Environmentalists Killed Logging to Protect Owls. Now They Want to Kill the Owls.

Thirty-five years after “save a logger, eat an owl” could be seen across the Pacific Northwest, the government environmentalists at US Fish and Wildlife want to kill half a million owls…to save the owls.

In a world of transgender surgeries, terrorist cryptocurrencies, and senile presidents, the Owl Wars that entered the 1990 presidential election seem implausible. But they cost tens of thousands of jobs, wiped out sizable amounts of the logging industry in the Pacific Northwest, and helped solidify Oregon and Washington as hipster strongholds no Republican could win.

It all started with listing the spotted owls as an endangered species. The northern spotted owls (which to non-owl fanciers look like most other owls except smaller) were listed as endangered by that noted scientist, Judge William L. Dwyer, who apart from destroying logging also helped create the Seattle Mariners which placed two crimes against humanity on his checkered soul.

But Dwyer was doing the bidding of the anti-industrial Sierra Club and decided to block timber sales in national forests to save the owls.

“The timber industry no longer drives the Pacific Northwest’s economy,” Judge Dwyer, whose own job as a government appointee was protected by the mandatory confiscation used to pay his ill-gotten salary, wrote. “Job losses in the wood-products industry will continue regardless of whether the northern spotted owl is protected.”

Over 1,500 loggers and family members staged a protest around Hood River, of the kind that has since become familiar in Europe, against the shutdown of their industry.

President George H.W. Bush in his usual squishy manner tried to split the difference. “All across the country, we have a spotted owl problem. And yes, we want to see that little furry, feathery guy protected and all of that. But I don’t want to see 40,000 loggers thrown out of work.”

Bill Clinton, who did want to see 40,000 loggers thrown out of work, won and held an owl summit in Portland on April Fool’s Day featuring Al Gore and a protest rally led by Neil Young. The result of the summit was that the millionaire hipsters and environmentalists who had funded the Clintons won and the loggers who were just trying to feed their families came out the losers.

Clinton cut 80% of logging. Timber prices rose 70% in the first years of the Clinton administration. Housing construction costs rose with it further hurting the middle class. Seattle and Portland became safe spaces for fans of Neil Young and bad music. Republicans, conservatives, and the working class were squeezed out to make way for the owls.

But a funny thing happened on the way to owl nirvana, the owls kept dying.

Logging on federal lands fell by 90% but spotted owl populations also fell by as much as 80%. The number of “furry, feathery guys” today is down 75% since Bill Clinton, Judge Dwyer, and the Sierra Club wiped out loggers to protect them. And owl numbers are falling 2.9% every year.

Environmentalists railed that the Trump administration’s expansion of forest areas where loggers could work was “heartbreaking”, “callous” and “offensive” to an “endangered species”.

But the real threat to the spotted owls wasn’t the loggers, but other owls. Environmentalists had known and lied about the fact that barred owls were expanding their territory and driving out the spotted owls. But the spotted owls provided a convenient excuse for a government power grab.

And now if the spotted owls disappear so does the excuse for government abuses of power.

That’s why US Fish and Wildlife has discussed killing the owls to save the owls. The proposal would use “trained shooters” to kill 470,000 barred owls. (And if enough of the barred owls are killed by the government, maybe they can be listed as an endangered species and protected.)

The Endangered Species Act was supposed to be used to protect species threatened by human behavior, but now the environmentalists are protecting owls from other owls by killing the owls. The same government environmentalists who bemoan the hunters who wiped out the passenger pigeon are now proposing to do the same thing to take sides in the owl wars.

But which owls live or die is not up to us. Nature has its own free market economy. And no amount of shooting barred owls will save the spotted owls. The trouble is that the spotted owls are interbreeding with barred owls. And unless the environmentalists can convince spotted owls to avoid owl miscegenation, the outcome will be some sort of mixed spotted barred owl.

The Biden administration has proposed killing the mixed spotted barred owl because owl miscegenation can only be solved with total owl genocide. The government has already decided which owls belong in Oregon and the Creator, nature, and biology don’t get a say in it. Why can’t nature listen to the “experts”, “scientists” and government instead of doing its own thing?

The Owl Wars have been going on for over three decades now. Since Neil Young and Kenny Loggins were warbling about owls in Portland, the pro-logger Bush administration was replaced by the pro-owl Clinton administration, and then by the pro-logger Bush administration, then the pro-owl Obama administration, the pro-logger Trump administration, and now the pro-owl and anti-owl Biden administration which will save the owls and kill the owls at the same time.

The number of loggers and owls has been declining so the only winners are the government and the barred owls which paid no attention to the judges, presidentists, and environmentalists.

After claiming to love the animals, environmentalists are turning to violence to fight nature. But violence has always been at the root of environmental and other forms of leftist activism.

The Biden administration appointed Tracy Stone-Manning, a former spokeswoman for the eco-terrorist group EarthFirst, to head the Bureau of Land Management. Manning had sent a threatening letter in 1989 warning that the eco-terrorist group had rigged trees with traps. “You bastards go in there anyway and a lot of people could get hurt.”

Tree spikes planted by EarthFirst had wounded a number of loggers and mill workers.

But Tracy and the other government ecoterrorists may find that it’s easier to stop loggers than it is to stop the course of nature no matter how many people or animals they try to kill.

It is difficult to say which is the more invasive species: the barred owls or the government. The coming showdown between the barred owls and the “trained shooters” of US Fish and Wildlife will also determine who decides the fate of the owl population: environmentalists or the owls.

G-d in His infinite wisdom made all the many varieties of owls, but only human beings could be stupid enough to create government, the Sierra Club, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In a contest between the works of G-d and the idiot works of man, the government has no chance.

After wiping out logging to save the owls, the government now wants to kill the owls.

My money is on the owls.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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