Environmental radiation like the Spotted Owl, which annihilated most of the industry in the PNW. They have since noted that a competing owl may be the real culprit and not the logging industry.
When logging stopped the Spotted Owl population didn't improve suggesting it might've not been logging, but at the time it wasn't known. What was known was that the population was decreasing, logging was going on, and the owl required large amounts of forest to produce prey they could feed upon.
It, however, has not been proven it's all the competing owl. It could've also been that the logging caused the population to plummet but then the competing owl prevented recovery as has happened in other species in various studies. The "recovery" that might've not been needed in the first place without the logging. Further in the areas where the Spotted Owl was in danger, questions such as the long-term prospects of maintaining the logging industry weren't being addressed. E.g. Were they allowing pockets of land for trees to grow back so that industry in that area could be maintained? When this was asked, the locals admitted they didn't have long-term planning, and the argument then came back that they were then going to kill the goose laying the eggs anyway just further down the road unless the owl issue was addressed. The Spotted Owl became a political symbol on several fronts, not just to protect it but to point out that if the logging continued anyway the local economy would've gone down the tubes anyway (oh no liberal-agenda! maintaining industry!) and the owl was just a sign of things to come as is often the case when an ecosystem is affected.
To boil it down to "liberal activism" oversimplifies the issue plus transparently inserts an agenda into the argument. This type of thing often times happens with people with laymen knowledge on the issue.
E.g. the Mcdonald's hot coffee issue where they were effectively sued and had to pay large amounts court-ordered fines. What several don't report was that McDonald's was told to lower their coffee temperature for years and at that point not made to pay high fines, several had previously been injured by their coffee literally being given at temperatures far higher than a human could safely consume, Mcdonald's had data showing serving coffee at the prior high temperature would lead to further injuries but only lowered the temperature when they had to pay a huge fine, but the real story is usually not told, and the edited-misleading version told as if it's a "liberal conspiracy."
Do you for a FACT know that it was all the Barred Owl (that by the way is an invasive species) and not the tree cutting at all? Funny given that many experts in the field aren't sure. If not don't pretend to be an expert in the subject. Barred Owls are being killed to see if Spotted Owls will rise in number but it's still being studied. Why not tell the researchers to stop given that you seem to know the answer?
Further I know plenty of people in construction that say because of cutting down trees...allowing them to grow for about 10-20 years, then cutting them down again isn't good enough because the quality of wood from such a tree doesn't compare to trees that are much older and want even more "liberal activism," or more like some forests where the trees are allowed to grow for much longer, and these guys aren't liberal.
Medicine is a science. I'd no further advocate people prescribe based on political theories or to believe anti-vaxxers than to offer their opinion over science in non-medical fields.