Learning to Adapt

摘要

The ambitious Northwest Forest Plan tried to balance desires for timber and biodiversity, but preservation trumped Egging—and research. Can the plan be made as adaptable and science-friendly as intended? For decades, a steady stream of logging trucksrolled out of forests in the Pacific Northwest, piled high with ancient Douglas firs, valued for their huge trunks. Old-growth forests on private lands were the first casualties, and as they disappeared, the loggers turned to national forests. Despite outcries from environmentalists, the pace of clear-cutting intensified in the 1980s—reaching a peak of more than 5 billion board feet a year, enough to build 350,000 three-bedroom houses, much of it from old growth. Then in the early 1990s, environmentalists finally found a weapon powerful enough to fight destruction of these venerable forests: the northern spotted owl, which needs large tracts of old trees to survive.