Barred owls and spotted owls are in the crosshairs

• Wayne Pacelle
• October 21, 2025
• https://animalwellnessaction.org/collusion-by-fish-and-wildlife-service-and-timber-industry-to-kill-owls/?ms=EM_NBI_AWA_20251023_INV_WebinarInvite_WaynePacelle_NA_NA_WebinarInvite&emci=392948cd-4bb0-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4&emdi=442948cd-4bb0-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4&ceid=14046887

We’ve learned in recent days that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s billion-dollar “Barred Owl Management Strategy” (BOMS) is not what it seems. It’s a scheme. A con job. A bait-and-switch.

Sold to the public as a rescue mission for the threatened northern spotted owl, the plan does nothing of that kind. Instead, it’s a deceptive plan with designs not only to produce a body count of 450,000-plus barred owls, but also to kill northern spotted owls in untold numbers.

The BOMS is double trouble for owls. It’s worse than a neutron bomb — because the birds die and not even the trees are left standing.

It’s crony capitalism at work, with government and industry conspiring to bilk taxpayers $1.35 billion, undermine animal welfare and conservation values, and bring massive profits to companies already raking in the dough.

Unbeknownst to the public, the plan all along was for the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to craft a plan that uses the pretext of “controlling” barred owl populations as a way of “helping” spotted owls.

But it turned out to be a thin cover plot for the timber industry to nearly double the annual cut of timber in the verdant forests of the Pacific Northwest over the next eight years, laying waste to both species of owls in the process.

Undercutting Decades of Protection for Two Species of Owls

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) protects species it classifies as “threatened” or “endangered” and timber companies and other private actors aren’t generally allowed to take their lives by cutting down the trees that are their homes. Nor are they allowed to kill barred owls or any other North American owls protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).

And the agency can also issue an “incidental take” permit to destroy the habitat of the owls — “incidentally” harassing or even killing the spotted owls. But in that circumstance, the agency requires timber companies to offset the harm to the spotted owls by taking some corresponding action to help them. It’s a sort of pay-to-slay scheme.

The prohibition on the killing of these protected species has always presented a problem for the timber industry, putting them in a position of having to come pleading to the FWS to issue permits to kill the species under certain circumstances and come up with creative ways to try to mitigate the harm to the species. But until now, it’s been the job of the FWS to safeguard animal populations, not facilitate habitat destruction or the killing of protected species.

All of that is about to change with the BOMS scheme that FWS, the timber industry, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have colluded to engineer.

The government and business interests have spent years working together to smear the reputation of barred owls — falsely labeling the North American owls as “invasive” and exaggerating their level of competition with spotted owls. In fact, as early as 2016, a BLM Resource Management Plan stated that it would not authorize timber sales that would cause the incidental take of northern spotted owl until a barred owl management program had begun. BLM sowed the seeds for this scheme to kill barred owls and spotted owls nearly a decade ago.

But any person involved in spotted owl conservation understood that it was decades of timber cutting that triggered a long-term decline in their populations, not the behavior of look-alike cousins.

In fact, no bird species has ever driven a different bird species into the extinction abyss. Humans have always been the agents of their demise. The whole blame-game focused on barred owls was a public-private bait-and-switch.

In California, Oregon, and Washington, the FWS and the BLM engineered a legal process to allow the timber companies to “incidentally take” spotted owls as long as the companies participated in killing barred owls. In other words, the FWS will issue permits to kill spotted owls and will then give the timber companies license to kill barred owls. The forests are cleansed of both species with taxpayers paying for the lion’s share of it.

Turning the ESA into a Sword to Hurt Wildlife

 It’s an extraordinary perversion of the Endangered Species Act, turning a federal law designed as a shield for wildlife into a sword.

We’ve said all along that the BOMS was a boondoggle — a waste of a billion dollars on an inhumane plan, a deflection away from the timber industry’s own destructive conduct, and an unworkable plan. Shooting barred owls would do little good, since other barred owls would fill in the void in short order, resetting the existing relationships between the two owl species.

But it’s worse than we originally imagined — with the spotted owls also being the targets of this plan. The scheme smacked of industry capture of government. The FWS was charged to protect barred owls under the terms of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and to protect northern spotted owls under the MBTA and the Endangered Species Act. Instead, the agency has put targets on the backs of the barred owls and it’s putting “do cut” markings on trees slated for felling.

Congress Can Unwind BOMS

But we can turn around this mess and morass if Congress passes the resolutions to nullify BOMS. The resolutions — S.J. Res. 69, led by Sens. John Kennedy, R-La., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., and H.J. Res. 111, promoted by Reps. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, Josh Harder, D-Calif., Scott Perry, R-Pa., and Adam Gray, D-Calif. — will maintain existing protections for barred owls and spotted owls. And they won’t burn your taxpayer dollars in the process.

Last week, Sen. Kennedy turned in 30 signatures from his colleagues, meeting the threshold required to bring his resolution directly to the floor for a simple majority vote of all 100 senators. That vote can happen any day now.

If it goes our way, the action will allow the FWS to get back to conservation basics: protecting habitats, engaging in sound forestry practices, and sensible management of forests to preserve owls who rule the night. Nixing BOMS will prevent shooting of barred owls in 14 national parks and it will prevent a timber-industry assault on threatened spotted owls and their habitats, too.

We’ve built a coalition of 450 groups to fight for the owls. But we need you — and tens of thousands of caring people like you — to raise their collective voices right now against hurting the barred owls and the spotted owls.

ACT NOW

There’s not a moment to waste. It’s no time to stand on the sidelines.

October 26th, 2025 | NGPC

Hunters in the chronic wasting disease testing zone for this year’s firearm deer season will have two options to test their deer: in-person check stations or a free mail-in sampling kit.

Testing in the Platte, Frenchman, Buffalo or Republican units is part of the continued surveillance of chronic wasting disease and its occurrence across Nebraska. Testing and access to results are free of charge to hunters who check their deer in person or submit a sample using a kit.

Nebraska Game and Parks will provide kits only to those intending to Telecheck their harvested deer in one of the four test units.

Hunters may request one at OutdoorNebraska.gov by searching for “CWD” and filling out the “Request a CWD Sampling Kit” form. Hunters will need to select the deer management unit they intend to hunt and provide their permit number to complete the form and receive a kit.

Once processed, the kit with supplies, instructions and a free return shipping label will be mailed to the hunter through the U.S. Postal Service; shipping should take three to seven business days.

Hunters should sample their deer within three days of harvest, and samples kept frozen until mailed back using the free FedEx shipping label. Hunters should not ship samples on Fridays or Saturdays to ensure quality samples for testing.

About 2,000 kits will be available and issued on a first-come, first-served basis.

The kits are being provided as part of a study comparing CWD testing methods as Telecheck becomes more common.

For hunters wishing to check their deer in person, a list of participating check stations will be provided closer to the firearm season at OutdoorNebraska.gov on the Deer Hunting page.

Those outside of the testing zone may pay to have their deer tested through the Nebraska, Kansas or Wyoming veterinary diagnostic centers. Find details at OutdoorNebraska.gov on the Chronic Wasting Disease page.

Since 1997, Game and Parks has tested more than 58,000 deer, with 1,347 deer testing positive for CWD in 68 counties.

Share:    https://ruralradio.com/maxcountry/news/hunters-in-4-units-can-request-a-free-cwd-testing-kit/

by Jim Robertson

As I write this it’s ‘General Deer Season’ and although the bucks are wisely hanging out in the high country above the valley floor, I just heard a gunshot when I stepped outside that could easily have resulted in a hunting accident for any of us living in this sparsely populated area,  including my dog, or people’s horses and cows or the does and their fawns who call these foothills their home.

The following is a fictionalized account, based on countless actual hunting accidents, that takes the reader inside a hunter’s mind after one such tragedy…

I can’t believe I shot the boy. He was 12 years old, but I still called him Markey, and he called me Uncle Mel. He was growing up fast, and I was honored to take him out on his first deer hunt. His mother, my sister-in-law, bought him the standard safety equipment and Markey wore his orange vest religiously. 

I don’t know, I guess he must have been bent over to tighten up his new boots (he had been complaining that they didn’t fit him right), but all I saw was a patch of brown hair that looked like fur (it was hard to tell at that distance in the low light and from behind the thick brush we were hunting in).

We were following a nice buck we had seen earlier that morning. Its tracks were fresh wherever we found them and although I’ve killed plenty of deer throughout my life, this one had a rack of impressive antlers that anyone would have loved to claim as a trophy for their wall. I was thinking of mounting it head and all.

I should have let Markey harvest it for his first buck, but I didn’t want to miss the chance and let it get away, so I took a shot. I knew it wouldn’t be a clean kill-shot, but I figured it would drop the deer and give me a chance to go catch up and finish it off. What I found when I got there, I’ll never forget for the rest of my days…

Instead of a prize buck, the pitiful sight of Markey’s bloodied body will haunt me from this day on whenever I raise my rifle and sight through the scope. Now, rather than the elation of going to the bar and reliving the adventure by bragging about it to anyone who would listen, I’d have to face the boy’s mother and explain why, after losing her husband—my brother—to a deadly fall from a tree stand a few hunting seasons back, she now would have to mourn the death of her first-born son as well.

It just doesn’t seem fair that what should have been a proud moment shared with all who would appreciate the thrill of the hunt, I would now have something so embarrassing to try to live down. I had rehearsed the story over and over in my mind about how deer had gotten so overpopulated and had become a road hazard and that as a hunter we were doing society a favor by thinning the herd, but now I had to dread telling the story of a hunting accident to the Sherriff and anyone to else who wanted to know about it. Instead of being a hero, I would now be seen as some kind of criminal. But hunting is legal, and I was just doing my part to share the experience with the younger generation so they wouldn’t lose touch with an important tradition. 

I know my hunting buddies will understand when I tell them about the accident and I expect to get a call from someone in the NRA or the Safari Club or one of the other hunting groups to coach me on what to say to the press, but I half expect to get some looks or hear people talking in hushed tones about me at the local grocery store until this thing blows over. As bad as this all is, it would be worse if some animal rights or anti-hunting do-gooders got wind of it and tried to use it to stop hunting for good. Heck, for many of us, it’s our favorite sport; we don’t know what we’d do without hunting season to look forward to.

I can just hear some of their types saying that hunting is cruel and unnecessary and that we should just let the natural predators control the deer like they always have. Well, I’m sure there’s a lot of reasons to keep on hunting. I can’t think of them now, but I know we didn’t kill-off wolves and control cougars for nothing. The fact that it gives more game for us to hunt is reason enough. Aren’t humans more important than wolves, bears or mountain lions? I wouldn’t want to go on living if I wasn’t better than those animals.

I remember one of the last things Markey said to me just the other day. He said, “Uncle Mel, why don’t the non-hunters appreciate what we do to keep the deer numbers down?” I told him, “I don’t know, Markey, they seem to have some kind of hair-brained idea that nature can take care of itself without us. If that were true, I’d hang up my gun forever—which I don’t plan to ever do, and I hope you don’t ever either.” “No sir,” Markey told me, “Now that you showed me the ropes, I plan to be out here hunting every fall for the rest of my life, like you.” Besides some of the big bucks and bull elk I’ve shot over the years, that was one of the proudest moments in all my life.

As I crouched down to check for a pulse, which I couldn’t imagine finding since the bullet had gone clear through his head and almost removed the top part of his skull, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and I looked up to see the buck we were after looking down on us from the top of a steep, snow-covered ridge. Although I know he couldn’t possibly have been thinking it, it’s almost like his expression was one of disdain—like he was thinking, ‘You humans will kill anyone, even your own kind.’

The buck then turned away and crossed the ridge out of sight. I looked back at the boy and quickly gave up on trying to find any sign of life—he was surely gone. I covered him up with my coat (I was too hot for it now anyway), then stood up, turning my back on the scene and took a step or two away. Time seemed to be moving slowly as I pulled my ‘smartphone’ out of my back pocket and dialed 911. The sheriff’s dispatcher told me they’d send a helicopter out I should keep my phone on so the ambulance crew could find my location. As I hung up, I thought about the fact that wildlife don’t have the chance to be rescued—when they’re shot, their life is over, no matter how long it takes for them to die.

The whole situation was turning ugly, and I found myself thinking that maybe this would be my last hunting season. It just wasn’t worth it to put so many others through so much for a sport or hobby. Maybe I should switch to hiking instead since that’s the only real exercise you get in the sport anyway, besides packing out the meat from a kill which can be treacherous when you have to posthole through fresh snow over blowdowns with a heavy pack on your back.

The more I think about it, this is my last hunting season. My buddies will understand, and if they don’t then maybe they weren’t my true friends after all. And to Hell with the Safari Club and the NRA. They’s just a bunch of Trump supporters and I’ve always voted Democrat anyway. I’m sure predators can keep the deer populations in check without Me and Markey’s help. They’ve been doing a good job without human hunters for millions of years. And if folks would just slow down—and maybe if there were fewer cars on the roads—there wouldn’t be so many accidents involving deer. Truth be told, we weren’t really hunting to help anyone else but ourselves anyway.    

I’m hearing the helicopter now, coming up from the wide valley below. At least I won’t have to pack out Markey’s body—that would make this whole thing even more depressing. I just hope the boy’s mother forgives me. Heck, I hope I can forgive myself. It might be good time to join C.A.S.H. and become an anti-hunter to redeem myself…