“Umbrella species” approach to endangered species protection brings both barred owl massacre and loss of habitat protection
WASHINGTON D.C.––Northern spotted owls on July 10, 2026 came home to roost for the U.S. conservation movement.
While hired guns employed by government agencies massacred barred owls in northern California, in the name of protecting northern spotted owls from habitat competition, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum with the blessing of president Donald Trump blew away the Endangered Species Act enforcement rules as they have existed since 1973.
Change allows Trump administration & loggers to have it both ways
Section 9 of the U.S. Endangered Species Act stipulates that it is unlawful to “take” endangered wildlife, a term defined by Congress as including harming, harassing, wounding or killing protected species.
“Harming” has been interpreted by federal agencies and courts at every level as including destruction of habitat that endangered species need to survive.
Significantly, the Endangered Species Act does not address harming, harassing, wounding or killing other species, even species nominally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, in the name of conserving endangered species.
Thus the Trump administration can simultaneously claim to be taking extreme measures to save the northern spotted owl, at the same time as authorizing full speed ahead destruction of the old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest that are the only northern spotted owl habitat.
Spotted owl (left).
“Recast the single word ‘harm'”
The Trump administration, explained Catrin Einhorn and Maxine Joselow for The New York Times, on July 10, 2026 “moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities…by recasting a single word, ‘harm.'”
“Harm” for the purpose of enforcing the Endangered Species Act has until now “included any significant ‘modification or degradation’ of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter, or breed,” Einhorn and Joselow wrote.
“The Supreme Court upheld this interpretation in 1995, ruling against property owners who argued that harm should only mean directly killing or injuring an endangered animal.”
On July 10, 2026, however, Einhorn and Joselow continued, “The Interior Department and the Commerce Department announced a final rule that rescinded this longstanding interpretation. Under the [new] rule, destroying an endangered species’ nest or habitat would no longer be considered illegal.
Court challenge could backfire too
“Earthjustice, a [nonprofit] environmental law firm, said it planned a legal challenge,” Einhorn and Joselow acknowledged.
“But if the case were to reach the current Supreme Court,” Einhorn and Joselow paraphrased University of California Davis environmental law professor Karrigan Börk, the conservative majority of the present justices could enshrine the Trump administration interpretation of the Endangered Species Act as precedent-setting law.
“Administration officials said they were returning the law to its original intent, following a 2024 Supreme Court decision that limited the authority of federal agencies to interpret environmental statutes passed by Congress. They described the government’s prior definition of harm as an intrusion on private property rights,” summarized Wufei Yu and Matthew Brown for Associated Press.
Prairie chickens & spotted owls
Elaborated Charles Creitz for Fox News, “Officials pointed to several Endangered Species Act-listed species they say triggered undue or burdensome restrictions by treating habitat modification as potential ‘harm’ to protected species.
“Officials argued the change led to unnecessary restrictions on energy projects in Texas’ lucrative Permian Basin.
“Officials also cited the lesser prairie-chicken, a grassland bird,” Creitz explained, “whose federal protections have drawn opposition from farmers, ranchers and energy developers across New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado.
“The fight over habitat-based ‘harm’ dates back decades,” Creitz recounted, citing “the northern spotted owl, whose 1990 Endangered Species Act listing fueled a long-running battle over timber harvesting in the Pacific Northwest and was blamed for job losses.
“A 2021 study in the Journal of Environmental Economics & Management,” Creitz said, “estimated the owl’s Endangered Species Act listing reduced timber employment by roughly 16,000 to 32,000 jobs in the Pacific Northwest and northern California.”
“Umbrella species” strategy
The northern spotted owl debacle, leading to the present massacre 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,” and, coincidentally in many cases, to protect scenic landscapes favored by donors.
The ecological rationale 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 environmentalists having to fight costly and exhausting battle after battle on behalf of unknown, obscure, and/or relatively unpopular but also endangered species.
No one saw barred owls coming
Barred owls at the time were not even on anyone’s radar screen as potential “friendly fire” victims, having first been documented in Washington state in 1973 and in Oregon a year later.
Major environmental groups joined battle in the names of northern spotted owls, bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, and declining salmon runs, especially, 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 deeply naïve and ultimately destructive of species conservation goals.
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.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Shoot, shovel, and shut up”
Hunters, fishers, loggers, ranchers, miners, trappers, and others forming much of the political muscle that put the Trump administration in office 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.
Never a chance of spotted owl recovery
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.
Protecting illusion
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.
“Scientists and wildlife managers have resorted to a bloody last-ditch gambit to rescue the bird,” Sarah Crespi, Seth Thomas Scanlon, and Warren Cornwall summarized for Science on July 9, 2026.
“Over the past 17 years, they have tested whether they can shoot enough barred owls to enable spotted owls to come back, or at least hang on.
2,000 barred owls down
“In the past five years they have killed more than 2,000.
“The northern spotted owl was saved once before,” wrote Crespi, Scanlon, and Cornwall with unconscious irony. “In 1990, the owl was listed as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Courts soon halted most old-growth logging on federal lands. In response, then-president Bill Clinton’s administration adopted the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which put large swaths of spotted owl habitat off-limits to logging,” supposedly forever.
“Those actions dealt with what many assumed to be the biggest threat to the owls: habitat loss,” Crespi, Scanlon, and Cornwall continued.
“But around that time scientists were beginning to sound the alarm about a new problem,” habitat competition from spotted owls. Advocates for resumed and expanded logging soon seized upon the notion that barred owls rather than habitat loss was the major threat to northern spotted owl survival, creating an entire “blame the barred owls” industry.
“Feathery flood”
Barred owls, expanding their range westward, were first documented in heavily logged British Columbia in 1959.
“From there, a feathery flood began to inexorably move south,” Crespi, Scanlon, and Cornwall alleged.
“So few spotted owls have survived the onslaught that British Columbia has resorted to rearing nearly all its remaining known birds in captivity, planning to release their offspring in a forest reserve where officials recently shot several dozen barred owls. Washington state, where the number of spotted owls has shrunk to fewer than 150 mated pairs, is considering following suit.
“Oregon is only slightly better off, with estimates of fewer than 900 pairs.”
“By contrast, today there are an estimated 100,000 barred owls in the western United States.”
Targeting four times more barred owls than exist
But the northern spotted owl protection plan authorized by the Trump administration calls for killing as many as 450,000 barred owls in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and California over the next 30 years––a tacit admission that the barred owl population is likely to continue to expand despite the killing.
(See Barred owl massacre isn’t about saving spotted owls; it’s about saving face and “Kill the barred owls!” agree U.S. Senate Democrats with Republicans.)
Spotted owls are far from the only animals targeted as scapegoats for habitat change, including climate change, the very existence of which is denied by the Trump administration.
Sometimes the purported threats from adaptive species and the threats from climate change combine into one, as Inside Climate News writer Paula Dobbyn alleged in a July 11, 2026 article headlined “Climate change is helping an invasive predator wreak havoc on iconic Alaskan fish.”
Northern pike
Reported Dobbyn, “The Alaska Department of Fish & Game is aggressively trying to control the proliferation of northern pike,” the same ubiquitous species that Vermonters notoriously shoot in Lake Champlain tributaries.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game mission “is to kill as many northern pike as possible,” Dobbyn continued, since “Increasingly, their menu includes baby salmon and rainbow trout, iconic species prized by Alaskans and anglers from around the state, the Lower 48 and beyond.
“While endemic to much of western and northern Alaska,” Dobbyn conceded, “pike are an invasive species south of the Alaska Range, a 600-mile expanse of mountains stretching from the Canadian border to the Aleutian Island chain. Pike,” also an “iconic species prized by Alaskans and anglers from around the state, the Lower 48 and beyond,” though Dobbyn did not acknowledge this, “were likely introduced illegally in the 1950s,” Dobbyn wrote, “and have since spread throughout much of Southcentral Alaska.”
Not introduced at all
“Through sustained efforts,” Dobbyn claimed, “Fish and Game has successfully eradicated them on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. But the sharp-toothed apex predators have invaded more than 150 waterways around Anchorage and farther north in the Mat-Su, decimating native fish species as well as local sportfishing lodges and hurting air charter businesses that fly anglers to remote waterways.”
Setting aside Dobbyn’s misuse of the term “decimating,” which means to kill one in ten, and her rocky grammar, the Fairbanks Daily News Miner of June 9, 1958 documents that the Alaska Department of Lands was trying to extirpate native northern pike from the Kenai Peninsula as early as 1951, in order to stock introduced rainbow trout.
This was 19 years after the Fairbanks Daily News Miner mentioned a bush pilot catching two 15-pound northern pike in Castle Rock Lake, near Healy, 250 miles north of Anchorage, well north of the Mat-Su region.
Killing northern pike will not reverse global warming
“One peer-reviewed paper, published in the journal Biological Invasions last February,” Dobbyn rattled on, “found that as water temperatures warm due to climate change, pike in Southcentral Alaska are becoming hungrier and more aggressive as their metabolisms ramp up.
“The implications of this discovery for salmon, trout and other species—adult pike are known to eat ducklings, eagle chicks, voles, shrews and even juvenile pike—may be profound,” Dobbyn projected.
But even a cursory check of the range maps for every species that Dobbyn mentioned shows that their habitat and that of northern pike have almost entirely overlapped in northern latitudes for many millions of years, during which all of these species have co-existed.
Water temperatures warming due to climate change may indeed upset the relative balance of species. Killing northern pike, however, will do nothing to reverse that.
And no, northern pike do not eat whales
Warmer waters are also afflicting gray whales, explained Shannon Handy for KGW television in Portland, Oregon on July 8, 2026––and killing any number of northern pike will not help them at all.
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports a staggering 145 gray whales have been found stranded dead on the West Coast [in the first half of 2026], including regions in Mexico and Canada,” Handy said.
“The current stranding rate starkly contrasts with the previous two decades, where the average number of stranding per year was around 43 from 2006 to 2023. In 2025, the number surged to 179,” but that was over a full year.
“Miyoko Sakashita, from the Center for Biological Diversity, indicates that starvation is a leading factor in these whale deaths,” Handy continued. “She attributes the lack of food to climate change, particularly the warming of the Arctic, which has adversely affected the whales’ food supply during their summer feeding months.”
After starvation, ship strikes are the second leading cause of gray whale deaths, accounting for 24 so far in 2026.
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Thanking you for these discouraging updates, and feeling, as usual, disgust.
The only species that legitimately DESERVES annihilation is our own.
Politicians without the slightest biological intelligence or knowledge making life and death decisions about animals is reprehensible. Whenever these idiots are unleashed like the rabid dogs they are, the damage they do spans decades and ALWAYS makes things worse, never better.
The Supreme Court has turned into a rogue kangaroo court of toadies and asskissers, anything BUT ethical law. As for the incompetent idiot who currently has invaded the White House, he urgently needs removal. At the rate some of the overdue members of Congress are dropping, maybe there is hope.
Frankly, if the aliens come to earth to take over, I will be the human who gives them the list of names of who to eat first.
As usual from these posts , one learns that all concerns are FAR MORE complex than previously understood, which is a valuable and humbling lesson.
I had no comprehension of much that you discuss. but agree wholeheartedly with those comments which voice that the current Administration and the Supreme Court are as proudly ignorant of critical eco concerns as is feared by experts in the field and ,as such, are destructive beyond imagining to a healthy future in those vital areas.
This bodes ill, if not calamitous, to our , and umpteen species futures . The law can be manipulated for the benefit of those in current power, and the carnage will be , and already is proving to be, monumental. Terrifying!