MOVE IN FOR THE CULL

The complicated calculus of killing some wild creatures to protect others.

- ELIZABETH KOLBERT

We've upset the balance between predator and prey. Should we try to right it?

The northern spotted owl is about a foot and a half high, with very dark eyes, a greenish beak, and a rim of feathers, called a facial disk, that makes it appear to be regarding the world with worried perplexity. Like most owls, northern spotteds are nocturnal, but, unlike most of their brethren, they are picky. They can live only in old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Their diet is restricted and seems to consist mainly of f lying squirrels. They’re incapable of building nests of their own, and so, to raise their young, they rely on tree cavities or on basketlike growths that are produced by arboreal infections and known, evocatively, as witches’ brooms.

The spotted owl’s fastidiousness produced one of the great environmental conflicts of the twentieth century. By the late nineteen-eighties, it was estimated that only fifteen hundred breeding pairs survived. Since the owls depended on old growth, the only way to save them, according to biologists, was to preserve the Northwest’s remaining stands of ancient trees. The timber industry countered that leaving those trees untouched would cost thousands of jobs. The two sides adopted increasingly confrontational tactics. Loggers raced to cut down the most valuable timber before their opponents could secure court injunctions. Protesters blocked forest-access roads and chained themselves to tree trunks. The police brought in heavy machinery to bulldoze their encampments. Environmentalists dressed up as owls and shouted, “No more clear-cuts!” Sawmill workers drove around with bumper stickers that read “I Like Spotted Owls . . . Fried.”