BY NBC NEWS
One species of owl depends on the extinction of another.
In its petition to be granted permission to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls in West Coast forests over the next 30 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service makes this argument. According to the agency, the spotted owl, a close genetic relative, is being displaced by the barred owl, which is not native to the area.
Service experts warn that if barred owls are not controlled, the spotted owl may ultimately become extinct and vanish from portions of Washington and Oregon.
The plan is the most recent in a string of initiatives to protect the spotted owl, whose population decrease in the 1980s served as a focal point for environmentalists opposed to logging in the Pacific Northwest.
It is most likely due to human influence that the barred owl arrived in the Pacific Northwest as European settlers moved west. The concept now raises concerns about the expense of reversing a historical ecological wrong and the extent to which humans should go in order to conserve a species.
“The barred owls are not to blame. We are to blame for bringing them here. It’s not the spotted owls’ fault either, said scientist Robin Brown of the Fish and Wildlife Service, who oversees the organization’s plan for barred owls. “If we don’t control barred owls, the future is extinction for the species. It’s written on the walls.
The plan put out by the government, which stipulates that over 470,000 barred owls must be “lethally removed”—that is, shotgun-killed—remains in draft form and is available for public comment until January 16.
contrasted with barred One species of owl depends on the extinction of another.
It might be difficult for an untrained eye to distinguish between barred and spotted owls. Both have light faces and coats speckled with brown and white. Their genus is the same. The primary distinction between the barred owl in the Eastern United States and the spotted owl in the Western woodlands of the United States prior to the 20th century was where they resided.
However, the barred owl is smaller, reproduces more quickly, is more aggressive, and is less picky about where it lives and what it consumes.
According to an environmental impact statement outlining the USFWS plan, barred owls are mostly to blame for the roughly 5% annual drop in spotted owl numbers that has occurred over the previous 20 years, a loss of around 75%. According to the idea, there are more than 100,000 barred owls in the West Coast woods.
They enter these regions. Their densities become quite high. They are essentially consuming everything and posing a threat to spotted owls in terms of food,” according to David Wiens, a U.S. Geological Survey supervisory research wildlife biologist.
Over the course of three decades, the USFWS’s proposed management plan calls for the slaughter of barred owls in about one-third of the spotted owl habitat in Washington, Oregon, and California. According to the proposal, 1%–2% of the barred owl’s present range would be lost.
Teams of skilled marksmen would emit an owl cry, drawing in onlookers. Then they would murder the birds with firearms and flashlights.
Over the course of five years, Wiens supervised experimental research financed by the USFWS to evaluate the effectiveness of the method in five different Pacific Northwest forest locations. The findings, which were released in 2021, revealed that 2,485 barred owls were killed and that spotted owls fared 10% better in places where the barred owl population was eliminated.
The spotted owl population was not greatly increased, but it was stabilized by the removal. According to Brown, the agency believes that it will take more than five years for spotted owl numbers to recover since the birds don’t breed rapidly.
Barren owls are dominant, so it stands to reason that their numbers will eventually recover. For this reason, Brown said, the USFWS would probably need to “perpetually manage the species.”
According to Kessina Lee, the state supervisor for the USFWS in Oregon, wildlife scientists discussed the idea of killing the animals with an ethicist. According to Lee, the eradication of a species by death is appropriate when there is no other option.
She said, “There are times when human intervention is required to correct an unnatural situation.”
Various animal rights organizations don’t agree.
Nonprofit animal advocacy group Friends of Animals, situated in Connecticut, attempted in vain to contest the USFWS’ authorization to carry out the 2021 investigation.
The organization’s wildlife law program manager, Jennifer Best, said, “We don’t think it’s ethical to be going out and calling for barred owls and shooting them with a shotgun because they are currently doing better in the existing environment and outcompeting other species.”
Best said, because of challenges like climate change, organisms are always adjusting to new stressors and shifting to new locations.
“How to tackle it requires attention and thought. It is not a good idea to eradicate the species that are growing, the speaker said.
decades of efforts to keep spotted owls safe
The woods of the Pacific Northwest were home to barred owls during a turbulent period.
The Wood Wars, which took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s over wood harvesting in the surviving old-growth forests, pitted environmentalists against loggers. The focal point of the heated discussion was the spotted owl, which loves to reside in the enormous old-growth trees that are disappearing.
In the end, the battle produced a plan to preserve historic forests on federal lands in addition to safeguarding the bird and its habitat. The Endangered Species Act declared the owl a vulnerable species in 1990.
These steps were beneficial up until barred owls started to take over.
Scientists believe that the expansion of barred owls was facilitated by changes in the Canadian climate or by human-caused changes in the Great Plains, such as an increase in treed habitat after humans eliminated the buffalo and beavers, which hampered tree development.
They gradually migrated over that region over a span of around a century. They really started to blow up once they got to the West Coast and the forest there, according to Wiens.
However, Best sees the barred owl as a scapegoat and believes that killing them is a way to divert attention from taking more daring action to protect the habitat of spotted owls.
“I believe that the most crucial thing is to protect old-growth forests in areas where spotted owls can and do live, as well as to work toward restoring habitat that has been destroyed.” That may be the long-term answer, but it’s not a simple or fast remedy, as Best said.
A definitive proposal from the USFWS is anticipated in the spring or summer, after the conclusion of the public comment period.
