9367 ‎(2)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9367
• Author: Colorado Water Workshop.
• Title: Proceedings
• USFW Year: 1992.
• USFW - Doc Type: Colorado Water Workshop July 22-24, 1992.
• Copyright Material: NO

toughest controversies for us to come to grips with.
Currently, we are hearing the controversy cast in very simplistic
terms. There is a dimension of truth to them, but it is not the whole
truth; therefore, we are misguided as to what the issue is all about.
The best example I can think of is that of the Spotted Owl in the
Pacific Northwest. This is an issue that my organization, the
Wilderness Society, has been very involved in. I used to be with U.S.
Fish & Wildlife Service, and I worked on the Spotted Owl issue when
I was with them. The media focused on the phrase "owls versus jobs."
The issue was reduced to either saving the Spotted Owls, or saving
timber jobs. However, the reality of the situation is not that
simple.
Pat mentioned that we have over two hundred different taxa of
salmon in the Pacific Northwest that are in the process of being
considered for listing as either threatened or endangered. These
salmon spawn in streams that are embedded in forests. Many of these
forests are public forests, administered by the BLM or Forest Service.
The population of these different stocks of salmon have been
drastically reduced in recent decades. There are a number of reasons
for this decline. It is not a simple situation. Some of it may come
down to harvest, particularly on the high seas where we cannot
regulate it. Certainly, some of it is tied up in the fact that the
Northwest is in the midst of a drought on the order of five or six
years with below normal rainfall. We also believe, and scientific
evidence indicates, that the rate at which we are cutting lumber in
the Pacific Northwest is also diminishing the utility of the streams
to be able to produce salmon. I want to emphasize that the problem
is not the fact that we are cutting lumber, but the rate at which we
are cutting it. One estimate was made that the salmon industry in the
Pacific Northwest, including both the commercial and the recreational
segments, employs 60,000 people, and is worth one billion dollars per
year. I do not know the accuracy of these figures, but I can assure
you that the salmon industry is a very vital component of the economy
in the Pacific Northwest. Many communities are dependent on fish,
just as other communities are dependent on timber. What I think we
need to understand, as a society, is that we are pushing resources to
such a limit that we are not just in a situation of whether it is owls
or jobs, but whether it is timber jobs or salmon jobs. Who are we
going to put out of work? Are we going to put the logger out of work,
or the fisherman? It does not reduce to conservationists wanting to
put people out of work, or stop development, rather it is a result of
the fact that we are utilizing resources in such a way that we are
creating friction and dysfunction in the natural world that is the
original source of all this wealth.
Recently, the term biodiversity has been used frequently,
particularly, in the context of the Earth Summit in Rio. The.
Endangered Species Act is an American original. We are the first
society in the recorded written history to proclaim that the variety
of natural living things is of fundamental importance to humanity and
should be protected. No other nation has ever done that. We took a
leadership role. I spent two years on loan from the u.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service to work for the Agency for International Development
to stimulate the development of conservation programs in our foreign
assistance programs. Congress was directing A. I . D. to pay more

80