Spotted Owls or Barred Owls?

Bay City News:

MARIN COUNTY, CA — Two animal welfare organizations have filed a federal lawsuit to stop the hunting of a half-million barred owls across several states, including in federal parks and monuments, three of which are in Marin County.

The groups are also calling on superintendents of federal lands in California to opt out of the program, which was finalized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in August.

The program would cull about 500,000 barred owls over 30 years to try to protect Northern and California spotted owls, which are protected under the Endangered Species Act. Their territory has been encroached upon by barred owls from the Eastern U.S. and Great Plains for over a century.

Barred owls are slightly larger and more aggressive than spotted owls and displace them from their territory.

The conservation groups, Animal Wellness Action and The Center for a Humane Economy, wrote open letters to superintendents of parks and monuments in California, asking them not to allow hunting in their jurisdictions, which, in the Bay Area include Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Muir Woods National Monument, and Point Reyes National Seashore, in Marin County.

"This inhumane, unworkable barred-owl kill-plan is the largest-ever scheme to slaughter raptors in any nation, and a big stage for the killing will be more than a half dozen of California's iconic national parks," said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy.

The animal welfare groups said in a press release that they had assembled over 200 supporting organizations around the country that signed a petition against the plan, including 20 Audubon Societies.

But the Marin Audubon Society supports the hunting plan, calling it the only way to protect spotted owls from being wiped out by more aggressive competitors.

"We're here to protect ecosystems, not species," said Barbara Salzman, Marin Audubon Society's president. And while the animal welfare groups argue the plan is not scalable and is "doomed to fail," Salzman said that there was no other choice. "To not try would be pretty irresponsible," she said.

Salzman said that the barred owls' more aggressive nature made them an existential threat to spotted owls and that the culling would be done under USFWS monitoring.

The USFWS said in its decision that the goal of the program was to protect spotted owls.

"The need for this action is that barred owls compete with northern and California spotted owls. Competition from barred owls is a primary cause of the rapid and ongoing decline of northern spotted owl populations," the record of decision reads.

There were six alternatives considered with varying degrees of scope and range, but all involved eliminating the barred owls from non-native areas through lethal means.

The animal welfare groups' lawsuit argues the plan is a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contends that the law allows it to issue special permits for habitat management.

In an October letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the welfare organizations raised several objections, including the risk that hunters could kill the wrong owls and spent lead casings would be littered around forest lands. 

They contend the need to hunt nocturnally, and the scale of the plan makes it unworkable. The groups also said that range expansion was a natural phenomenon and barred owls were therefore entitled to the same protection as native species.

In letters to the superintendent of Muir Woods National Monument and Golden Gate National Monument, David Smith, and a separate letter to Anne Altman, the superintendent of Point Reyes National Seashore, the groups said the barred owl had been displaced by human activity, and its range expansion should be considered normal.

"Range expansion is a naturally occurring ecological phenomena, and it is a core characteristic of many species of birds and mammals. Indeed, it is the process by which so many species have come to occupy their current ranges. Just like there is no end to history, there is no end to species movements," the letter to Smith said.