This is only a quick overview of the piece I am currently working on, but it gives the reader enough information as "food for thought".
If an "endangered" species of owl could cause large scale financial havoc with communities associated with our forests, how much would a species of primate previously unrecognized cause?
This
is becoming an increasingly frequently asked question. I myself never
considered such a thing, and having been a close personal friend of the late
Rene' Dahinden was in a position to have known of such activities had they been
perpetrated, but had not heard of such things.
I
was reading comments on a blog last year about just this, and the people
chatting there were asking rather excellent questions. This discussion got me
thinking about my own experiences, and I have them written on my own website and
blog, and began seeking accounts from anyone else who may have experienced
similar situations.
I
began receiving responses from people all along the west coast of the United
States with similar stories. So the question is not "if" such
cover-ups and outright destruction of evidence is taking place, but
"why"?
I
am certain that there are numerous reasons for why anyone would wish the
Sasquatch to remain in limbo as far as being officially recognized, but one
stands out in my mind as likely the strongest reason.
Many
investigators over the years attempting to uncover government actions
successfully follow the same path, and that is to follow the money. In this
case taking a close look at the financial impact that proving the Sasquatch to
exist would have on local communities which are in the vicinity of national or
state forest lands would have.
I
have not completed my investigation into this probable impact, but enough so
that it would be devastating on a wide scale.
How
do we know this would be a problem? We already have a much smaller example with
the Northern Spotted owl, remember this?
I
have placed an article here that was written about the impact the owl
controversy had on communities, I have yet to hear any major studies done on
the impact on communities and humans as a result of the Spotted Owl decision.
In
June 1990 the government set aside 15% (20 million acres) of old growth forest
for the owl habitat, and all the neighboring communities never recovered from
this. Below is the article from a site called "One voice working for the
forests".
It
was
20 years ago — June 26, 1990 — that the spotted owl was listed as threatened
under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The Oregonian has taken an in-depth look at what that decision has meant for
the timber industry and the spotted owl itself. The results, especially for the
industry, are not pretty, and environmental groups might have a few things
they’d rather forget too.
As
this graphic shows, the owl listing ended up
cutting Oregon’s total timber harvest in half. And the Northwest timber
industry was decimated.
Here
is a description from Jonathan Raban’s op-ed this week in the New York
Times:
(In
1994) the Northwest Forest Plan came into effect, protecting around 20 million
acres of federal land from logging, and offering financial compensation and job
retraining to the timber towns. As mill after mill closed, the stench of steam
and pulp vanished from the Northwestern air; trucks carrying massive tree
trunks, which used to cause mile-long tailbacks on the Olympic Peninsula,
became rarities; and the ubiquitous slow-moving tugboats, dragging rafts of
freshly felled firs, gradually faded from view on Puget Sound.
Raban,
whose op-ed is generally supportive of the owl’s
listing, said the sting still lingers in timber communities:
The
battle over the owl has been just one engagement in the war over nature in the
Northwest…The struggle has set class against class and countryside against
city, and turned lifelong rural Democrats into staunch Republicans.
In
the old timber towns, many people still echo the August 1994 speech by Slade
Gorton, Republican of Washington, to the Senate on the human cost of the
spotted owl listing: “The U.S. government, driven by sophisticated,
well-financed national environmental organizations and supported by the media
and urban opinion leaders, has betrayed rural communities and destroyed — yes,
destroyed — the lives and careers of tens of thousands of honest working
families in the Pacific Northwest.” Or, as the city attorney for Forks, Wash.,
(once a roaring town that declared itself the Logging Capital of the World)
said when I called to remind him of last week’s anniversary: “That’s not a day
we celebrate. At any time.”
And
yet
— this is the real kicker — all sides of the debate agree that the listing has
done nothing to improve the spotted owl’s numbers from 20 years ago. In
fact, after two decades of the owl being federally listed as “threatened,”
there are actually fewer spotted owls than there were in 1990.
How
can this possibly be? The absurdity of the situation is almost comical if it
wasn’t so painful. The reason — and apparently no one anticipated this 20 years
ago — is a larger, more efficient species called the barred owl has migrated to
the Pacific Northwest from the East and is squeezing out the spotted owl
population. In the Olympic National Forest, for example, researchers counted just 13 spotted owls last
year, whereas in 1990 they counted 150.
Now it doesn't take much imagination to multiply the effects of the
Sasquatch being proven to exist to see what would happen. There would be no 15%
of forest old growth closed, "ALL" forests would be closed, and until
scientists could determine all the aspects of Sasquatch life, range, feeding
habits, family structure and how they relate to range areas, etc. The
endangered species act clearly defines this, and all state DNR, state forest,
national forest lands would be frozen. This could potentially include national
parks as Sasquatch encounters happen in them also.
While logging has been cut off a great deal from before the spotted owl
decision, which makes one wonder "did they do this to soften the economic
impact in case the Sasquatch inadvertently were proven to exist"?
Of course this is speculation, but I am certain if the economic impact were
thoroughly studied, the picture would become clear as to this motive.
This issue would not be the first one in which we know for fact the
government has kept from the public.
