LOOMING OVER THE political debate is one simple question: What is humanity's place in the universe, anyway? Deep Ecology, a concept that first took hold among radical environmentalists in the 1970s and has since been adopted by many mainstream greens, holds that humans are merely one among millions of species sharing the earth—and to some, a particularly toxic one. But according to Genesis, God fashioned our species alone in his image.

In the May 1999 draft of "The Columbia River Watershed: Realities and Possibilities," the Northwest Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on the state of the Columbia River, the tension between those two ideas becomes striking. The bishops listed "speciesism," a bias that one's own species is superior to and has the right to dominate another species, as one of the "evils present periodically in the watershed." They went on to confirm, however, that "humans have a unique place among creatures.... Humans alone, with the abilities granted to them, can understand creatures soaring in the heights or swimming in the depths, and can come to know the laws of biology, chemistry, and physics which influence all creation." The early draft was released by the bishops, in part, to gauge the public and political reaction to principles they were still hashing out themselves; it is perhaps a sign of the issue's conundrums that this passage on speciesism has been left out of the final draft.

Bishop William Skylstad of the diocese of Spokane, who chaired the steering committee that prepared the letter, recognizes the conflict. "That all has to be balanced out," he says. "God gives us creation to support ourselves, but we also need to be wise stewards and look at the sustainability of the creation about us."

Don't be misled by the word "letter." This is no interoffice memo. Three years in the making, the final 18-page document, which came out in early February, is a faith-based assessment of an entire watershed's spiritual, economic, and environmental health. "We began with the idea that it was time for us to take responsibility, to sustain the river and provide for future generations," says Skylstad, who grew up on an apple orchard near the Methow River, a tributary of the Columbia in central Washington. "We are in the business of not only taking care of our own faith community, but of supporting and strengthening the common good."

The bishops' letter is remarkably sweeping and specific. The authors advocate selective, sustainable timber harvests; the support of family farms and industrial co-ops through the reform of banking policies and government regulations; energy conservation and the use of wind and solar power to supplement the maxed-out grid; the restriction of all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles to established roads; decent wages, health care, and education for workers; and the honoring of treaties with local tribes. Saving the watershed's salmon is at the top of their list of priorities, but even they can't decide whether to breach the four lower Snake River dams. An echo of the speciesism problem can be heard in the bishops' choice of words: "People's concern for salmon as creatures of God should be linked to their concern for fishers, who are also children of God." Lest they give the impression of decreeing from on high, the bishops vow to get their own houses in order, too. Parish gardeners, for example, have been encouraged to limit the use of fertilizers and pesticides and will be asked to show restraint with the lawn sprinklers.

The letter sounds downright utopian at times; would that we all lived in a world with eco-friendly mining, plentiful salmon, bountiful harvests, high wages, and responsible lawn care. But because of the church's long record of serving human needs, the letter may prove to be one of the more influential documents in the history of the American West. "We aren't the parts-per-million people, but we can point people in a new direction," says Walt Grazer, director of the U.S. Catholic Conference's Environmental Justice Program and coeditor of And God Saw That It Was Good: Catholic Theology and the Environment. "The bishops are saying there's a link between social and natural ecology. People are a part of their environment; it's not something separate from them."

Grazer's statement reflects the unique ability of the Catholic church to speak to both parties, making one side aware of the precarious ecological state they're living in; the other, that the environment is not a hallowed realm off-limits to man. Indeed, the bishops' statement seems to say: Jesus is coming, but until then, mankind and the earth are inextricably linked; if one fails, so will the other.