Environment: Showdown in The Treetops

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That path is often blocked by the Earth Firsters, whose guerrilla tactics have in the past alienated other environmentalists. Some members of the group have lain down in front of bulldozers, and others have been accused of acts of sabotage, such as driving long metal spikes into trees. As those trees are cut and processed, the hidden spikes can damage the machinery of a sawmill.

The confrontations over old-growth forests are fiercest in the Pacific Northwest, where logging is both a major industry and a historical source of < identity and pride. Atop Oregon's state capitol in Salem is a gilded statue of an ax-wielding pioneer. But long before the lumberjacks came, the Northwest was home to some of the continent's most majestic trees, including cedar, Douglas fir, western hemlock and Sitka spruce, and 200 or more species of wildlife, from elk to pileated woodpeckers.

Just one of those animals, the northern spotted owl, has given the conservationists a way to slow down the logging. Citing the bird's increasing rarity and the fact that it lives primarily in old-growth forests, activists have obtained court injunctions against logging on federally controlled lands inhabited by the owl. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which estimates that only 4,500 spotted owls remain in Western old-growth woodlands, has agreed to decide by next summer whether the animal should be included on the list of threatened species. If that happens, provisions of the Endangered Species Act dictate that the owl's habitats must be protected.

Such a ruling could be a disaster for the logging industry. The temporary court injunctions have slashed the amount of timber available for harvesting in fiscal 1989 from 5.4 billion board feet to 2.4 billion, with most of the cutbacks affecting Oregon. That is a devastating blow to a state where the $7 billion-a-year wood-products industry provides a livelihood for 150,000 people. Directly or indirectly, logging accounts for nearly one-fifth of Oregon's gross product.

Understandably, the loggers feel persecuted by the environmentalists. Says Tom Hirons, owner of Mad Creek Timber: "The preservationists' campaign to lock up ((the forests)) is a brand of mental terrorism that has cast a great cloud of fear over our communities." At a rally this summer in Salem, loggers wore T shirts bearing the slogan SAVE A LOGGER. EAT AN OWL.

The Oregon loggers have some powerful allies, including most of the state's congressional delegation, led by Senator Mark Hatfield. Last month Hatfield and Governor Neil Goldschmidt convened a meeting of lumbermen, environmentalists and federal officials to try to forge a logging plan that would be fair to both sides. After acrimonious debate, Hatfield offered a compromise, to remain in force through fiscal year 1990. It would protect some forest areas but allow continued old-growth logging and forbid anyone to seek court injunctions to prohibit cutting.