Last summer, loggers discovered a nest with two rare
goshawk fledglings on the Headquarters timber sale, west of
Laramie, Wyo. With permission from the Forest Service they cut
trees within yards of the nest, causing the adults to abandon the
nest and the fledglings to die. Environmentalists blasted the
agency and loggers for failing to halt logging within a
quarter-mile of the nest, as required by the forest’s management
plan and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Pat Thrasher, an agency
spokesperson, admits the agency failed to write protections into
the sale, though he says the agency could have invoked the law. “It
was an oversight on our part,” he says.
Maybe
not. An in-house memo written by agency biologist Jerry Mastel at
the time of the logging suggests the Forest Service should have
known that the logging would jeopardize wildlife. “Hammer (Timber
and Lumber Co.) has a very bad attitude: goddamn FS (Forest
Service), goddamn goshawk, next time we find one we’re just going
to cut the goddamn thing down …”
In an
interview, Mastel stood by his memo: “What I really wanted to do is
to turn enough heads that this wouldn’t happen again, and I think
it succeeded.” Shortly after the incident, Medicine Bow and Routt
National Forest Supervisor Jerry Schmidt sent a memo to his
employees saying future contracts should include protection for
rare species, even if found after the sale. If necessary, Schmidt
wrote, officials should breach contracts to protect species.
*Warren Cornwall
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline `Goddamn goshawks’.
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