Western Ancient Forest Campaign
A new study shows that spotted owl protections have no impact on timber employment!
A paper released recently shows that despite popular belief, protections for northern spotted owls have not eliminated timber industry jobs.
The paper, titled Forty Years of Spotted Owls? A Longitudinal Analysis of Logging-Industry Job Losses, analyzed the relation between environmental protection and lob losses in the timber industry. The authors analyzed long term trends in timber industry employment and found no evidence of job loss due to spotted owl protections.
"If logging jobs have indeed been endangered by efforts to protect the environment in general and spotted-owl habitat in particular, what is needed is a plausible explanation of how the influence of the owls could have begun some forty years before the species came under the protection of the Endangered Species Act," reads the abstract.
The paper concludes that, "Despite the strength of conviction that the 'endangered logger' of the Pacific Northwest has been suffering because of the needs of small owls, rather than tree-cutting and cost-cutting practices of large corporations, the common belief is remarkably devoid of empirical support. There is simply no quantitative evidence of any statistically credible increase in job losses associated with the federal listing of the northern spotted owl as a 'threatened' species."
"This paper adds to the growing body of evidence that the jobs vs. owls debate is pure fabrication. Study after study has shown that environmental protection goes hand in hand with a healthy economy. It's time to bury the jobs vs. environment myth once and for all", said Paul Spitler, California Organizer for the Western Ancient Forest Campaign.
The paper is being presented by William Freudenberg, Lisa Wilson and Daniel O'Leary of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. It will be published in an upcoming issue of Sociological Perspectives, the peer-reviewed journal of the Pacific Sociological Association. The paper will be presented on February 14 at the Annual Meeting for the Advancement of Sciences.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited