So-called "conservationists" continue to employ the courts in their ongoing efforts to kill off the forest products industries; the latest being their success in convincing a U.S. District judge in Eugene, OR to grant a temporary restraining order stopping the Deschutes National Forest from offering for sale 190 acres of timber that burned last year in the Black Crater fire outside Sisters.
Conservation groups preservation organizations argue that logging in an area denuded by forest fire would threaten the threatened northern spotted owl. You know, the little owls that we were told require old-growth forests in order to survive? The same folks that pushed that fairy tale with such great success are now claiming that, uh, well - they also use burnt trees. In another ten years, they'll tell us that they also use shrubs.
Of course, that assumes that the spotted owl will still be around in ten years, because as it happens, they're being out-competed in the habitat department by their larger cousins, the barred owl. Now, some of the arguments presented by propagandists in regard to the barred owl seem just plain silly:
Barred Owls may be partly responsible for the recent decline of the Northern Spotted Owl, native to Washington, Oregon, and California. Since the 1960s, Barred Owls have been expanding their range westward from the eastern US, perhaps because manmade changes have created new suitable habitat in the west. When Spotted Owls and Barred Owls share the same environment, the latter are generally more aggressive and outcompete the former, leading to decreased populations of the native owls. You can see how this would work; the barred owls back east are all sitting around the roost one night, when one of them pipes up: "Hey, I hear that manmade changes have been creating suitable habitat for us over on the west coast!" Wellsir, this here was some mighty interesting news to the others, and so what a bunch of them did, y'see, is they packed up their stuff and headed West to check things out. So now they're here, and they're a-hornin' in on the territory of the northern spotted owl. Of course, in order for this to have occurred, these barred owls would have had to find habitat along the way in precisely the very sorts of conditions that the preservationists insist is incompatible with the Way Of Life for both the spotted owl and the barred owl. They'd have had to find habitat out in the Great Plains. Hmm...not a lot of old-growth forest out that way, now is there? The Barred Owl is closely related to the Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) and tends to be more aggressive than its smaller, spotted cousin. As a result, where populations meet, it is usually the Barred Owl that retains the majority of territories. Both species have dark brown eyes and horn coloured beaks. The Barred Owl has vertical barring on its belly (horizontal on the breast) while its western cousin has horizontal barring (which often appears blotchy or spotted) on its belly and tends to be a darker brown overall. Where populations overlap, these two species will interbreed. Progeny from these matings are known as Sparred Owls. Now hold on a second, here. You've got one preservationist group saying that where ranges overlap, the barred owls outcompete the spotted owls, "leading to decreased populations" of the spotted owl. On the other hand, another preservationist group is saying that these two species will interbreed. Well, now hold up again: the barred owl will ruthlessly rape the poor, defenseless, virginal spotted owl - and produce fertile hybrid offspring? As they're hybrids, isn't that a good thing? After all, environmeddlists are always trying to get us to buy hybrid cars.... In any case, we know that you can mate a donkey and a horse, and that mixing of two distinct species yields very predictable results: you end up with Still, some folks are pretty wound up about it: Scientists meeting here Wednesday are planning an experiment that involves shooting a small population of barred owls, a species that migrated across the Great Plains and now threatens to displace smaller northern spotted owls. If the experiment shows removing barred owls allows spotted owls to reclaim lost territory, it could lead to shotgunning thousands of barred owls in Washington, Oregon and California. As one biologist who apparently has a brain observed, if the experiment works, then you'd better be prepared to continue it for the next 10,000 years - because once you stop, you're right back to where we are today.Ted Kennedy a jackass. But a different result occurs when these two "species" of birds hook up. In fact, they're described by some as "cousins", and by others as "closely related", and so you've pretty much gotta reckon that this whole thing isn't all that much different from what happens in Appalachia or Tennessee, really.
