To Save Spotted Owls, U.S. Authorities Plan to Kill Hundreds of Thousands of Other Owl Species

To save the endangered spotted owl from possible extinction, U.S. wildlife officials have adopted a controversial plan to deploy trained shooters into dense forests along the West Coast to kill nearly half a million barred owls that are crowding out their cousins.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's strategy, unveiled Wednesday, aims to bolster declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

Documents released by the agency show that nearly 450,000 barred owls may have been killed in the past three decades after the birds from the eastern United States invaded the range of two owl species on the West Coast: the northern spotted owl and the California spotted owl. The smaller spotted owls were unable to compete with the invaders, which have large clutches and need less space to survive than spotted owls.

Past efforts to save spotted owls have focused on protecting the forests where they live, sparking bitter fights against logging but also helping slow the birds' decline. The proliferation of barred owls in recent years is undermining those earlier efforts, officials said.

“Without active management of barred owls, northern spotted owls will likely become extirpated across all or most of their range, despite decades of collaborative conservation efforts,” said Kessina Lee, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Service state supervisor.

The idea of ​​killing one bird species to save another divides wildlife advocates and environmentalists. It echoes past government efforts to save West Coast salmon by killing sea lions and cormorants that feed on them, and to preserve warblers by killing cowbirds that lay eggs in their nests.

Some advocates reluctantly accepted the barred owl elimination strategy; others said it was a reckless diversion from necessary forest preservation.

According to Wayne Pacelle, founder of the advocacy group Animal Wellness Action, the Fish and Wildlife Service is shifting from being a wildlife protector to a wildlife persecutor. He predicts the program will fail because the agency will not be able to stop more barred owls from migrating into areas where others have been killed.

The shootings will likely begin next spring, authorities said. The barred owls will be lured with megaphones broadcasting recorded calls and then shot with shotguns. The carcasses will be buried on site.

Researchers have already culled the birds in some spotted owl habitats. About 4,500 have been removed since 2009, said Robin Bown, barred owl strategy manager for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Among the targeted species are barred owls in California’s Sierra Nevada region, where the animals have only recently arrived and officials want to prevent their spread.

In other areas where barred owls are more established, officials are seeking to reduce their numbers, but acknowledge that culling them will likely not eliminate them completely.

Supporters include the American Bird Conservancy and other conservation groups.

Barred owls have no place in the West, said American Bird Conservancy Vice President Steve Holmer. Killing them is unfortunate, he added, but reducing their numbers could allow them to coexist with spotted owls in the long term.

“As old forests grow back, coexistence becomes possible and we may not need to shoot as much,” Holmer said.

Officials said the killings would reduce barred owl numbers nationwide by less than 1 percent, comparable to the potential extinction of spotted owls if the problem is not addressed.

Public hunting of barred owls would not be allowed. The wildlife service would designate government agencies, landowners, Native American tribes or businesses to conduct the hunt. Hunters would have to provide documentation of training or experience in owl identification and firearms proficiency.

The publication in the coming days of a final environmental study on the proposal will open a 30-day comment period before a final decision is made.

The barred owl plan follows decades of conflict between conservationists and logging companies, which are cutting down vast areas of old-growth forest where the spotted owls reside.

Early efforts to save the birds resulted in logging bans in the 1990s, rattling the timber industry and its political supporters in Congress.

Yet spotted owl populations continued to decline after barred owls arrived on the West Coast decades ago. At study sites in the region, at least half of the spotted owls have disappeared, with losses exceeding 75 percent in some areas, said Katherine Fitzgerald, who leads the wildlife service’s northern spotted owl recovery program.

Opponents say the mass killing of barred owls would severely disrupt forest ecosystems and could lead to the inadvertent killing of other species, including spotted owls. They also dispute the notion that barred owls have no place on the West Coast, calling their expanding range a natural ecological phenomenon.

Researchers say barred owls moved west by one of two routes: across the Great Plains, where trees planted by settlers gave them a foothold in new areas; or through Canada's boreal forests, which have become more hospitable as temperatures rise due to climate change.

Northern spotted owls are federally protected as a threatened species. Federal officials determined in 2020 that their continued decline merited a more critical endangered species designation. But the Fish and Wildlife Service declined to do so at the time, saying other species took priority.

Last year, proposals were made to give California spotted owls federal protection. A decision is pending.

Under former President Donald Trump, government officials removed habitat protections for spotted owls at the urging of the timber industry. Those measures were reinstated under President Joe Biden after the Interior Department said Trump appointees relied on flawed science to justify weakening protections.

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