March 27, 2024 By Merritt Clifton
https://www.animals24-7.org/2024/03/27/why-would-anyone-want-to-shoot-half-a-million-barred-owls/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFWoCpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHUeprlO9GndlFFiqd6Y2mOajxx9cCH_411JSLcf9NHcdYeuFziat-2l27g_aem_qbZ1iIok3XkQK2zJPjgoYg
Killing barred owls creates a distraction from failing to protect spotted owl habitat
WASHINGTON D.C.––Seventy-five organizations on March 25, 2024 jointly urged Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland “to nix a reckless and wholly unworkable plan to shoot more than 500,000 barred owls over the next 30 years across millions of public and private lands in California, Oregon, and Washington,” jointly announced Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy.
Why would anyone want to shoot half a million barred owls, officially believed to be a third of the entire population in the western states?
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service does, for starters, “as a far-fetched strategy to reduce competition with beleaguered spotted owls,” Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle said.
Barred owl. (Beth Clifton photo)
Lawsuits likely
Coming 20 years after the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 2005 first proposed to shoot barred owls to encourage spotted owl recovery, the 75-organization letter jointly authored by Pacelle and Center for a Humane Economy attorney Scott Edwards did not include a specific threat to sue to stop the barred owl massacre, but did enumerate five potential topics for litigation, including “Victimizing a native species engaging in range expansion because of climate disturbance,” “Mistaken identity can kill off more than a dozen other owl species,” “Lead dispersal will kill thousands of eagles, hawks, owls, and other wildlife,” and “The barred owl killing plan cannot be scaled to work and is doomed to fail.”
Barred owls are welcome here.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Timber industry financed the studies”
Charged Pacelle and Edwards, “The timber industry financed the ‘studies’ and fieldwork that are the impetus for this owl-killing plan as an attempt to distract from the industry’s continued destruction of spotted owl habitats.
“While the Biden Administration reversed a portion of the decision, the Trump administration in early 2021 attempted to allow logging on up to 3.4 million acres of mature forests,” Pacelle and Edwards continued.
“It seems far easier, as a political matter, to authorize the mass killing of barred owls than to provide enduring and consistent protection of key habitat,” against the opposition of the logging and forest product industries,” Pacelle and Edwards wrote.
Endangered Species Act
But Pacelle and Edwards did not hark back to just how it is that an ecological travesty such as killing half a million of a federally protected species came to be pursued by the Department of Interior, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service, all in the name of fulfilling the mandate of the Endangered Species Act to prevent extinctions, while avoiding putting designated “critical habitat” off limits to logging, mining, and other economic uses.
If Pacelle, Edwards, the 75 organizations co-signing their letter, and the multitude of animal and environmental organizations that have filed innumerable lawsuits on purported behalf of spotted owls over the past half century took the whole issue all the way back to the beginnings of it, at the dawn of the late 20th century environmental movement, before the late 20th century “animal rights” movement even began, they would discover that the only real reasons for desperate measures to be undertaken on behalf of spotted owl recovery in the first place had to do with fundraising and politics––and still do.
Totem for Endangered Species Act
The actual conservation status of spotted owls was almost an afterthought.
The gist of the matter was that in the early days of high-volume direct mail fundraising, soon after the 1969 privatization of the U.S. Postal Service introduced bulk mail discounts, fundraisers for some of the “Big Six” U.S. conservation groups––the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Wilderness Society, and the Natural Resources Defense Fund––realized that they could ride the rise of environmental concern if they could find an animal to symbolize the cause, much as Smokey Bear had already come to symbolize forest fire prevention.
Through much the same process of showing photos of various potential symbolic species to focus groups that in 1971 made Woodsy Owl the animal totem of the U.S. Forest Service, the direct mail gurus discovered the potential appeal of spotted owls, over such other endangered species list candidates who were at the time either perceived as dangerous to humans, such as wolves and grizzly bears, or less well known, such as manatees.
California, northern, & Mexican spotted owls.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Cute, cuddly, non-threatening
While the public did not recognize spotted owls in particular, owls in general were well-known, well-liked, and spotted owls in particular were small enough to seem cute, cuddly, and non-threatening.
Simultaneously several of the “Big Six” conservation groups were looking for “umbrella species” whose critical habitat might cover the range of many other potentially endangered species.
If the critical habitat provisions of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 could be invoked on behalf of “umbrella species,” the reasoning went, many other animals and plants could be protected, along with much scenic landscape, without the “Big Six” and a multitude of other upstart organizations having to fight costly and exhausting battle after battle on behalf of unknown, obscure, and/or relatively unpopular but also endangered species.
“Umbrella species”
First, though, Endangered Species Act protection had to be won for the “umbrella species.”
Barred owls at the time were not even on anyone’s radar screen as potential “friendly fire” victims, having first been documented in Washington in 1973.
The “Big Six” joined battle in the names of spotted owls, bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, and declining salmon runs, in hopes of putting almost the whole of the Pacific Northwest, the part of the U.S. hosting the most species then perceived to be endangered, under protected conservation status.
In hindsight, the “umbrella species” conservation strategy of the early 1970s was naïve. Instead of putting almost a quarter of the Lower 48 states under protected status, the “umbrella species” strategy put many endangered species in the crosshairs.
U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and HSUS founding board member Delos Culver in 1954.
(HSUS photo)
“Shoot, shovel, and shut up”
Hunters, fishers, loggers, ranchers, miners, trappers, and others increasingly saw their economic interests––often their personal livelihoods––in potential jeopardy, leading to the mantra of “Shoot, shovel, and shut up” uttered in response to any discovery of endangered animals on private property.
Difficult though this may be to remember now, the Endangered Species Act of 1973 was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, signed into law by Republican president Richard Nixon, as were the Animal Protection Act of 1971, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, also of 1972.
“Wedge strategy”
It was in large part the “umbrella species” conservation strategy that evolved into the political “wedge strategy” dividing urban from rural voters, creating the “red state” versus “blue state” dichotomy that prevails today.
Meanwhile, years before restoration of wolves and grizzly bears became politically controversial, “spotted owl” became fighting words throughout the west, largely because it was legally questionable whether spotted owls––northern, western, or Mexican––should ever have been considered endangered in the first place.
Spotted owls were always known to be a scarce, if broadly distributed species, strongly favoring old growth forests inhabited by red tree voles, almost exclusively the spotted owl food source.
Red tree vole. (Beth Clifton collage)
Red tree voles
However, though spotted owls became the “umbrella species” relied upon to protect old growth forests, spotted owls never demonstrably used much of the mature, not yet “old” growth that was proposed for their critical habitat, where red tree voles were absent or not abundant.
Forty years passed and countless studies were done before anyone could actually say with reasonable certainty that spotted owls were in truth in decline––and even now, it is still unclear that spotted owls can ever recover to their earliest documented abundance until and unless it is possible to manufacture lost old growth habitat to which red tree voles will emigrate.
Mature habitat meanwhile continues to be logged.
Even if mature habitat was not logged, but survived increasingly frequent wildfires driven by global warming, most of it would not for many decades attract red tree voles and thereby become the “old growth” habitat preferred by spotted owls.
Wildfires
Much geography that once was spotted owl habitat is now second growth, the old growth having been lost partially to logging, partially to wildfires.
Many places where spotted owls are now occasionally seen in mature growth are marginal habitat for them, not densely occupied by red tree voles, tenuously occupied by spotted owls in lieu of more favorable habitat.
But spotted owls over the past several decades have moved gradually from “endangered” to iconic status, as the “sacred cows” of western woodlands, who cannot be allowed to endure the normal ups and downs of all other species in response to climate and habitat change, because so much politically, legally, and economically depends on them as symbolic “umbrellas” for even, at this point, preserving the Endangered Species Act itself.
Barred owl. (Beth Clifton photo)
2,485 barred owls killed to test theory
Recalled Pacelle and Edwards in their letter to Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland, “The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service previously killed 2,485 barred owls in five areas of Pacific Northwest forest over five years. The results, published in 2021, show a short-term reduction of barred owls, with only modest numerical gains for spotted owls.
“Conducting such a program over a vastly larger landscape over decades will simply be impractical and subject to reversals by succeeding administrations.
“The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service does not have the personnel to monitor this kind of mass lethal removal program. In the end, the so-called cure may be worse than the disease itself.
“Should it be implemented, it may cost hundreds of millions of dollars, while the Fish & Wildlife Service is shortchanging plans for protecting dozens of other threatened and endangered species where those expenditures would provide definite protections.”
“Feds failed to control nutria”
Pacelle and Edwards also reminded Haaland of the ignominious failure of past attempts by federal agencies to kill their way to “hog heaven,” meaning favored outcomes for influential industries with their feet in the public trough, not anything actually good for real-life pigs.
“Government has a long and mixed history of controlling species for conservation aims,” recalled Pacelle and Edwards.
“The federal government was unable to control nutria, a species introduced to North America for fur farming, even after state and federal agencies unleashed government and private trappers and hunters to kill them at will.
Killing coyotes
“The federal government, through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has engaged in a decades-long massive plan to kill coyotes – annually taking 100,000 or so of these ecologically beneficial animals,” Pacelle and Edwards said.
“Despite of this sustained assault, coyotes have dramatically expanded their range,” from the southeastern quadrant of the continental U.S. prior to 1930 to every state but Hawaii having resident coyotes by 1980.
Spotted owl listed by court, not U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
“The northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act,” Pacelle and Edwards continued, “throughout its range of northern California, Oregon and Washington by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on June 23, 1990, citing loss of old-growth habitat as the primary threat.
“The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service previously reviewed the status of the northern spotted owl in 1982, 1987 and 1989,” Pacelle and Edwards pointed out, “but found it did not warrant listing as either threatened or endangered.”
Therefore, no critical habitat designation for the northern spotted owl was actually issued, or could be, until “Logging in national forests containing the northern spotted owl was stopped by court order in 1991,” Pacelle and Edwards mentioned, soon after the long-sought threatened species designation was finally won.
U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service comparison of spotted owls and barred owls.
Species continued to decline
But another 20 years of litigation followed before the current critical habitat designation for northern spotted owls was established by court order in 2012, covering 9.5 million acres.
Add to that the 8.6 million acres designated as critical habitat for the also endangered Mexican spotted owl and it is easy to see why spotted owls are unpopular with loggers.
Despite all that, “Northern spotted owl populations have declined by 70%, and the rate of decline has increased,” noted Susan Jane Brown of the Western Environmental Law Center and Tom Wheeler of the Environmental Protection Information Center in a May 6, 2021 media release.
Shifting blame
Trying to reopen designated spotted owl critical habitat to logging, without acknowledging the influence of climate change on old growth forest in particular and spotted owl habitat in specific, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service during both the Trump administration and the preceding Barack Obama administration sought to shift the blame for spotted owl losses from habitat issues to the presence of “non-native species,” a code phrase for barred owls.
“Barred owls,” actually native to most of North America, “have been in the Pacific Northwest since the 1950s,” summarized Newsweek science reporter Jess Thomson on Pearl Harbor Day 2023.
“Barred owls now outnumber northern spotted owls across Washington, Oregon and California,” allegedly posing “a threat to northern spotted owls, as they are more aggressive and have a more varied diet, eating anything from insects and amphibians to fish and other birds.”
Spotted owl chicks.
(Tom Kogutus/USFWS aia Wikimedia photo).
Thirty years’ war planned
Barred owls “are also larger and more territorial, meaning that they displace the northern spotted owls, disrupting their nesting, competing with them for food, and even attacking them when they come too close,” Thomson said.
“There are now over 100,000 barred owls in the northern spotted owls’ territory across Washington, Oregon and northern California. They are also slowly moving south and into the territory of California’s spotted owls, which are also facing population declines,” Thompson continued.
“To save northern spotted owls from the barred owl onslaught,” Thompson recounted, “the Fish & Wildlife Service said in a draft environmental impact statement that they plan to initially cull around 20,000 of the owls in the first year, followed by 13,397 birds a year in the first decade, 16,303 a year in the second, and 17,390 birds each year in the third decade.
“This is due to start possibly as early as 2025.”
More than half a century after the 1971 film “Bless the beasts & the children,” the feds are still finding pretexts for shooting the Grand Canyon bison. (Beth Clifton collage)
Bison blamed too
“The plan details that landowners or land managers could apply for a permit to kill the owls, and that a large-bore shotgun would be the choice weapon, to be substituted for capture and euthanasia when people are close.”
Barred owls are not the only native species to be sacrificed to “preserve” spotted owls.
In Mexican spotted owl habitat, the Grand Canyon bison herd has been rather improbably blamed for spotted owl population declines, and is also to be culled.
(See Bullets for bison in Grand Canyon National Park.)
Though bison are a native North American species, the Grand Canyon herd were long considered “non-native” to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, but since 2016 have been belatedly recognized as native.
Aurelia Skipwith, her husband Leo Giacometto, & one of their hunting victims. (Facebook photo)
Trump administration cut spotted owl critical habitat
Donald Trump administration U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service director Aurelia Skipwith on January 15, 2021 cancelled the designation of 3.4 million acres of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl.
On the same day U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Oregon office director Paul Henson, considered the agency’s top owl specialist, predicted that, ‘It is reasonable to conclude that [the reduction in critical habitat] will result in the extinction of the [northern spotted owl].’”
Reducing spotted owl protected habitat increased the pressure to kill barred owls, lest further losses of northern spotted owls become Exhibit A for restoring the cancelled critical habitat designation.
The political ancestor of the proposed 500,000 barred owl “hit” contract was a 2005 study in which seven barred owls were shot in habitat recently vacated by spotted owls in northern California. After the larger and more aggressive barred owls were killed, spotted owls returned.
(See Barred owls on the hit list.)
Bush & the birds
The 2005 California study became the rational for a rewrite of the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan produced in mid-2008 by appointees of former U.S. President George W. Bush.
Blaming barred owls and wildfires rather than logging for the decline of spotted owls, the Bush administration plan reduced the designated critical habitat for spotted owls by 1.6 million acres. This was expected to increase timber sales in the region fivefold.
Wild turkeys. (Beth Clifton photo)
“Dangerous road”
Concluded Pacelle, “This [barred owl] control plan targets a low-density, nocturnal, migratory species living far off the forest floor,” and therefore extremely difficult to see, let alone shoot.
“I am astonished that no adult in the room at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service put the brakes on this plan solely on the impossibility of its success,” Pacelle said.
Added Edwards, “The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is calling for mass slaughter of an owl species native to the United States that has exhibited adaptive behavior and expanded its range because of human perturbations of the environment. This is a dangerous road to travel for a federal wildlife protection agency.”
Issuing a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the barred owl extirpation plan on November 17, 2023, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service closed the public comment period on it effective on January 16, 2024.
“A U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service final decision is on an indefinite timetable,” Pacelle said.
Exposing the Big Game 
