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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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051589
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05158900.035
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 39American NotesCONSERVATIONThe Spotted Owl Prevails
Mule deer, mountain goats, bald eagles and three-toed
woodpeckers are naturally at home among the stately firs, hemlocks,
cedars and redwoods in the "old growth" forests of the Pacific
Northwest. So are goshawks, flying squirrels and red tree voles.
But amid this Noah's ark of creatures, none is so influential as
a dark-eyed bird with a doglike bark and a yen for mice -- the
northern spotted owl.
By proposing to make the owl a threatened species, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service may enable the birds, now numbering only
about 2,500 pairs, to succeed where environmentalists have failed:
it may halt or slow down an insatiable logging industry that has
been turning ancient trees into lumber at the rate of more than
55,000 acres of old growth a year. But for the owl to prevail, its
status as a threatened species must be formally declared, a process
that may take another year. Then it could become a federal crime
even to disturb the owl's habitat, and multitudes of buzz saws that
have been felling the trees would have to stop. Loggers warn that
unemployment would follow. Sad, but not as ineffably sad or final
as extinction.