US adopts plan to save spotted owls from extinction

TTo save the endangered spotted owl from potential extinction, U.S. wildlife officials are adopting a controversial plan to send trained marksmen into the dense forests of the West Coast. kill almost half a million barred owls that are driving out their cousins.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s strategy, released Wednesday, aims to sustain declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

Documents released by the agency show that about 450,000 barred owls would be killed over three decades after the eastern U.S. birds invaded the West Coast territory of two owls: northern spotted owls and California Spotted Owls. The smaller spotted owls were unable to compete with the invaders, which have large broods and need less space to survive than spotted owls.

Previous efforts to save spotted owls have focused on protecting the forests where they live, sparking fierce fights over logging but also helping to slow the birds’ decline. The proliferation of barred owls in recent years is undermining previous work, officials said.

“Without active management of barred owls, northern spotted owls are likely to go extinct throughout all or most of their range, despite decades of collaborative conservation efforts,” said State Wildlife Service Supervisor Oregon Fish and Wildlife, Kessina Lee.

The idea of ​​killing one species of bird to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists. It’s reminiscent of the government’s previous efforts to save West Coast salmon, killing sea lions It is cormorants that attack fish and to preserve warblers killing cowbirds that lay eggs in warbler nests.

Some advocates grudgingly accepted the barred owl removal strategy; others said it is a reckless diversion from necessary forest preservation.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is moving from being a protector of wildlife to a persecutor of wildlife,” said Wayne Pacelle, founder of the advocacy group Animal Wellness Action. He predicted the program would fail because the agency would not be able to stop more barred owls from migrating to areas where others were killed.

The shootings would likely begin next spring, authorities said. Barred owls would be lured in using megaphones to broadcast recorded owl calls and then shot with shotguns. The carcasses would be buried on site.

The birds are already being killed by researchers in some spotted owl habitats, with about 4,500 removed since 2009, said Robin Bown, barred owl strategic lead for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Targets included barred owls in California’s Sierra Nevada region, where the animals recently arrived and authorities want to prevent populations from taking hold.

In other areas where barred owls are more established, authorities aim to reduce their numbers but acknowledge that shooting owls is unlikely to eliminate them completely.

Supporters include the American Bird Conservancy and other conservation groups.

Barred owls don’t belong in the West, said American Bird Conservancy Vice President Steve Holmer. Killing them is a shame, he added, but reducing their numbers could allow them to live alongside spotted owls in the long term.

“As old-growth forests are allowed to grow back, I hope that coexistence will be possible and we may not need to do as much filming,” Holmer said.

The deaths would reduce the number of barred owls in North America by less than 1% a year, officials said. This compares to the potential extinction of spotted owls if the problem is not resolved.

Because barred owls are aggressive hunters, removing them could also help other West Coast species that they have preyed on, such as salamanders and crayfish, said Tom Wheeler, director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, a California-based conservation group. .

Public hunting of barred owls would not be permitted. The Wildlife Service would designate government agencies, landowners, Native American tribes or companies to carry out the kills. Shooters would have to provide documentation of training or experience in owl identification and firearms skills.

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 comes in the wake of decades of conflict between conservationists and logging companies, which have cut down vast areas of older forests where spotted owls reside.

Early efforts to save the birds culminated in a ban on logging in the 1990s, which shook the logging industry and its political supporters in Congress.

However, spotted owl populations continued to decline after barred owls began appearing on the West Coast several decades ago. Across the region, at least half of the spotted owls have been lost, with declines of 75 percent or more in some study areas, said Katherine Fitzgerald, who leads the wildlife service’s spotted owl recovery program.

Opponents say the mass killing of barred owls would cause serious disruption to forest ecosystems and could lead to other species — including spotted owls — being mistakenly shot. They also challenged the notion that barred owls do not belong on the West Coast, characterizing their increasing distribution as 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 authorities determined in 2020 that its continued decline merited an upgrade to the more critical “endangered” designation. But the Fish and Wildlife Service refused to do so at the time, saying other species took priority.

California spotted owls were proposed for federal protection last year. A decision is pending.

Under former President Donald Trump, government officials stripped habitat protections for spotted owls at the behest of the timber industry. They were reinstated under President Joe Biden after the Interior Department said political appointees in the Trump administration relied on flawed science to justify weakening protections.