The Imperial Japanese Spotted Owl Colony

Let Them Eat Beef Citrus, and Rice

The United States seems to have a passionate urge to become an Imperial Japanese colony. For years now our trade negotiators have been pushing beef, citrus, and rice on the Japanese who claim to be in thrall to their farmers, and therefore find it politically untoward to let the beef, citrus, and rice in. No matter, its still high on the U. S. Trade Negotiator's list and with beef hitting $18.00 a pound in Tokyo it may happen. More startling than the beef is the fact that a whole region of the country, namely the Pacific Northwest, just can't do enough to qualify as a Japanese colony.

Are The Ancient Forests Just Commodities?

The remaining ancient forests of continental United States are in this region. They represent the remnant of a vast forest that was millennia old when European man first entered the continent. These forests include trees that were hundreds of years old before Columbus discovered America, The loggers want to cut them. The conservationists don't want them cut. The loggers say that jobs are at stake. The economy of the region will be imperiled if the forests are not cut, they say. Since these are the last forests of their kind in the lower forty-eight the pressure to preserve them is great. Because these are the last forests of their kind in the lower forty-eight the pressure to log them is great. The yield in board feet/acre is enormous. The demand for the logs great. The profitability factor very nice indeed. Lots of money to be made, cutting the forests a piece of cake.

Who Gives a Hoot?

What's the fuss all about? An owl. The Spotted Owl. The U. S. agencies involved with the protection of our wildlife are caught in the middle. If the Spotted Owl were declared endangered and put on the endangered species list, no logging could continue until the status of the bird was determined and its critical habitat established. They would put the kibosh on logging. The loggers have shone their contempt for the bird by catching them and roasting and eating them. I don't mean this, but in away its too bad they don't catch them all and roast them since that would take them out of the argument and the preservation of the forest could be argued on its own merits.

Big Dam; Small Fish

Once before an endangered species was invoked to save a habitat from inundation. The snail darter was trotted out to prevent the building of the Tellico Dam. It was the worst ploy the conservationists could have employed because it gave the proponents of the dam an argument they did not have and which they used to good advantage. The argument handed to the developers by the conservationists? Small fish—big dam. The dam was an economic basket case. A special commission appointed by Jimmy Carter determined there was no economic benefit to building the dam. A commission looked at the dam in terms of flood control—not needed. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers argued that they had a great deal invested in the dam that could not be recovered. The fact of the matter is that all the Corps' money was invested in the land the dam would flood, including prime farm land and Cherokee Indian sites including burial grounds. On no account was there merit in building the damn and the Congress after viewing the evidence deleted the money for the dam. In a 12 midnight raid on the legislative process a Representative from Tennessee put the money back in the bill. The choice was now up to Jimmy Carter. Do what's right and veto the bill or go up against the shrill political reality of, "Small fish—big dam." Jimmy Carter signed the bill.

The Endangered Whipping Boy

The Tellico Dam was built be cause the snail darter provided the proper whipping boy to cause an otherwise economically, unneeded, and economically bankrupt project to be built. Without the endangered species the dam would have not been built on the merits of the case, but the little fish gave the developers the winning edge.

Deja Vu All Over Again

The same phenomenon is occurring with the spotted owl and the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest. The spotted owl does not make these forest magnificent. They makes themselves magnificent. The spotted owl does not make those forests unique. They would be unique without the owl. In their own right the forests deserve to be saved, not because they are the critical habitat of the spotted owl, but because they are a unique, rare, wonderful, community of life that we should revere and respect as something special on the planet. Cut them down and it will be a thousand years before anyone sees the like of them. Where was the logging trade a thousand years ago? Where will it be a thousand years from now?

The Loggers are the Endangered Technotype

The simple dumb fact is that the loggers of the Pacific Northwest are themselves an endangered technotype. The new, highly productive forests of the United States are in the Southeast, not the Northwest. The U.S. Forest Service is putting resources into the Southeast because it has the most productive forests on the continent, on land that is not mountainous, and which has the roads already built, with ample in the way of communications, amenities and firefighting assets. As the years go by the percentage of our lumber for all purposes will come from the Southeast, not the Northwest. To make matters more attractive in the Southeast, the forests are mostly privately owned taking them out of the competition for parks and monuments and public recreation. If the loggers are successful in cutting the ancient forests they will cut themselves out of a job.

$55 Million a Pair

So what do the logging company executives say? Spotted owls come at $55 million a pair. That's the price of the lumber on their breeding territory. The argument is nonsense, of course, since all the value of the forest does not reside in the bird. What is the cost of a 600 year old tree? If we can answer this question we can tackle the cost of the bird. The stumpage cost of a 600 year old tree is simply the function of the board feet in the tree. In any economic sense this is the intrinsic cost of the tree. The prices can be compared on any lumber exchange. Not by the ages of the trees, but by the cost per board foot. These prices will vary slightly and will have no relation to the age of the tree but will relate only to any comparable lumber from any marketable saw log of similar species. If you didn't have a 600 year old tree and you wanted to buy one where would you go. The question now is not board feet, but ancient trees and forests. Could we go to the lumber exchange and say sell us a six hundred year old tree? Ridiculous question.

Intrinsic, Moral and Ethical Values

What other value can a 600 year old tree have? It can have a moral value and it can have an ethical value. Too often in our consideration of the value of things we focus on the intrinsic value as the only realistically economic value. If we had a piece of the True Cross, it would only be a piece of wood of little or no intrinsic value. Its moral and ethical value would be astronomical. What's the value of a 600 year old tree that only the Creator can make? Should the areas now containing the ancient forests be managed either as National Parks, or Biosphere Reserves, their value in tourism alone would exceed their intrinsic value. Committing the forests to the axe, or to a nature reserve are moral acts each of which has its ethical consequences. They might even be harvested in a way which would remove some of the intrinsic value while retaining a good quantity of other kinds of moral and ethical values. The alternatives: a few years of cutting with a boom prosperity and then the bust with the forest in a long regeneration phase, while the forests in the Southeast regenerate much more quickly, hastening the exodus to Southeastern forestry; or preserve the ancient forests, not for the spotted owl but for themselves. If an airborne creeping crud got the spotted owl the forests still have very high moral and ethical value for us as a nation and the civilization we represent. Their value to the nation--tourism and recreation-non-destructive uses that can go on in perpetuity.

Value Added In Japan

After all this flourish about saving jobs where do the raw saw logs go? Why to Japan of course, where they are manufactured into finished products, by Japanese labor. The logger of the Pacific Northwest extracts the resource, like any miner digging coal, and the Japanese add the value. The loggers of the Pacific Northwest get to be part of the Japanese plantation economy, while the real money is made by the big boys in Japan. When the logs run out maybe the Pacific Northwest can grow rice, or beef or citrus. Or maybe they can find happiness in capitalizing on the moral and ethical values of their ancient forests. The tourists will come on a lot quicker cycle than raising a 600 year old tree. They might even come to see the spotted owl.

. . . Ted Sudia . . .

© Copyright 1989
Institute for domestic Tranquility