Such unnatural intervention is not about “saving nature”
WASHINGTON D.C.––The first thing to understand about the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service scheme to start shooting upward of 450,000 barred owls, perhaps beginning in just a few days in mid-September 2025, is that it has nothing to do with actually saving northern spotted owls, saving the old growth forest habitat that spotted owls need to survive, or “saving nature.”
No matter how many barred owls are killed, there will be no more old growth forest habitat created by the killing.
Neither does nature give a damn whether one owl species or another fulfills the natural ecological roles of owls in forests, whether old growth or new, so long as enough owls do in adequate number.
WHO wants to shoot barred owls?
What the barred owl bloodbath, in planning since 2015, is really all about is saving face.
Saving face for the major national environmental groups who built their legal strategies for protecting old growth forest around winning endangered status for the northern spotted owl, but lost the original issue because they failed to persuade enough of the public residing in northern spotted owl range that old growth forest is worth preserving at expense of logging jobs;
Saving face for politicians, mostly Democrats, who bought conservationist votes by pledging to protect northern spotted owls at all costs, symbolic of protecting the existence of the Endangered Species Act itself;
Saving face for the timber industry, whose major voices have insisted for decades that old growth forests can be logged without losing either northern spotted owls or other endangered species, without convincingly demonstrating how; and
Saving face for the Donald Trump administration and Congressional Republicans, who want old growth logging to proceed full speed ahead, but would like to save the estimated $135 million that shooting barred owls to make a show of trying to save northern spotted owls would cost.
Spotted owls confused with albatross
All political stakeholders would prefer not to have the possible demise of northern spotted owls hanging around their necks like the albatross shot by the Ancient Mariner, as an advertisement of short-sighted bad judgement and greed, but the risk of having the rotting remains of barred owls hanging around their necks instead is more unappetizing to some than others
On July 23, 2025, “a bipartisan group of House of Representatives lawmakers introduced a Congressional Review Act resolution to nullify” the owl-shooting scheme, with a similar U.S. Senate companion bull closely following, announced Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle.
As the countdown to “Ready! Aim! Fire!” proceeds, “This week should produce some telling information on where the barred owl Congressional Review Act resolution stands,” Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7.
“It’s partisan”
Louisiana U.S. Senator John Neely Kennedy “is leading the charge on the issue,” Pacelle said. “This week, he will be working to secure enough signatures to discharge the bill from the Senate Environment & Public Works committee and put it on a path for Senate floor action.
“In terms of cosponsors in the Senate,” Pacelle explained, “it’s partisan, with Kennedy joined so far by [Republicans] Rand Paul, Katie Britt, Rick Scott, and Marsha Blackburn.
“No Democrats have signed on as of yet,” Pacelle admitted, “with the range state lawmakers all Democrats,” meaning the Senators representing the states––California, Oregon, and Washington––where spotted owls live.
“Hard to believe that Democrats will vote to shoot 450,000-plus owls”
The range state Democrats “have friends in both camps and are still trying to navigate the issue,” Pacelle assessed. “Other Democrats, from around the nation, are a bit frozen until they see where the range-state lawmakers are. At the end of the day,” Pacelle speculated, “I find it hard to believe that Democrats will vote to shoot 450,000-plus owls, but I’ve been surprised before.”
“In the House,” Pacelle continued, “we are continuing to pick up Congressional Review Act cosponsors, on both sides of the aisle, but we are also facing challenges on both sides of the aisle.
“Representative Jared Huffman, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, who represents Marin County and up through Del Norte County on the California cost, is strongly opposed to us. He is actively ‘whipping’ Democrats to not support the measure.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Jared Huffman: “defending” the Endangered Species Act at expense of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
Huffman has long linked his political career to defense of the Endangered Species Act at all costs, apparently even in this case when rigid defense of an inflexible mandate to save spotted owls is interpreted to require killing nearly half a million barred owls who have been protected since 1918 by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
“On the R side,” Pacelle told ANIMALS 24-7, “the key Republicans in terms of geography have held off supporting” the Congressional Review Act as applied to stopping the barred owl massacre.
“It appears to me,” Pacelle offered, “that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has made a deal with timber companies: you can cut timber, and kill spotted owls by ‘incidental take,’ as long as you offset that incidental taking by killing barred owls. The R lawmakers don’t want to do anything to slow timber-cutting.
“The effect is, there is a left/right coalition on both sides of the issue, but it’s still inchoate,” meaning not yet hardened into rigid positions.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Trump position “still unsettled”
“The Administration position is still unsettled,” Pacelle assessed.
In July 2025 the Trump administration retaliated against unrelated criticism from California governor Gavin Newsom by cancelling three federal grants to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife meant to fund killing barred owls.
But the three grants covered only seven tenths of 1% of the 24.5 million acres covered by the spotted owl protections included in the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, where the 450,000 barred owls are to be shot.
“Further, despite those cancellations,” Pacelle said, “we found two new ones, both centered in Marin County, Huffman’s county,” totaling $350,000, and there has been no action on them yet.
“What’s more, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service chief administrator from Wyoming (Brian Nesvik) is now in place and we don’t know where he stands.”
Nesvik, heavily favored by pro-hunting organizations, is expected to favor cutting the estimated cost of culling barred owls by turning as much of the killing as possible over to volunteers.
The “hoot & shoot”
“In short,” Pacelle concluded, “we have a fight on our hands. There was little resistance to this plan,” which Pacelle calls the “hoot-and-shoot” because of the owl-calling technique meant to lure barred owls into gunsights, “before we made it a national issue, and now we have Republican-led Congressional Review Act in both chambers of Congress,” supported by “nearly 450 organizations, including 30 local Audubon societies.
“But we are facing fierce resistance from the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, and other groups, plus Huffman, and timber industry maneuvering behind the scenes,” Pacelle acknowledged. “And things are just uncertain with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service using its leverage with the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to allow timber cutting in exchange for barred owl killing.”
Killing may start before fall
Meanwhile Pacelle is worried that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will shoot first and ask questions later, having received a nominally “final” go-ahead during the last days of the Joe Biden administration.
“The government knows we sued them in federal court in Seattle to stop their scheme,” Pacelle concluded. “They know we are working with lawmakers in the House and Senate to introduce resolutions to shut down these kill plans.
“Government authorities initially told us that they’d hold off on the barred owl shooting scheme while the legal proceedings play out. But they’re nervous that we have momentum, and the arguments and ability to stop them, so they are trying to unleash shooters to start killing owls right away.
“We may see hunting start in Olympic National Park, Crater Lake National Park, and Yosemite National Park before the calendar turns to fall on September 22,” Pacelle warned.
“The plan simply won’t work”
Two prominent ecologists have recently come forward to dispute the science behind the scheme to shoot barred owls on purported behalf of spotted owls.
Daniel T. Blumstein, an ecology and evolutionary biology professor at the University of California Los Angeles, on August 26, 2025 stated in an open letter to Congress that “The plan simply won’t work,” recommending “better protecting old-growth forests that the key habitat for spotted owls” instead.
Kent Livezey, on the other hand, introducing himself as “a retired wildlife biologist who worked for U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Navy, California Department of Fish & Game, and The Nature Conservancy,” had quite a bit more to say, in depth and detail, coming at the issue from the perspective of having recommended shooting barred owls to protect spotted owls in a 2007 scientific paper, before changing his mind in light of new information and changing circumstances.
“A never-ending bloody game”
“Of my 24 publications,” Livezey wrote, “14 focused on various aspects of the competition between spotted owls and barred owls. I worked extensively on the spotted owl/barred owl issue for U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
“Relative to spotted owls,” Livezey explained, “barred owls are slightly larger, produce more offspring per year, produce offspring more often, every year instead of every other year, have smaller home ranges, have higher densities, eat a wider variety of prey, and live in a wider variety of forests. Due to their more varied prey base, several pairs of barred owls often are present within each spotted owl territory.
“The management plan,” Livezey pointing out, “proposes to kill barred owls on about 28% of the current range of the northern spotted owl. Virtually all occupied spotted owl territories include and are surrounded by many pairs of barred owls. If barred owls are shot in one area, other barred owls would move in and replace them. This kill plan would be a never-ending bloody game of Whack-A-Mole.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
$1.35 billion might be low
Moreover, Livezey suggested, over time the surviving barred owls could be expected to become more wary of humans, “thereby making it much more costly to kill the barred owls,” so that even the $1.35 billion estimated initial cost of the complete program might be far low.
“There is an endless supply of barred owls,” Livezey said, “and killing them would be required ‘forever’ to allow some spotted owls to persist in isolated locations.
“A challenge in implementing the Endangered Species Act,” Livezey mentioned, “is that there is virtually no option to question ‘Is this really worth it?’
“For example, one might ask, ‘Why are spotted owls so important?’
“Poster child for old growth”
“The answer is that spotted owls are the ‘poster child’ for old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.
“At present,” Livezey observed, “large areas of old-growth forest are already being protected in National Forests through the Northwest Forest Plan and National Parks. It might be naïve to assume that all of the habitat protections that exist today will be retained in the decades to come, but one could anticipate that if barred owls were killed with some success relative to spotted owls, old-growth forests would be protected where those spotted owls were able to persist.
“But rather than protecting the forests where, due to the shooting program, spotted owls happen to survive,” Livezey offered, “I suggest we use those funds to identify and protect the most-important old forests and old-growth forests,” outside of already protected habitat, many of which may have spotted owls in them at present.
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
“Overall,” Livezey concluded, “I do not believe that spending more than one billion dollars to kill almost one-half million barred owls is worth the carnage, expense, precedents, and distraction from what is the more important issue: protection of biodiverse old-growth forests.
“As far as the owls go,” Livezey wrote, “I suggest we let nature take its course.”
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As has been said, ya can’t fix stupid. And when it’s combined with a complete lack of compassion, as it often is, it’s twice as negatively impactful on those who always pay the heaviest price.
Sharing with gratitude, sorrow, and exasperation.
This is so appalling. Is there any kind of leadership anywhere? All I see are pimps who exploit, manipulate, and persecute wildlife species to promote their own greedy self-interest.
Somehow we’ve got to stop this absurd, vicious, and unacceptable slaughter “plan.”