The U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s experimental barred-owl demolition — er, reduction — to save the northern spotted owl has begun, reports Jeff Barnard with the Associated Press. So far, 26 members of the species Strix varia have been blammoed out in Hoopa. And many more are targeted.
The Hoopa site is one of four sites in California, Oregon and Washington chosen by the USFWS to experiment with barred-owl reduction, according to the Record of Decision outlining the agency’s controversial plan, which you can find, along with other info on the owl duel, on the agency’s website.
The agency notes in the decision document that while the “Hoopa (Willow Creek) Study Area is the most recently invaded, has lower barred owl densities, and higher spotted owl site occupancy,” it “has shown recent declines in spotted owl nesting and site occupancy coincident with a rapidly increasing barred owl population.”
Readers may want to revisit former Journal writer Zach St. George’s award-winning story on the barred owl/spotted owl situation, “Shooting Owls.”
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NPR Barred Owls vs. Spotted Owls
This article appears in Treacherous Maw.
Horrible!
Trap em then take to Arcata for adoption.
While I truly do dislike the “us playing the god thing” thing I must admit that even though I do love owls I can’t really see much difference between these two species. Species will exist where species can exist. It’s inevitable. Can’t we all just get along?
They’re not being killed. . .they’re being “harvested.”
I am so SAD!!!!!
Here is a owl that flew across the country on its own and is now breeding with its cousin the spotted owl (to make a sparred owl) and some how ended up with a $100,000 per bird bounty on its head. The $100,000 does not go to the guys with the shotguns so where else does it go?
Sparred owls have been around since 1990. Barred and Sparred owls are more versatile than the slightly smaller spotted owl and take advantage of the ecosystem that exists here today. Some might call that evolution. Others call it a way to spend $3.5 mill.
When are we going to figure out we are not ever going to live in the ecosystem of 200 years ago or 2000 years ago. Climate has changed, populations have changed, it all keeps changing. Let the Barred owl be welcome. Spend our resources smarter.
Uri Driscoll,
Please get your facts straight! The Barred Owl is as exotic and strange to Northern California and the Pacific Northwest as the House Sparrow or Zebra Mussel is to N. America; before nineteen-hundred, they had never been seen west of the Rocky Mountains. I encourage you to read the science behind this decision. Given changes in forest management adopted since the NSOs listing, invasive barred owls are a much bigger problem than habitat removal. Not only does it take over NSO territories, it could also cause serious and lasting ecological impacts on other vertebrates.
Most experts consider the barred owl’s range expansion a product of Manifest Destiny in that they likely piggy backed on the Great Western Migration. As people homesteaded the northern prairie, they planted trees and there are historical accounts of barred owls showing up in places where they had not previously occurred throughout the nineteenth century. Eventually, they managed to make an end-run around the Rockies, but it took Barred Owls about fifty years to establish a foothold in western Canada. When I started surveying for northern spotted owls (NSO) in 1988, they were common in Washington State, and it only took them another ten years to overrun Oregon and get a foothold in California.
In as much as this could be a discussion on the effectiveness and consistency of the ESA, I would like to propose the NSO as a perfect example of why people are upset and want to change this law. How did the USFWS manage to get this so wrong despite throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at the owl? Why was not Barred Owl removal proposed earlier? Furthermore, why is NSO take avoidance handled so differently between the States? I would also like to know why existing baseline conditions, a key ESA principle, is being ignored by the USFWS in California.
In conclusion, I want to stress that this is not an inherent problem with the ESA. Rather, it is the unintended consequences of operator error. In this case, I suspect it was far more expedient to focus on habitat factors, and stopping logging, than proposing something as politically incorrect as killing Barred Owls.
Initially believed to be old growth obligate, and listed on this premise, nonetheless, by 1994 the USFWS was forced to concede that NSOs also commonly occurred in younger forest types of northern California. In their seminal work, Climate, habitat quality, and fitness in northern spotted owl populations in northwestern California, Franklin, Anderson, Burnham and Gutierrez (2000) suggested that a mosaic of older forest types interspersed with other vegetation types promoted the highest NSO fitness.
http://warnercnr.colostate.edu/~alanf/repr…
Skipping over the difficult statistical analysis, I highly recommend that you at least read the abstract and discussion as it relates to Figure 10 of this study. The take home message of this study: Rather than thousands of acres of virgin forest, it appears NSOs in California nest just fine in territories with 250 to 500 acres of mature structurally diverse second growth. In contrast, although barred owls are capable of nesting in much more open landscapes, habitat suitability for them does not seem to be a factor. The prevalence of barred owls in Parks and Wilderness Areas, large areas unaffected by logging, speaks to the foolishness among those who think this problem can be handled as you could propose.
If rhetoric and wishful thinking were effective management tools, there would be no need for wildlife managers, other than perhaps to inspect and monitor construction sites. Indeed, your type of thinking is emblematic among a new breed of “Safety West” biologists. Maybe because there simply is no need for analytical thinking among those of us whose sole function is to avoid incidental take of some individual plant or animal. Preserve, protect and mitigate is the mantra of the day, but sometimes I wonder if the actual effectiveness of our efforts has not become incidental to the handsome wages we can command in doing this work. Nevertheless, allowing an exotic species to replace an ESA listed species does not contribute to biological diversity, it reduces it.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-natu…
I submit to you that this type of thinking is the result of an animal rights bias; in line with an agenda more interested in curtailing, even outlawing, forest management than saving the spotted owl. However, for those of us who have actually worked with this species, it is very clear that no amount of habitat retention will address the Barred Owl problem.
Honest answer,
Seems like you chose to not even be honest with who you are.
Whenever I here things like “could cause serious and lasting impacts” I wonder what “could” really means. You don’t elaborate.
The points I make don’t seem to be addressed. Spending $100K per bird, Sparred owls are a new fertile hybrid, and that we really can’t stop evolution.
I am certainly going to agree with you regarding the fact that forest management has made some wrong turns when it comes to the spotted owl.
The premise that the barred owls crossed the country because of tree planting frankly seems a bit far fetched. It seems to be saying they would not have found their way here otherwise.
When does a species become naturalized and quit being exotic? Who would decide that?
While the ESA has some problems the original intentions seemed appropriate. However one of the biggest problems is this baseline conditions standard. There is no baseline, the planet is constantly changing as are the populations of all the critters on it. Can we help maintain healthy environments? sure, Can we keep an environment or THE environment the same?
As evolution clearly tells us that would be impossible.
I would buy you a cup of coffee to keep the conversation going. I am pretty easy to get a hold of.
Do you feel the same about government efforts to remove northern pike minnows by paying bounties to anglers of up to $8 a fish? Is this an aversion to killing animals in general, or only those with fur and feathers? If this is merely an issue of government spending you should know that we as tax payers spent about 2.5 million dollars extra (as in over budget) this year on bogus biological surveys intended to protect perfectly ordinary and common place nesting birds as part of an Environmentalist conspiracy to obstruct and delay the Willits Bypass. Also, the problem with barred owls is not that they hybridize with NSOs, rather, they simply take over and dominate NSO territories.
This is awefull! It is never okay to kill one species to “help” another! Humans have no right to decide who lives and who dies! I can’t believe the usfws is supporting the slaughter of barred owls!