Has government-approved logging doomed Canada’s spotted owl?
In the race against time to save Canada’s only population of Northern Spotted Owls, a wilderness biologist reports a disturbing setback. British Columbia conservationists charge the government is handing out permits to log the last remaining habitat for the spotted owl in Canada. BC’s Timber Sales Program grants licenses for small logging operations, allowing local companies to clearcut where Big Timber fears to tread. The timber sales target the valuable remnants of old-growth forest in southwestern BC – the same forest the owls require to survive. Decades of logging and development have left fewer than two dozen owls in BC’s fragmented landscape, and only two nests have been documented this year. Earlier this month, researchers found a Cattermole Timber logging operation at one of the nest sites. “It was a sad sight,” commented Andy Miller, a leading spotted owl biologist with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. “With all these small areas of felled trees dispersed over the hill
