Thirty-some years ago, a local businessman dropped by The New Era to chat with the publisher.
The vistor reported that he’d heard about a movement to shut down logging in the local national forest, ostensibly to protect a small, shy creature with a cuddly appearance, which was believed to require the deep recesses of old-growth forests for its survival: the northern spotted owl.
“This is dangerous,” the visitor warned.
We all know what happened thereafter,…