The U.S. government plans to kill half a million owls, but why?

The United States federal government is planning to kill thousands of owls so that it can save one endangered species of the nocturnal that is suffering a decline at the hands of another. However, the plan has upset advocacy groups. 

Roughly Half a million barred owls are slated to be killed by hunters over 30 years to save the northern spotted owl, which has suffered at the hands of its more successful counterpart. But the story is a lot more complicated than one bird being better.

The Los Angeles Times noted that the barred owl and northern spotted owl are closely related, so much so that they can interbreed. But the barred owl, an invasive species that hails from the eastern coast has become a big problem. 

The barred owl is what could be described as a generalist when it comes to the food it eats and the habitat it can thrive in. Barred owls will eat a wide variety of foods and the owl is outperforming its smaller competitor on its home turf. 

The northern spotted owl is pickier about the food that it will eat and prefers to call older old-growth forests home in an area that ranges from California up through Oregon and into British Columbia according to the National Wildlife Foundation. 

While barred owls have thrived, Smithsonian Magazine reported that their success has come at the cost of the northern spotted owl, whose numbers have dropped 75% over the last two decades based on data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Only about 3,000 to 5,200 northern spotted owls live on federal lands in the owl's habitat whereas the barred owl has a population of 100,000 birds in the same area. This is why federal officials have developed a plan in place to cull the owls.

“The populations are really at a tipping point right now,” explained Alan Franklin, a U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center research scientist. While speaking with Audubon Magazine in 2022. “Something has to be done quickly.”

In a bid to save the northern spotted owl, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has said at least 470,000 barred owls should be shot over the next three decades, but activists and advocacy groups are not happy with the planned cullings. 

On March 25th, seventy-five wildlife protection and animal welfare organizations sent a letter to the Secretary of the Interior Deborah Haaland advocating against the “reckless” plan to kill nearly half a million barred owls on federal lands. 

“Most nocturnal owls have never been “huntable” species in the United States, and there is no bank of practical experience in conducting such an immense and complicated control program,” the letter explained to Secretary Haaland. 

"Implementing a decades-long plan to unleash untold numbers of 'hunters' in sensitive forest ecosystems is a case of single-species myopia regarding wildlife control," stated the letter before pointing out the federal government's plan was impractical. 

The letter’s authors pointed to several major issues with the federal government’s plan, first noting that it was victimizing a species engaging in range expansion as a result of climate and added mistaken identity would kill off thousands of other owl species. 

Thousands of other eagles, hawks, owls, and other wildlife would also be killed by the lead dispersed from guns meant to kill barred owls according to the letter. “The barred owl killing plan cannot be scaled to work and doomed to fail,” the letter added. 

However, not all wildlife protection groups agree with the facts presented in the letter to Secretary Haaland. Environmental Protection Information Center’s Tom Wheeler called the letter "factually misleading" and "divorced from what's actually being proposed." 

Photo Credit: Environmental Protection Information Center

Wheeler did explain to the Los Angeles Times that the issue was problematic but added we may not have a choice. "We have a functional choice, which is the extinction of one species, or we could have both species continue to exist on the landscape.”

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

The proposal to cull 470,000 barred owls isn’t close to becoming a reality and the public comment period for the draft’s environmental impact closed in January 2024. However, a final draft of the proposal is expected in the summer of 2024 NBC News report.