Free Republic

An Amtrak train headed for Los Angeles with nearly 200 people on board came to a standstill Sunday evening after hitting a tree that had fallen onto the tracks. More than 24 hours later, there's still no movement. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari told CNN none of the 183 passengers and dozen crew members were injured, but that "conditions further deteriorated with numerous track blockages from snow and fallen trees."

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

Nothing's worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon's mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it's still slipping away. Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500...

Industry Groups Challenge Endangered Species ActFrom the April 2002 issue of The Forestry Source The northern spotted owl has once again become of the subject of debate. Representing a coalition of forest products companies, the American Forest Resource Council (AFRC) recently sent Secretary of Interior Gail Norton a 60-day notice of intent to file suit if the US Fish and Wildlife Service does not review on the protected status of the northern spotted owl and marbled murrelet. The two birds, both listed as threatened by the Endangered Species Act (ESA), have been called the "driving force" behind the creation of...

The conflict between radical environmentalists and the logging communities of the Pacific Northwest over spotted owls and old growth forests has become a modern morality play. The outcome is tragic on two counts. First, the effects on loggers and their families have been devastating. In the name of saving the owl, environmentalists succeeded in shutting down logging in an area the size of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Connecticut combined. The logging industry has lost billions of dollars, loggers have lost tens of thousands of jobs, and communities throughout the Northwest have closed schools and hospitals as local residents have...