By Chiggers Stokes

Special to Forks Forum

The Endangered Species Act came into law in 1973 when I was a Park Ranger back east. At the time I yearned to work in the Pacific Northwest. A friend of mine from Maryland had gotten a job setting chokers in the logging show that was going on at Lake Ozette. Some of the logs that my friend helped yard were 10 foot diameter cedars. These trees had sat on their stumps for a thousand years before Columbus “discovered” the Americas. My friend lived on a houseboat on Lake Ozette. He partied in Sappho, which was a town of consequence during this epoch of logging. Shortly after the passage of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Department of Interior filed the Northern Spotted Owl as a “listed species.”

I got my lucky break. I arrived at Lake Ozette as a Park Ranger in August of 1977. The east and south shores of the lake were Doug Fir reproduction units. The re-prod grew from horizons of clear-cut left behind by my friend. From my perspective as a “tree hugger,” logging of old growth had been stopped by National Park boundary less than three miles from the end of the continent. Three months later I was moved from Ozette to Mora. Shortly after I moved to Forks, Congress began to realize the huge economic and social impact of the ESA. An amendment to the act was passed, impaneling seven Federal and State officials. They were empowered to “de-list” certain species. This Endangered Species Committee, later known as “The God Squad,” never de-listed the Northern Spotted Owl. This particular bird, and my community of Forks, were on a collision course.

In 1982 I was involved in an early Spotted Owl survey with Bruce Moorehead, the lead wildlife biologist for Olympic National Park. It was new ground. A little before midnight we set out from the Elwha Whiskey Bend trailhead with a portable broadcast system. To me, it was no surprise that there was negative response from real Spotted Owls. Spotted owls don’t use boom boxes, but I learned the voice and call of the Spotted Owl. I heard their calls in the night from my bedroom window in the Bogachiel Rain Forest two miles from the ONP boundary. Oregon State University became a research arm for determining, “Well how many owls are there, anyway?” The owl crew all learned to voice call the birds, and the science of census took shape. You could call the friendly little birds from a ¼ mile away. The science I believed said they were getting critically scarce. I stopped hearing them in the wilderness symphony from my window.

By 1987 the USFS was recommending about ¾ million acres set aside for Spotted Owl management. The Soleduck District of ONP was still setting records for stumpage to market. There appeared to be some disconnect between what was going on in the courts and what was going on in the woods of the Olympic Peninsula.

By 1990 government biologists had upped the recommended set aside for Spotted Owls to 3 million acres. About 1,500 Grays Harbor residents, anticipating massive job layoffs, blocked Highway 101 on the Hoquiam bridge and chanted “families first, owls last.” The battle was nearing Forks.

In 1991 some of our neighbors were among the loggers in Portland that demonstrated before a Fish and Wildlife hearing on a plan to set aside 11.6 million acres for owl habitat. Behind the doors of the Ninth District Court, Judge William Dwyer deliberated on the issue of jobs vs. preservation of a species. Perhaps most Americans will never see or care about the Northern Spotted Owl, but Judge Dwyer ruled the federal government did not do enough to protect it. Almost all timber sales in old-growth habitat were shut down. Forks felt the pinch. The mills here were mostly overhead carriage requiring large (old-growth) timber. Already, the shake mills were using bolts cut from salvage. Outside of Olympic National Park, there was little old-growth cedar left to cut. But Judge Dwyer’s decision yanked on a tightening noose. Forks loggers, some of the hardest working, get-the-job-done employees on planet Earth began to receive pink slips.

Fallen U.S. Forest Service Ranger Kris Fairbanks was a friend of mine. She investigated an assault on a couple camped in their tent near the Bogachiel trailhead, a mile upstream of my family’s cabin. As the family hunkered in their tent, an assailant broke out the glass of their car and hurled threats against “tree hugging, Sierra Club preaching, city slicking, mother (expletive, expletive)!” For me, it should have been a time to lay low as a Park Ranger and be grateful to be part of the Forks community. Instead, I shot my mouth off.

By 1993 the fate of the owl and of Forks loggers still standing was moving further into a political arena. “Science” was often by hire. Government scientists were challenged by scientists hired by the industry. President Clinton and his Vice President (who is Chief of all Federal Science) were about to convene a committee to draft the fate of the the Northwest Forest. The plan by the same name would require Draconian cuts in the stumpage of the Soleduck District of Olympic National Forest and all Federal land across the Pacific Northwest. There were even controls of private reserves of old-growth habitat. My town of Forks was caught in a stranglehold.

My friend Robert Lee, a PhD in the Forestry Department at the University of Washington, wrote a book about the pain Forks felt in the wake of this economic catastrophe. His book, Broken Trust Broken Land, takes the view that any science propelling the case of the Spotted Owl was overwhelmed by political interference. He believes, as many of us do, that there could have been a kinder and gentler federal hand on Fork’s throat.

For my part as a National Park Ranger, I was required to attend a briefing and exploration of the Clinton Forest Plan. At the time it seemed a little like brainwashing. The thing about brainwashing is: It works. I still believe in “the science” of the Northwest Forest Plan. I am of this community… or at least I was, but I am also a tree hugger.