Owl Fight Invigorating -- Environmentalist Angry With Congress, Not Loggers

-- STANWOOD

Despite death threats left on her answering machine and cold shoulders from once-friendly people, Bonnie Phillips-Howard says the fight to save the spotted owl has been enjoyable. Invigorating, even.

``You feel that something very historically important is about to happen,'' she says. ``You get to feel, in a small way, you're a part of it.''

Phillips-Howard is president of Pilchuck Audubon, the Snohomish County-Camano Island chapter of the Audubon Society. From her Warm Beach-area home, constructed from recycled materials down to the cedar shakes, she has led the group into the middle of the debate about the owls, old-growth and the timber industry.

``I don't like the confrontation part and the anger,'' she says. ``But I do like the excitement of what's going on - the drama.''

The group's efforts have put Pilchuck Audubon - and Phillips-Howard - in the spotlight and gotten them knee-deep in work.

Phillips-Howard has arisen at 4 a.m. for conference calls lasting six hours or more with fellow environmentalists in Washington, D.C. She's run up fax bills in the hundreds of dollars at a nearby store, adding her input to position papers on the owl. She has taken calls from reporters as far away as London - in addition, of course, to the not-so-friendly calls.

As a result of the threats, she has an unlisted phone number. And when she attended a recent meeting in Darrington that drew loggers from a wide area, she found herself so unwelcome that the chief ranger for the Darrington Forest District later called to make sure she'd gotten home safely.

Phillips-Howard says she's been angry, too, but not at most loggers or at the timber industry. Instead, she's been mad at Congress for forcing environmentalist groups last year to make important decisions within a few days about timber sales.

She's frustrated that the debate seems stuck on owls vs. jobs, and wishes it would evolve into a dialogue about how to save the owls and old-growth and minimize the impact on the timber industry, which could lose about 30,000 jobs in Washington, Oregon and northern California.

She'd also like to see more discussion on how to maintain the health of all forests, old-growth or not.

In small, personal ways, she's tried to mitigate the alienation that has built among environmentalists, loggers and government agencies. So, although she still looks the part of the environmentalist in her jeans and Birkenstocks, her T-shirts with environmental slogans stay in the closet. And the poster blasting clear-cuts that used to hang in her living room now is kept in her study.

``I can't believe we all can't agree on having sustainable forestry,'' she says. ``I truly believe there's a lot more common ground than we're allowed to pursue at this point.''

Pilchuck Audubon began in earnest to help protect the owl three years ago by mapping possible old-growth areas on Forest Service land northwest of Darrington.

Then the group took another step - circulating petitions, asking the federal government to designate the spotted owl an endangered species. And another - joining the handful of environmental groups that filed suit against the U.S. Forest Service.

That lawsuit got the attention of Congress and the nation when a federal judge granted an injunction barring most 1989 timber sales in old-growth, spotted-owl habitat.

Congress later intervened with legislation requiring two-thirds of those sales to go forward, and Phillips-Howard and Pilchuck Audubon helped negotiate what sales would not.

At the same time, Phillips-Howard became chairwoman of the Washington Ancient Forest Alliance, a coalition of more than two dozen environmental groups fighting to save old growth.

Now that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the owl as ``threatened,'' Phillips-Howard fears there's a potential for explosive confrontations between loggers and environmentalists - though she is hopeful that doesn't happen.

She's afraid the issue has become so polarized that cooperation may be extremely difficult.

At the same time, one important lesson she's learned during these crazy, intense years is that the battle lines aren't always clear.

The most poetic description she's heard of what it's like to stand in an old-growth forest came from a timber industry executive. And she has commiserated about timber sales with another timber company employee, who since has joined the Audubon chapter.

Those experiences and others have made her realize she can't always tell who might be her best allies in the struggle.

``It's not all black and white out there,'' she says. ``It's far too easy to categorize people.''

``North Faces'' is an occasional series introducing readers to interesting people in Snohomish County and North King County.