A county jury says the state of Washington must pay a logging
company almost $10,000 an acre if it wants to protect spotted owls
on private land.
SDS Co. was forced to halt
logging on 232 acres of its land in 1992 after state biologists
found evidence of an owl nest in the area. When the company sued
the state for illegally “taking” its land, a jury decided in favor
of the company, and lawyers on both sides expect the judge to
uphold the jury’s financial award of $2.25
million.
State officials now worry the case could
set a precedent. “It has grave implications for the ability of the
state to regulate private landowners,” says Susan Zemek of the
Washington Department of Natural Resources. “State law would need
to be changed if we had to compensate every private landowner in
situations like this.”
But the company doesn’t
believe the implications are wide-ranging since it is “the opinion
of merely one court in one county in the state,” says Mike Neff,
attorney for SDS Co.
The company’s 232 acres that
had been slated for logging are part of one of 10 state-designated
spotted owl preserves. In its suit, SDS said landowners within the
preserves are unfairly targeted for protection of the
owl.
“Their scheme doesn’t protect breeding owls
– only owls in the preserve,” says Neff. “Are we asking too few
people in our state to protect owls?”
Attorney
Michael Grossmann says the state plans to appeal the decision. He
adds that if SDS had done landscape planning for its 40,000 acres,
“then a little harvesting on the 232 acres would have been
allowed.”
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Loggers win one.
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