 However, this requires that we evaluate which would be worse—allowing logging though it reduces the owl population or not allowing logging though it would not have reduced them anyway? That is, we have a moral or sociopolitical question. Given habitat protection affects both the owls and the livelihoods of loggers living in the Pacific Northwest, this is not merely a technical scientific question. Some have argued that when environmental harms are at stake, we should minimize Type II errors (Shrader-Frechette &amp; McCoy 1993). This mode of reasoning is sometimes called the “precautionary principle” (Steel 2015).