Today's Sunday Oregonian carries a depressing story of how barred owls are apparently going to be the final step in the extinction of the spotted owl. After President Clinton forced through the Northwest Forest Plan in order to protect the spotted owl and other endangered species, the barred owl began moving in to spotted owl territory, proving stronger and more adaptive.

Here's how O writer Michael Milstein puts it:

Intensive logging of the spotted owl's old-growth forest home threw the first punch that sent the species reeling. But the knockout blow is coming from a direction that scientists who drew up plans to save the owl didn't count on: nature itself.

Note the beginning of that paragraph: "Intensive logging of the spotted owl's old-growth forest home threw the first punch...". Not quite. Logging threw hundreds of punches. It's as if Muhammed Ali fought the first 14 rounds of a fight — against a small girl — and then I was sent in for the final round (carrying a baseball bat). This is not the fault of the barred owl, nor of the biologists who didn't realize that it would move into spotted owl territory so aggressively. It damn sure isn't Clinton's fault for the Northwest Forest Plan. As with many of the problems we face here in Oregon, we can point a finger of blame in one direction:

Those who destroyed the forests for greed.

The timber corporations, of course, are the most guilty here, followed immediately by governments at all levels who sucked at the teat of payoffs, both legal and otherwise. The loggers who couldn't seem to figure out that a tree that took a few hundred years to grow might not be replaced in time to support their children and grandchildren are also responsible. The communities that loved the money and sank their head in the sand — or, appropriately, the eroding soil that washed away into streams and rivers no longer protected by trees — are also culpable. And Oregonians who simply ignored the obliteration of this irreplaceable resource have plenty of guilt on their own.

So who does this leave unsullied? Well, just about no one. And besides, it's completely pointless. The point is not guilt but what the hell we are going to do. And even more importantly, why.

The first thing we have to do, I believe, is to take economics out of the discussion. There's an eminently practical reason for doing so: Oregon's old-growth forests can never again be a useful source of income. They are, for all practical purposes, obliterated. How many jobs remain in the ancient forests? How much local money can be made? If logging is once again allowed, the money won't benefit Oregon; it will, as it has always done, flow out of the state into the coffers of those who own the rights to cut our trees. A few loggers and truckers and such will make some money for a time — and then, sooner rather than later, it will all close down for good.

Oregon has to give up on that kind of thinking regarding our forests. We can provide jobs and local income in our forests, but not by cutting ancient trees and driving species into extinction. What little remains of the old-growth forests must be left alone as protected wilderness — forever. Give them a chance to recover and find whatever equilibrium they can, naturally. Sadly, due to human violence, it now appears that will be a future without spotted owls.

We have also, and more importantly, to change our thinking on why we protect our few remaining old-growth forests. If we want to protect the future of the state for our own children and grandchildren, and for all the creatures that live in our varied, beautiful regions, we simply must put reverence for the life of the land at the top of our priorities. Not jobs, not the so-called "balancing" of economics and the environment that is a Luntzian attempt to find ways to squeeze yet another buck from the earth. Plain and simple, the earth and all the grows on it, all that lives upon it (and within it), is utterly worthy of life and of being left to live that life in peace.

Trees, in other words, have value simply because they are trees. Not because they can provide jobs and money, not because they make great places to camp and recreate, not because they protect creatures. Trees are living creatures, and all that lives is worthy of the same protection and reverence. Yes, this sounds like airy-fairy tree-hugger nonsense; but guess what? It's not nonsense. Our science is far too limited to know what level or nature of sentience the plant life of this planet possesses. For us to assume it has none is arrogance of the worst kind. Until we can prove the negative — that plants have no intelligence or "self" of any kind — moral and intellectual honesty compels us to accept the possibility that they do.

If we do not, we allow ourselves the option to wipe out these "things" just as we throw away plastic bags, diapers and the crusts off our sandwiches. There is no restoration of life once it's destroyed. This is what makes murder such a heinous crime, what makes war the worst of political options. The inability to bring a creature back from extinction should be a horror that demands our action, but hell, most of us don't even care about the genocides being perpetrated around the world today on humans (as many of our forebears didn't give a damn about genocidal policies directed at Native Americans). Our level of concern for humans who are not "us" gives me little hope we will extend our compassion to something we perceive as so utterly non-human as a tree.

But extend that compassion we must. We have a multitude of reasons for doing so: economic, social, scientific and humane. But until we learn to cherish each life for its own sake, whatever the nature of that life, however different it is from our own, we humans will be a species of destruction and chaos. And sadly, it's we who can do the most damage to the other species — until we done so much to them, there is nothing left to protect us from ourselves.