Environmentalists Press Case for Owl
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WASHINGTON — Environmentalists told senior advisers to President Bush on Friday that the timber industry has grossly exaggerated the economic impact of proposals to save the Northwest’s northern spotted owl from extinction.
The White House officials who heard the environmentalists’ story Friday had heard from the timber industry the day before.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to declare the northern spotted owl a threatened species next week, a move that probably will require that vast tracts of land be set aside for habitat protection, which will result in severe reductions in timber harvests.
Larry Tuttle, director of the Wilderness Society of Oregon, said the environmentalists were “very encouraged” by the tone of the White House meeting.
“It gave us a chance to debunk some of the numbers that the timber industry has been using to support their case. Clearly, they are using worst case numbers and, in some cases, worse than that,” he said.
A panel of government scientists said in April that 8.4 million acres of forests must be set aside to ensure that the owl will survive.
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