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“Last month the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a call for proposals to develop a recovery plan for the northern spotted owl. It’s about time: The owl was added to the nation’s burgeoning list of threatened and endangered species nearly 16 years ago. That it took so long helps explain why only 10 of the 1,264 species listed under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) have ever recovered.

“If my gut reading is correct, the owl won’t be No. 11. It is already doomed across much of its range, and the reason is well known among field biologists who have been observing the bird for some 20 years. More aggressive barred owls are pushing them out of their 21-million-acre home range, or killing them, or both…

“How and why the government failed so miserably in its costly attempt to protect spotted owls is a sordid tale that illustrates what happens when science is politicized. Begin with the fact that protecting owls was never the objective: Saving old-growth forests from chainsaws was. The owl was simply a surrogate – a stand-in for forests that do not themselves qualify for ESA protection. But if a link could be established between harvesting in old-growth forests and declining spotted owl numbers, the bird might well qualify for listing – a line of thinking that in 1988 led Andy Stahl, then a resource analysts with the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, to famously declare, ‘Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Northwest, for if it hadn’t, we’d have to genetically engineer it. It’s the perfect species for use as a surrogate.’

“Indeed it was. But to back their play, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society and their friends in the Clinton administration needed a good story for the judge. They found it in three obscure reports: a 1976 master’s thesis written by wildlife biology major Eric Forsman at Oregon State University; Mr. Forsman’s 1980 doctoral dissertation; and a 1984 report written by him and two other biologists. All three reports suggested a strong link between declining owl populations and harvesting in old-growth forests. Unfortunately, the hypothesis has never been tested, so despite 16 years of research, no link between old-growth harvesting and declining owl populations has ever been established…

“No doubt one or more environmental groups will use the government’s call for recovery plans to demand that even more habitat be set aside for spotted owls. When that demand is made, someone ought to remind Congress of a recent U.S. Forest Service estimate that an additional 1.1 million acres of federal forestland in the Pacific Northwest have grown into old-growth status since the owl’s listing. But owl numbers continue to decline…”

“Mr. Petersen is the founder of the non-profit Evergreen Foundation and the publisher of Evergreen Magazine in Montana.

“THE AGE OF CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTALISM
Surprise – big business has learned that it’s pretty easy being green
By Katherine Mangu-Ward”

Our title and quotes are from a 02/06 posting on the REASON Internet site:

…“As the environmental bureaucracy become an emasculated dispenser of the occasional award, many greens decided that they had no choice but to suck it up and try to figure out how to work with men who consider bowties a daring fashion statement. Ruta [Gwen Ruta, director of corporate partnerships at Environmental Defense] claims private initiatives are ‘the wave of the future,’ in part because ‘we’re in a rather uncertain regulatory period. How aggressive will the government be in the next few years in creating regulations?…

“Ron Jarvis, now Home Depot’s vice president of merchandising for lumber products, enjoys recounting the tizzy his career trajectory caused in environmental circles. In 1999 Jarvis’ bosses asked him to leave his position as a regional merchandise manager and come to their Atlanta headquarters to serve as the environmental global manager product manager. A ‘shock wave went through some of the environmental groups,’ he says. They were aghast that ‘Home depot had just taken one of their lumber guys and put [him] over the environment.’…

“In 2005 Home Depot sold more than $400 million in wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. It does not buy old-growth timber or wood from recently cleared rainforests. Its Web site boasts that ‘typical Team Depot activities include conservation projects, beautification efforts, and cleanups…

“Four-hundred million dollars seems like a lot of wood, and Home Depot is the largest lumber buyer in the world. But its purchases account for only about 1 percent of the trees cut down worldwide. Still, says Jarvis, who has the authority to sever logging contracts with any supplier whose practices harm endangered forests or otherwise injure the environment, ‘Does that mean that we turn our back and walk away and say that we do not have a social responsibility, that the impact’s not great enough? No.’…

“To call Jarvis an environmentalist is just as inaccurate as calling him a ‘lumber guy.’ He doesn’t fit the stereotype of either. The problem, he says, is that environmentalists and their corporate counterparts ‘couldn’t speak the same language for years.’”

“Which brings us back to Bob Langert, the man who won an EPA award for McDonald’s. He talks like a Midwestern businessman, which, of course, he is. He discusses the problems of ‘monitoring the supply chain,’ declaims on McDonald’s ‘holistic approach,’ and often refers to his area of expertise as ‘waste management.’ It’s easy to imagine how this kind of talk would make ‘speaking the same language’ a near-literal as well as figurative problem in powwows with greens. ‘At McDonald’s,’ Langert says, ‘we like to roll up our sleeves and get things done’…

“McDonald’s executive Mats Lederhausen puts it more colorfully. Lederhausen was instrumental in instituting green-fiendly policies when he ran McDonald’s Sweden. Swedish McDonald’s, not to be outdone by its Danish neighbors and their HFC-free prototype, buys all of its energy from renewable sources and serves organic food. Lederhausen has long argues that ‘doing good is good business’ and apparently can get quite upset at the environmental movement’s residual anti-corporatism. When he was asked, by author Marc Gunther, to respond to the criticism that McDonald’s could be truly socially responsible only by shutting down, he fired out this reply: “That really pisses me off, quite frankly. You don’t attract 46 million customers daily by happenstance. You do it because you fill a need that is pretty strong and because your products are pretty damn good. I’m not saying there aren’t a lot of things we can do better. But, I mean, give us a break. We deserve a break today!”

To read all six pages of this interesting article, click on http://www.reason.com/0602/fe.km.the.shtml

“WISDOM OR SENILITY
Understanding how the brain ages could help to slow deterioration”

Our title and quotes are from an article in The Economist of 02/18/06:

“At what point does an ageing mind become a liability and not an asset? The answer depends on what that mind is asked to do. If the task requires a wealth of knowledge and experience, then the elders have it. If the job needs sharp and fast thinking, youth triumphs.

“The inherent differences between people mean that a quick-witted 60-year-old can outperform a slow-minded 25-year-old in tasks at which youth should prevail. But, in general, from the age of 20, you can see a decline in a person’s raw mental agility – recalling a list of objects, grouping objects into classes and replacing words with numbers (or vice versa). The speed of reaction slows too…

“What can be done to promote healthy ageing? You can lower your blood pressure, perhaps through physical exercise, and mental workouts, such as crosswords and soduku – older people with a history of complex mental activity are less likely to suffer mental decline. But the best protection is to have been born with a big brain.”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5519055

“WHY BUBBLES FORM IF A GLASS OF WATER IS LEFT ALONE”
Rick Watling, NOAA meteorologist, explains

Our title and quotes are from a posting on the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN Internet site on 02/19/06:

“When you draw a glass of cold water from your faucet and allow it to warm to room temperature, nitrogen and oxygen slowly come out of solution, with tiny bubbles forming and coalescing at sites on microscopic imperfections on the glass. If the atmospheric pressure happens to be falling as the water warms, the equilibrium between gas molecules leaving and joining the air/water interface becomes unbalanced and tips in favor of them leaving the water, which causes even more gas to come out of solution. Hence bubbles along the inside of your water glass.”

Click on http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_directory.cfm and then on the appropriate “Current Question.”

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OUR SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER

For details, click on http://www.vardaman.com and then on the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” You can offer to buy or sell timber or land. You must post the general area of your interest; be sure to include the state. You must also post your E-MAIL ADDRESS and the URL of your Internet site. Our tracking report will not report the number of visitors UNLESS you enter your URL. If you are selling, you should post the name of the tract. When you have entered all details, click on “Submit,” and what you just entered will appear on our Internet site at the bottom of the page under the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” Be sure to check for and correct errors.

For each tract posted and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.50 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.50 for each visit his ad received during the week just ended. You can pay us by e-mailing the money to “Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company” at PayPal or mailing it to P.O. Box 12293, Jackson, MS 39236. We will delete your ad when your payments cease.

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