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 ForestForests' Retreat: Page 7 Kitt Chubb, a Canadian wildlife rescuer, recounted the trauma that one family of owls endured as a result of a mechanical logging operation. Tiny Screech Owl (Otus asia) chicks, still downy and being fed in their treehole nest by the parents, suddenly found themselves slammed to the ground when the tree was cut. A giant logskidder machine roared through the woods gathering up the cut trees, including the one containing the owl chicks (Chubb 1995). The machine proceeded through the woods, bouncing and violently rocking over rocks and ruts. This cacophony must have terrified the owl chicks. Finally, the driver dumped the trees with a crash onto a pasture (Chubb 1995). Soon after, an employee with a chain saw began to cut up the trunks, and as he cut into a big knothole, he jerked the saw back when he saw three fuzzy grey owl chicks with their eyes closed tight (Chubb 1995). Amazingly, they had not been injured or killed after being knocked and bounced about. The loggers decided to save the little Screech Owls, bringing them to Chubb's wildlife rescue center. She placed them in a wooden box and returned with the box the next day to the spot where their nest tree had stood. The forest where the owls had lived had been obliterated, and not a single tree remained. Finding a hollow beech stump in the clearcut not too far away, she and fellow rescuers placed the box in the stump, covering the top with leafy branches for shade, hoping the parents would return to feed the chicks (Chubb 1995). The next day, Chubb was surprised to find a frog leg in the box with the chicks, left by a parent owl. The chicks were lively and vocalizing, and 10 days later, they were still healthy and ready to be banded (Chubb 1995). Unfortunately, few baby birds and other animals survive logging operations or are lucky enough to be rescued if found alive.
Even animals as large as bears are frequently killed when they den in large tree holes. If their cubs survive, they will die of starvation if not rescued. Numerous cases of logging operations orphaning or causing mothers to abandon bear cubs are documented each year. A National Geographic Society film, “Mother Bear Man,” shown in 1998 on "National Geographic Explorer," told the story of three bear cubs found after logging operations and their long return to the wild under the care of a kind and experienced wildlife rehabilitator in New England. Turtles, rodents, snakes and ground birds sheltering in burrows can be crushed to death by heavy logging machines. The soil, no longer held in place by root systems, breaks loose when saturated by heavy rains. Severe erosion on hillsides can cause mud slides that swallow up houses and the forest below, leaving a virtual moonscape, devoid of life. On level areas, rain washes soil into streams and rivers, clogging them, which kills fish and other aquatic lifeforms. Beautiful tropical forests with 300 or more species of trees per acre, a typical diversity, and myriad species of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates inhabiting them, become denuded patches of bare soil interspersed with stumps and broken limbs after clearcutting.
Even in remote wildernesses, the heavy machines that are now used to harvest and transport trees create such havoc and noise that wildlife flees. Many species of rare primates and birds disappear from logged forests, unable to adapt to any logging activities. A recent study in Gabon found that selective logging operations so traumatized Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) that their population in one 2,000-square-mile reserve fell by 80 percent after logging, even though only 10 percent of the trees were cut (Stevens 1997a). Dr. Lee White, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York, who was studying these Chimpanzees, made the following observation when loggers were in the forest: "I had whole chimpanzee communities charging to about five meters and screaming at me, and that's very unusual behavior" (Stevens 1997a). They were observed in logging areas in extremely agitated states, drumming on trees and calling to each other. The tremendous noise and disturbance by large machines apparently caused them to flee into the territory of neighboring Chimpanzees, where they fought to the death (Stevens 1997a). Both the Chimpanzee and Bonobo, or Pygmy Chimpanzee (Pan paniscus), are endangered species, and the latter is unlikely to survive much longer in the wild as a result of logging. Its tiny population inhabits a restricted portion of forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the former Zaire. Both are also killed in large numbers for meat markets by loggers and hunters, who use logging roads to enter forests. The traumatized orphaned young are sold as pets and to others who exploit them commercially.
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