon counties deeded cut + burned timberland over to the state because they couldn't afford the upkeep. The state agreed to maintain the forests (which comprise the bulk of our state forests now) and share logging revenues with the counties. The state's responsibility, codified in 1941, was to manage the forests to the "greatest permanent value of such lands to the state".

In 2001, the forestry department did some rule making to interpret "greatest value" as not just logging profits, but protecting clean watersheds, wildlife habitats, and recreation. Absolutely the right thing to do!

Fast forward to a couple years ago: a consortium of Oregon counties (funded by logging companies) sued the state, claiming that "greatest value" can only mean "maximize logging profits", because that's how it was interpreted for decades. They won a $1B+ judgment for lost past and future revenues. Still held up in appeals and accruing interest, as far as I'm aware, but eventually the hammer will drop and the state will have to pay up and/or change its management practices to allow more logging. Absolutely infuriating.
posted by bassooner at 8:58 PM on January 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Under our current capitalist system, a tree has no value until it is cut down; the intrinsic value of the entire ecosystem is seen as a "squishy number".

I am hopeful that the impact of Greta, and others like her who bring voice to our intertwined environmental future, will be stronger than that of those who are solely harvesting for their current benefit.
posted by mightshould at 6:21 AM on January 17, 2021