Plan finalized to kill thousands of barred owls around Northwest

A barred Owl at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. (Ray Bosch/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The federal government will move ahead with plans to kill tens of thousands of barred owls in Washington, Oregon and California to protect threatened spotted owls.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision on Wednesday to adopt a controversial barred owl management strategy that calls for lethal removal of the birds by shooting them with shotguns and, in some cases, capturing and euthanizing them.

Barred owls are native to the eastern U.S. but began expanding their range in the early 1900s and arrived in the Northwest around the 1970s. The invasive birds prefer the same habitat as spotted owls and compete with them for the same foods.

They are blamed as a primary cause for declines in northern spotted owl populations – along with habitat loss from logging on non-federal lands and wildfires.

“As wildlife professionals, we approached this issue carefully and did not come to this decision lightly,” said Kessina Lee, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Oregon office state supervisor.

“Spotted owls are at a crossroads, and we need to manage both barred owls and habitat to save them. This isn’t about choosing one owl over the other,” Lee added. “If we act now, future generations will be able to see both owls in our Western forests.”

Megan Nagel, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson, said that spring of 2025 is the earliest that barred owl removals are likely to begin and emphasized the program would ramp up over time.

Animal welfare groups deride the plan as costly, unworkable and inhumane.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing the largest-ever plan to slaughter raptors anywhere in the world, and by a country mile,” Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The agency is stepping onto a killing treadmill that it can never dismount. The two outcomes likely to result from the plan are a massive body count of barred owls and no long-term improvement in the survival prospects of spotted owls,” Pacelle added.

It would not be open season on the birds.

No public hunting of barred owls is allowed under the strategy and it is illegal for anyone to kill a barred owl without authorization under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. And, under the plan, no removals of the birds will be permitted outside approved areas in the Northwest and California.

The killing would be done by “professional removal specialists” who meet certain training and competency requirements, including an ability to differentiate barred owls from spotted owls, which are known for a distinctive, four-note “hoot, hoot-hoot hoooooot” territorial defense song.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates a maximum of about 15,600 invasive barred owls per year could be removed over 30 years, which adds up to between 400,000 and 500,000 of the birds if the strategy is maintained over three decades.

At most, the federal agency says the strategy would result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the current North American barred owl population.

In the near term, plans call for a maximum of 2,450 of the owls to be killed in year one of the project, 11,309 in year two, and around 15,600 in year three.

The northern spotted owl was designated as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act nearly 25 years ago.

In the Northwest, it is known for its central role in the “ timber wars ” of the 1980s and 1990s, which pitted environmentalists concerned about saving old-growth trees against loggers.

This conflict eventually led to the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which put new protections in place for forests where the spotted owl lives.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the rate of spotted owl population declines showed signs of improvement until about 2008 but accelerated soon after and that the downturn coincided with the expansion of barred owls into spotted owls’ territory.

Nagel, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency would “work with interested landowners and land managers, including State agencies, to implement barred owl management on their lands.”

“Each agency will determine how, and if, they will be involved in the Strategy,” she added. “No one is required to implement the Strategy. Implementation is fully voluntary.”

UPDATED at 4:33 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 28, 2024 with additional comment from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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