Owl vs. Man: Who Gives A Hoot?

In the Northwest's battle over logging, jobs are at stake, but so are irreplaceable ancient forests

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

-- "Inversnaid," by Gerard Manley Hopkins; Poems (1876-89)

In Oregon's Umpqua National Forest, a lumberjack presses his snarling chain saw into the flesh of a Douglas fir that has held its place against wind and fire, rockslide and flood, for 200 years. The white pulpy fiber scatters in a plume beside him, and in 90 seconds, 4 ft. of searing steel have ripped through the thick bark, the thin...

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