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Biden feds draw up final plan to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls in PNW

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https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/climate-lab/feds-draw-up-final-
plan-to-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-of-barred-owls-in-pnw/

It is time, federal wildlife managers have decided, to kill invasive 
barred owls in the Pacific Northwest that threaten native spotted owls 
with extinction.

The barred owl, ransacking forests and pushing deeper into fragile 
habitats, is outcompeting the spotted owl. It’s bigger, more aggressive, 
and eats anything in the spotted owl’s territory. Wildlife managers see no 
choice but to reduce the number of barred owls in some areas, to create 
refugia where spotted owls may persist.

The control program, outlined in a final Environmental Impact Statement 
announced Wednesday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is intended to 
result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the current 
North American barred owl population — but it’s still a lot of birds: as 
many as 500,000 barred owls, over the next 30 years, depending on how 
fully the program is implemented.

The policy is the result of more than 15 years of review and study and 
collaboration, said Bridget Moran, Oregon Fish and Wildlife Office deputy 
state supervisor.

“We are at a crossroads. We now have the science. … There is time for us 
to act now, but that window is closing,” Moran said.

“We are wildlife biologists, we don’t take this on lightly. We do so 
because we know the Endangered Species Act requires us to do everything 
possible to protect endangered species, and we are doing that.”

Under the program, trained professionals would be deployed in about half 
of the areas where spotted owls and invasive barred owls are found in the 
northern spotted owl’s range, and also deployed to limit the barred owl’s 
invasion into California. Hunting by the general public would not be 
allowed. Shooters are to call barred owls into close range to confirm the 
species’ identity, and kill them with a shotgun. Lead shot will not be 
used.

To implement the program, USFWS must first obtain a permit under the 
Migratory Bird Treaty Act. The agency could then designate interested 
tribes, federal and state agencies, or landowners to shoot the owls. The 
“removal specialists,” as the agency calls them, would have to meet 
training and competency requirements set by the agency and monitor and 
report results.

The USFWS conducted a scoping and public comment process on its draft 
environmental impact statement last winter and will announce a final 
record of the decision in at least 30 days after the formal publication of 
the final statement in the Federal Register on Friday.

The plan is essentially unchanged from the draft statement, which 
attracted strong responses, including more than 8,600 public comments.

Bob Sallinger, executive director of Bird Conservation Oregon, said while 
his organization supports fighting extinction of any species and believes 
the science is there to support some removal of barred owls, the plan is 
“fatally flawed.

“We think this plan will result in a tremendous number of dead barred owls 
but likely won’t save the spotted owl,” Sallinger said. “The rigor in 
terms of the training, the requirements, the oversight and accountability 
isn’t there and if just a fraction of the birds shot turn out to be 
spotted owls, the outcome would be devastating. Our recommendation was 
they really needed to go back and rethink this with something much more 
targeted and sustainable.”

Hilary Franz, Washington’s commissioner of public lands, wrote Deb 
Haaland, Department of Interior secretary, last month, expressing concerns 
about the scope of the program — proposed on 14 million acres, it’s the 
largest-ever raptor-killing plan, and without precedent in any wildlife 
control program, she noted.

Others saw no choice.

Claire Catania, executive director of Birds Connect Seattle (formerly 
Seattle Audubon) had to take a deep breath before talking about the 
program, which the organization supports, with caveats. “This is not 
something we are celebrating. It is a necessity, and a terrible 
necessity,” Catania said. “It is so unfortunate that this is where we are 
… if there were any other paths forward for us to consider, you better 
believe we would be at the front of the line advocating for it, but it is 
just not there.”

Catania predicted conservationists will be facing more such moments. 
“These types of scenarios are unfortunately going to be facing us more and 
more as we head deeper into the climate crises, and we are going to be 
faced with bad choices,” Catania said. “We can’t just stand up for 
endangered species when it is palatable to do so.”

In Washington, areas the agency has mapped where barred owl removal could 
potentially take place include the entire Olympic National Park and 
Olympic National Forest, state lands adjacent to them, and the Yakama 
reservation. The soonest any large-scale implementation of the program is 
likely to begin is next spring.

A generalist predator, the barred owl is not only a threat to the spotted 
owl, but to Northwest ecosystems more broadly, noted Robin Bown, barred 
owl strategy lead for the USFWS. The barred owl is a devastating new 
predator to animals naive to their threat, from salamanders in Oregon to 
crayfish in California, with both species at risk, Bown said.

Much has been done to try to rescue the northern spotted owl, the poster 
animal of the campaign to save the old-growth forests of the Pacific 
Northwest. The owl was listed as a threatened species in 1990. Then, in 
1994, a federal judge approved the Northwest Forest Plan, devised under 
the Clinton administration, to set aside some 24 million acres of old-
growth forests on federal land. The multispecies protection plan was 
intended to preserve habitat for the spotted owl on federal lands in the 
places scientists deemed most important for its survival, from Washington 
to California.

The owl depends on old-growth forests home to its primary prey — small 
mammals that thrive in the complex, unique environment of old-growth 
forests — including flying squirrels and tree voles.

But the owl, already greatly reduced in numbers by logging before the 
Northwest Forest Plan, faces continued habitat loss from wildfire and 
logging on unprotected lands. And now, it is mortally threatened by a 
crushing invasive competitor.

Barred owls were first documented in British Columbia in 1959 and in 
Washington, Oregon and California in the 1970s. Today, there are well over 
100,000 barred owls in the northern spotted owl’s territory in Washington, 
Oregon and Northern California, according to USFWS.

Katherine Fitzgerald, northern spotted owl recovery lead for USFWS, said 
after watching the northern spotted owl decline for so many years, “There 
is some momentum to get them some help.

“Absolutely we don’t see it lightly, but I am looking forward to seeing 
some efforts on the ground. I would like to see those declines slowed and 
reversed.”


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Biden feds draw up final plan to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls in PNW "Leroy N. Soetoro" <democrat-criminals@mail.house.gov> - 2024-07-05 23:03 +0000
  Re: Biden feds draw up final plan to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls in PNW Watson Herbusch <paid@x.com> - 2024-07-07 20:38 +0000

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