It's bad enough that the expanding array of government regulations costs the American economy $1.75 trillion annually, which the Small Business Administration also calculates as more than twice the amount of revenue collected each year from individual income taxes. While large and small U.S. businesses grumble about the expense, tediousness and inconvenience of compliance, it seems some of the beneficiaries of the regulations, especially those in the wild, are, well, ungrateful.
Two decades after six million acres of federal forests in the Northwest were closed to logging by the Endangered Species Act in an effort to restore the spotted owl population, these nocturnal birds of prey don't seem to have got with the program. They are vanishing at an average rate of 3 percent a year and 9 percent in some parts of the preserve. In the meantime, 200 sawmills in Oregon alone are out of business. Unemployment there is 20 percent, and the unmanaged forests have become firetraps. The 2002 Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon and northern California burned 500,000 acres, cost $150 million to fight and destroyed $5 billion worth of timber. It also resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 pairs of spotted owls.
Biologists admit they don't really know what is behind the spotted owls' demise. But some suspect the hoot owl, a fierce rival, is preying on its cousin. So, despite Mother Nature's settled law, i.e., natural selection, survival of the fittest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is pressing on with a final Revised Recovery Plan issued this past summer. The Plan sets aside additional acreage for the spotted owls and calls for shooting the hoot owl.
As the U.S. prepares to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by the end of the month, is the nation really prepared for an incursion of armed federal agents into the Northwest forests on a search and destroy mission against hoot owls? By the way, the price tag for this Revised Recovery Plan is $127 million, and the Fish and Wildlife Service only ventures to say it might restore the spotted owl population in 30 years.
Two decades after six million acres of federal forests in the Northwest were closed to logging by the Endangered Species Act in an effort to restore the spotted owl population, these nocturnal birds of prey don't seem to have got with the program. They are vanishing at an average rate of 3 percent a year and 9 percent in some parts of the preserve. In the meantime, 200 sawmills in Oregon alone are out of business. Unemployment there is 20 percent, and the unmanaged forests have become firetraps. The 2002 Biscuit Fire in southern Oregon and northern California burned 500,000 acres, cost $150 million to fight and destroyed $5 billion worth of timber. It also resulted in the deaths of an estimated 75 pairs of spotted owls.
Biologists admit they don't really know what is behind the spotted owls' demise. But some suspect the hoot owl, a fierce rival, is preying on its cousin. So, despite Mother Nature's settled law, i.e., natural selection, survival of the fittest, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is pressing on with a final Revised Recovery Plan issued this past summer. The Plan sets aside additional acreage for the spotted owls and calls for shooting the hoot owl.
As the U.S. prepares to withdraw most of its troops from Iraq by the end of the month, is the nation really prepared for an incursion of armed federal agents into the Northwest forests on a search and destroy mission against hoot owls? By the way, the price tag for this Revised Recovery Plan is $127 million, and the Fish and Wildlife Service only ventures to say it might restore the spotted owl population in 30 years.
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