The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced a controversial plan to help save a critically endangered owl species in the Pacific Northwest: killing roughly 450,000 of a different owl species that is considered invasive. The Washington Post reported on the plan.
The spotted owl population has dropped by around 75% over the last two decades, according to the FWS, largely because it is being outcompeted for food and resources by the non-native barred owl.
After analyzing the situation and finding itself at a loss, the FWS arrived at the conclusion that it must license hunters to shoot the barred owls. The recruited hunters will walk through forests in the dead of night with shotguns, playing barred owl calls through a megaphone. They will then, ostensibly, use their flashlights to identify the correct owls to shoot by noticing the bar-like markings on their brown-and-white feathers.
"We are deeply saddened that it has come to this point," Claire Catania, executive director of Birds Connect Seattle, a bird conservation group, told the Post.
The plan is, of course, not without its critics. One potential complicating factor is that the two owls look extremely similar, casting doubt on the hunters' abilities to differentiate them in the middle of the night.
The group Animal Wellness Action led an effort of 135 wildlife organizations to sign an open letter denouncing the plan. "The Biden Administration plan to kill upwards of 450,00 barred owls … will put the federal government on a never-ending treadmill of killing forest owls and it is doomed to fail," the letter read, in part.
While the letter does not identify a consensus alternative plan, it says the proposed plan would be too expensive, too unlikely to yield positive results, and too likely to result in unnecessary killings of owls — even the invasive ones.
"How can we prevent the surviving barred owls from simply recolonizing and repopulating the very areas we are trying to preserve?" Hilary Franz asked in a quote from a video that was part of a June webinar for Animal Wellness Action. "I think we can do better, and we have too many questions that need to be answered."
Said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy: "Every sensible person wants to save spotted owls from extinction, but strategies that kill a half-million look-alike forest owls must be taken off the table in violating our norms about proper treatment of any native owl species in North America."
This is not the first time that the government has authorized the killing of animals deemed to be invasive in an attempt to save other species. In Florida, contractors can earn money from the government for killing invasive Burmese pythons. Several states have also declared it legal to hunt feral hogs without a license.
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