Spotted Owl

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to consider a plea to revive a congressional plan to save -- at the same time -- the northern spotted owl and the jobs of lumber workers in the Pacific Northwest.In a brief order issued before the justices began their summer recess, the court granted a hearing to the federal government on its anxious plea that a "timber crisis" was looming as a result of a lower federal court ruling.Last September, a federal appeals court ruled that Congress had acted unconstitutionally in 1989 when it enacted the "Northwest Timber Compromise" -- a multifaceted plan to control logging in the habitats of an endangered species, the northern spotted owl.Under the compromise, which was pressed by Pacific Northwest members of Congress, the government was given orders to sell specific amounts of timber from national forests and public lands, to keep the lumber industry in the area going.

Despite a recession that has crippled the housing industry, lumber prices have jumped more than 30 percent in the past six weeks, home builders and industry members have said.The National Association of Home Builders, a trade group based in Washington that represents builders' interests, laid the blame on proposed logging restrictions on millions of acres of forest land in the Pacific northwest and California to protect the habitat of the northern spotted owl.That has sent timber buyers scrambling to buy supplies to protect themselves from possible shortages, said Mark Ellis Tipton, a Raleigh, N.C., home builder and president of the national builders association.

I LIKE TREES, and respect other people who like trees. Tree people are stalwart.As a certified city boy at the Bronx High School of Science I used to stay home to observe Arbor Day, which some of the superachievers uncharitably thought was a tricky way to curry favor with the botany teacher.As a political partisan, I winced when Ronald Reagan argued that trees were partly responsible for acid rain, and secretly enjoyed it when press wags derided this with a sign tied around a tree reading "Chop me down before I kill again."

A preliminary study has found no genetic variation between a California owl and the northern spotted owl, whose dwindling numbers and steady loss of habitat have put it at the center of a dispute concerning logging in the Pacific Northwest.The results raise the question of whether the two birds are one subspecies of spotted owl rather than two, as scientists have thought.But researchers said they had analyzed only a small portion of the birds' genes so far. Further investigation and the use of more powerful analytical tools might turn up genetic differences, they said.