Say, what is it with these lousy mouse-munchers? Every time you turn around, the damned spotted owl is making people’s lives miserable, with the able assistance of the federal government.
A story out of Tombstone, Arizona, reports that the legendary town — erstwhile home of Doc Holliday and the Earp Brothers, and venue of the most famous gunfight in Western history, the OK Corral — is being destroyed by the US Forest Service. Yes, this storied burg that survived the guns of the outlaw Cowboy gang (Ike and Billy Clanton, Tom and Frank McLaury, and Billy Claiborne) is in danger of being throttled by the talons of the now legendary bird, backed by the now infamous Forest Service.
You see, last summer there was a fire in the nearby mountains, where the springs that provide water for the town are to be found. The fires burned away the ground cover, and recent rains have washed away part of the 26-mile pipeline that brings water into town. The pipeline has been there for over 130 years and needs to be repaired quickly, or the next round of rains will wash it away. Since Tombstone’s reservoir has run dry, this will pretty much kill the town.
Enter the owl. Forest Service rangers have discovered a nest of spotted owls — Mexican spotted owls, to be precise. Pero caramba! The species has been declared “endangered” (in the United States) so the Forest Service is trying to stop the town’s residents from using machinery to repair the pipeline.
Tombstone has gone to court, saying that since it owns the springs in question, it shouldn’t need the federal government’s permission to rebuild the pipeline. (The town is defended by the wonderful Goldwater Institute, and hundreds of ranchers, not to mention Western fans, throughout the West.) The feds respond that the town is just using this as an excuse to expand its water supply — a horrible sin, no doubt, for a desert town. Why exactly the construction equipment would harm the birds, which managed to survive the fires, is unclear — but then, almost everything the Forest Service does is unclear.
Its mindset is revealed by the answer one of its supervisors gave in court to the question, “What is more important, owls or the people of Tombstone?” The moral idiot replied that it is hard to say.
And so far the Forest Service is winning, of course, in federal court. The US Supreme Court just recently turned down Tombstone’s request for an emergency injunction to allow the use of construction equipment to repair the pipeline. The Forest Service will only allow individuals using hand shovels to do some repair work, in the 100 degree heat.
So an historic town may die because the government is worried about whether a couple of tractors will scare away Mexican spotted owls, however many of them there are. The Tombstone epitaph will wind up reading, “What the Cowboys could not kill, the Spotted Owls did!”
