One for The Loggers

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS MADE NO SECRET of its antipathy toward the Endangered Species Act and its most celebrated case, the northern spotted owl. Environmentalists have used the owl as a stalking horse to save the last 10% of old-growth forest in the Northwest; loggers claim that protecting it costs them 32,000 jobs. Last week the rare birds trembled, after the Cabinet-level committee known as the God Squad voted to override the act and allow timber sales on 1,700 acres.

Such an exemption has been granted only once before in the act's 19-year existence. While environmentalists go to court to reverse the action, conservation legislation is winding its way through Congress to protect not only the owl also but the salmon, steelhead and other species dependent on the old-growth-forest ecosystems. Lawmakers also hope to help timber communities and retrain lumberjacks, many of whom will lose their jobs anyway when the last, irreplaceable trees fall. (See related story on page 57.)