A Cautionary Tale for Greens in the Age of Obama
How Clinton Doomed the Spotted Owl
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

When biologist Jack Ward Thomas handed President Bill Clinton the final copy of his plan for the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest Forest, Clinton asked only one question: “How much timber will it cut?”

With this revealing query began the bizarre final chapter in the saga of Clinton’s adventure in the rainforests of the Northwest, the home of the salmon and the spotted owl.

In the final two weeks of April 1994, the Clinton administration saw its strategy to reinitiate timber sales in Northwest forests come to a shocking fruition, when most of the key environmental groups in the region agreed to lift the three-year old federal injunction prohibiting new timber sales in spotted owl habitat. At the same moment, one of the nation’s largest forest products companies announced its glowing support for Clinton’s forest plan.

Watch how neatly the pattern of events unfolded.

On April 14, 1994, the Clinton administration submitted the Record of Decision for its Northwest forest plan to federal Judge William Dwyer in Seattle. A disturbing codicil to the original plan (widely known as Option 9), the 200-page Record of Decision granted a series of last-minute concessions to timber interests that were designed to accelerate the preparation of new timber sales in old-growth and keep the plan’s annual timber sale above the one billion board foot mark—the psychological barrier demanded by the timber industry.

Link to con.