“Kill the barred owls!” agree U.S. Senate Democrats with Republicans

Scheme to kill barred owls allows timber industry to log off northern spotted owl habitat

WASHINGTON D.C.––Twenty-nine days into a U.S. government shutdown due to a partisan impasse over a budget bill,  Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate on October 29,  2025 overwhelming agreed in favor of massacring barred owls to protect northern spotted owls from habitat competition.

Killing barred owls is expected by proponents of the scheme to slow the disappearance of endangered northern spotted owls just enough to give Interior Secretary Doug Burgum legal cover for authorizing sharply increased logging in old growth forests,  in keeping with a March 1,  2025 executive order from U.S. president Donald Trump calling for “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.”

The Trump order called upon the Interior Secretary,  a cabinet post then still open in the second Trump administration,  to remove “obstacles to domestic timber production infrastructure specifically deriving from implementation of the Endangered Species Act.”

Trump administration embraces Biden administration plan

The scheme to kill barred owls for the purported benefit of northern spotted owls,  under discussion since 2015,  was authorized in late 2024 by the Joe Biden administration,  but is one hangover from the Biden administration,  and from the Barack Obama administration before the first Trump presidency,  that the Trump administration has enthusiastically embraced.

This,  paradoxically,  has put Trump and Burgum on the same side as traditional conservation organizations including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity,  which have favored massacring barred owls if the alternative is compromising the rigid language of the Endangered Species Act by allowing northern spotted owls to further decline toward possible extinction.

Demos help Trumpists to defeat bill to stop the massacre

Until October 29,  2025,  opponents of the impending barred owl massacre hoped that it might be stopped by U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 69,  which would have stated “Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service relating to ‘Record of Decision for the Barred Owl Management Strategy;  Washington,  Oregon,  and California,  and such rule shall have no force or effect.”

U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 69 on October 15,  2025 cleared the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

(See Bill to save barred owls heads to U.S. Senate floor––but when is the vote?)

But on October 29,  2025,  U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 69 was crushed 25-72 in a roll call vote on the Senate floor.

“Deeply distressed”

“I’m deeply distressed to report that the U.S. Senate rejected the resolution to stop the massacre of barred owls,  along with the closely entangled strategy to take spotted owls and cut down their forest homes to meet the Administration’s ramped up timber harvesting goals,”  posted Animal Wellness Action and Center for A Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle to social media.

“Senator John Kennedy,”  a Louisiana Republican,  “brilliantly led the effort,”  Pacelle said.  “With Interior Secretary Doug Burgum fighting him every step of the way,  Kennedy held nearly half of the Republicans.  These Republicans voted to save the [barred] owls and not spend a billion dollars to attack them.

“The reason we lost,”  Pacelle emphasized,  “is that Democrats supported the slaughter of the owls,  even though their votes could have easily put us over the top.

“The only Democrats to vote to save North American forest owls were unparalleled animal protection leader Cory Booker,”  of New Jersey,  “and the very strong animal advocates Kirsten Gillibrand,”  of New York,  “and Bernie Sanders,”  of Vermont.

“The other Senators did not step up when they were needed,”  Pacelle charged.

“Demos sided with big timber & Doug Burgum”

“Now the Administration and the timber industry will attempt to execute their plan and unleash shooters to slaughter barred owls,  and they’ll also now be able to ‘take’ spotted owls and start cutting down old-growth forests.

“We told every U.S. Senator that this was the plan,”  Pacelle emphasized,  “yet the Democrats sided with big timber and Doug Burgum.

“Environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Center for Biological Diversity lobbied aggressively for owl killing and helped enable this attack on both species of forest owls.

“I’ll be happy to publicly debate any of their leaders on the issue should they wish to dispute this characterization,”  Pacelle challenged.  “We’ll see them in court and continue to work to stop this unprecedented assault on birds who have been protected in our nation for 100 years,”  by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.

“A scheme.  A con job.  A bait-&-switch.”

Three days before the U.S. Senate killed U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 69,  and killed nearly half a million barred owls in coming decades with it,  Pacelle emailed to Animal Wellness Action and Center for A Humane Economy members that,  “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s billion-dollar ‘Barred Owl Management Strategy’ is not what it seems.  It’s a scheme.  A con job.  A bait-and-switch,”  exactly as ANIMALS 24-7 has repeatedly pointed out for ten years.

“Sold to the public as a rescue mission for the threatened northern spotted owl,”  Pacelle explained,  the plan is instead  designed “not only to produce a body count of 450,000-plus barred owls,  but also to kill northern spotted owls in untold numbers.

“It’s worse than a neutron bomb,”   Pacelle charged,  “because the birds die and not even the trees are left standing.

Scheme threatens both barred & spotted owls

“Unbeknownst to the public,”  Pacelle detailed,  “the plan all along was for the Fish & Wildlife Service to craft a plan that uses the pretext of ‘controlling’ barred owl populations as a way of ‘helping’ spotted owls,”  as “thin cover plot for the timber industry to nearly double the annual cut of timber in the Pacific Northwest over the next eight years,  laying waste to both species of owls in the process.

“The Endangered Species Act,”  Pacelle outlined,  “protects species it classifies as ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered.’  Timber companies and other private actors aren’t generally allowed to take their lives by cutting down the trees that are their homes.

“Nor are they allowed to kill barred owls or any other North American owls protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.”

But the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service can “issue an ‘incidental take’ permit,”  Pacelle explained,  “to destroy the habitat of the owls.  In that circumstance,  the agency requires timber companies to offset the harm to the [endangered] spotted owls by taking some corresponding action to help them.  It’s a sort of pay-to-slay scheme.

“A problem for the timber industry”

“The prohibition on killing protected species has always presented a problem for the timber industry,”  Pacelle acknowledged,  “putting them in the position of having to come pleading to the Fish & Wildlife Service to issue permits to kill the protected species under certain circumstances,”  finding “creative ways to try to mitigate the harm to the species.

“But until now,”  Pacelle said,  “it has been the job of the Fish & Wildlife Service to safeguard animal populations,  not facilitate either habitat destruction or killing protected species.”

Unfortunately for both barred owls and northern spotted owls,  Pacelle continued,  “the Fish & Wildlife Service,  the timber industry,  and the Bureau of Land Management have colluded to engineer” a scheme that allows logging by “falsely labeling barred owls as ‘invasive’ and exaggerating their level of competition with spotted owls.

“No bird has ever driven another bird to extinction”

“As early as 2016,”  Pacelle recalled,  “a Bureau of Land Management Resource Management Plan stated that it would not authorize timber sales that would cause the incidental take of northern spotted owls until a barred owl management program had begun,”  the word “management” in this context being a euphemism for “killing.”

But,  Pacelle reminded,   “it was decades of timber cutting that triggered a long-term decline in the northern spotted owl population,  not the behavior of look-alike cousins,  the barred owls.

“No bird species has ever driven a different bird species into the extinction abyss,”  Pacelle said.  “The whole blame-game focused on barred owls was a public/private bait-and-switch.

“In California,  Oregon,  and Washington,”  Pacelle recounted,  “the Fish & Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management engineered a legal process to allow the timber companies to ‘incidentally take’ spotted owls as long as the companies participated in killing barred owls.

“Extraordinary perversion of the Endangered Species Act”

“In other words,  the Fish & Wildlife will issue permits to kill spotted owls and will then give the timber companies license to kill barred owls. The forests are cleansed of both species with taxpayers paying for the lion’s share of it.”

Pacelle called this “an extraordinary perversion of the Endangered Species Act.”

The original perversion of the Endangered Species Act,  however,  leading to the present debacle at the expense of barred owls,  was the attempt of several major conservation groups,  beginning soon after the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973,  to invoke the “critical habitat”provisions of the act  on behalf of “umbrella species.”

The idea was to find endangered species whose “critical habitat” might cover the range of many other potentially endangered species.

Thus many other animals and plants could be protected,  along with much scenic landscape,  without the “Big Six” and a multitude of other upstart organizations having to fight costly and exhausting battle after battle on behalf of unknown,  obscure,  and/or relatively unpopular but also endangered species.

“Umbrella species”

First,  though,  Endangered Species Act protection had to be won for the “umbrella species.”

Barred owls at the time were not even on anyone’s radar screen as potential “friendly fire” victims,  having first been documented in Washington in 1973.

The “Big Six” joined battle in the names of spotted owls,  bald eagles,  wolves,  grizzly bears,  and declining salmon runs,  in hopes of putting almost the whole of the Pacific Northwest,  the part of the U.S. hosting the most species then perceived to be endangered,  under protected conservation status.

In hindsight,  the “umbrella species” conservation strategy of the early 1970s was naïve.  Instead of putting almost a quarter of the land mass of the Lower 48 states under protected status,  the “umbrella species” strategy put many endangered species in the crosshairs,  from wolves and grizzly bears to some of the most obscure varieties of brine shrimp.

“Shoot,  shovel,  & shut up”

Hunters,  fishers,  loggers,  ranchers,  miners,  trappers,  and others increasingly saw their economic interests––often their personal livelihoods––in potential jeopardy,  leading to the mantra of “Shoot,  shovel,  and shut up” uttered in response to any discovery of endangered or threatened animals on private property.

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 had been passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,  but by 1980 the “umbrella species” conservation strategy had already evolved into the political “wedge strategy” dividing urban from rural voters,  creating the “red state” versus “blue state” dichotomy that prevails today.

Meanwhile,  years before restoration of wolves and grizzly bears became politically controversial,  “spotted owl” became fighting words throughout the west,  largely because it was legally questionable whether spotted owls––northern,  western,  or Mexican––should ever have been considered endangered in the first place.

Red tree voles

Spotted owls had always been known to be a scarce,  if broadly distributed species,  strongly favoring old growth forests inhabited by red tree voles,  almost exclusively the spotted owl food source.

There was never any likelihood of spotted owls “recovering” to abundance,  because old growth forest by definition takes 150 years or longer to grow.  The old growth  forest that existed in 1973 was all that would ever exist within the lifespan of any living person or animal.

But “umbrella species” theorists pushed to include younger forest land adjacent to old growth as “critical habitat” for spotted owls too.

And that is where the conflict between barred owls and spotted owls developed.

Instead of expanding outward into younger growth with few if any red tree voles,  spotted owls remained isolated in old growth,  while newly arrived barred owls came to occupy the adjacent younger forests,  including second growth.

Shooting the barred owls now may protect the illusion that “critical habitat” exists for spotted owls to recolonize,  but they never actually occupied most of that habitat in the first place,  not since the very first time it was logged,  or was burned over by wildfire,  and never will occupy it again,  even if barred owls too are driven to the verge of extinction.

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