This piece originally appeared at Green Tape.
In 1990, as President George H.W. Bush was entering the latter half of his term, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) listed the Northern Spotted Owl as a threatened species. It was an enormous victory for environmentalists, who had been fighting — at times violently — for protections for the species. But it was also a devastating blow to the logging communities of the Pacific Northwest, who overnight saw 6.9 million acres of federal land declared off-limits.
The listing put President Bush in a difficult position. While he had announced his intentions to be the “environmental president,” he was worried that FWS’s decision would put entire communities out of work. “I’m interested in the owl, but I’m also interested in the American family,” Bush said to a Republican crowd in Portland, Oregon. (Yes, there used to be Republicans in Portland.)
In response, the Bush administration tried to craft compromises through a series of interagency working groups and rule proposals to minimize the Endangered Species Act (ESA)’s impact on the timber economy. One of the proposals, notably, was to leverage the Endangered Species Committee — commonly known as the “God Squad” — to exempt certain timber projects from ESA consultation. But it never came to bear. Critics saw these efforts as attempts to water down or stall the owl protections, and thus environmental lawsuits continued, forcing stricter adherence to the ESA.
