U.S. Spotted Owl Controversy Didn't Cause Massive Job Losses

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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

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Forest Networking a Project of forests.org

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http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

10/23/99

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

The doomsday scenarios of economic ruin if the last ancient forests

are spared from industrial logging ring hollow. In the case of the

Pacific Northwest of the United States, where logging was reduced due

to the infamous spotted owl controversy, it was found that downsizing

of logging did not cause massive job losses. Indeed, holding on to

relatively functioning ecosystems has contributed to the economy of

the region.

g.b.

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Title: Report: Spotted owl controversy didn't cause overall massive

job losses

Source: Associated Press

Date: October 22, 1999

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) -- As painful as it may have been to the logging

industry, the Northwest's economy didn't suffer massive job losses

after the federal curtailment of logging to protect old growth

forests and the northern spotted owl in the early 1990s, three Eugene

economists say.

They conclude in their new report, "The Sky Did Not Fall: The Pacific

Northwest's Response to Logging Reductions" that the economy likely

performed better in Oregon and Washington because of the forest

protection efforts.

"Mounting evidence indicates the region has prospered in part because

of logging reductions. Standing forests are now often more valuable

to the economy than logged ones," said Ernie Niemi of ECONorthwest, a

Eugene economic consulting company. Ed Whitelaw and Andrew Johnson of

ECONorthwest were the co-authors.

The performance of the region's economy this decade flies in the face

of dire predictions from the timber industry and many politicians,

the economists said.

But timber industry officials contend that most of the good times are

in urban areas or along the Interstate 5 corridor. Many small towns

dependent on federal logging are hurting, they said.

Industry representatives also rejected ECONorthwest's argument that

the economy is growing because old growth forest protections are

making the region a better place to live.

"I haven't seen any reliable scientific study to show that all these

jobs are coming into the Northwest because we've stopped logging,"

said Ross Mickey, a spokesman for the Northwest Forestry Association.

Two local examples are Hyundai and Sony, which opened large

manufacturing plants in Eugene-Springfield during the 1990s,

Mickey said.

"Hyundai didn't come here because we stopped logging. They came here

because we gave them a big tax break. Sony is the same," he said.

Federal lawsuits won by environmentalists in the early 1990s and

President Clinton's 1994 forest plan reduced federal logging in the

region by about 80 percent. Industry officials and politicians

predicted the region would lose up to 150,000 jobs.

That never materialized, according to the report, which was funded by

the Sierra Club of British Columbia and the Earthlife Canada

Foundation.

Wood products employment fell by more than 27,000 jobs between 1979

and 1989, before the big logging cutbacks, and then dropped by

another 21,000 jobs by 1996 as federal timber harvests declined.

But the report says only about 9,300 of those lost jobs were due to

old growth forest protection; market conditions were to blame for the

rest.

Meanwhile, the region has added tens of thousands of jobs every year.

Since 1994, the annual increase in jobs in the Pacific Northwest has

exceeded the total number of timber industry jobs, according to the

report.

"Cast your mind back. The prediction was that Oregon would descend

into becoming timber Appalachia. That was fantastically wrong; it

wasn't even close," said David Bayles, conservation director for the

Pacific Rivers Council in Eugene.

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