The northern spotted owl is the wildlife species of choice to act as a surrogate for old-growth forest protection. Thank goodness the spotted owl evolved in the Pacific Northwest, for if it hadn’t, we’d have to genetically engineer it.
Andy Stahl at a 1988 law clinic for environmentalists, staff forester, Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund
Stahl is now the Executive Director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
Taking a que from his little statement, a few years later, some of his fellow travellers manufactured a crisis involving the Lynx, by taking fur from an old pelt and placing bits of it around a certain forested area they wanted to get “protected”.
Not a whole lot of actual ethics in that crowd.