San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Slaughter of barred owls ethical?
In the dead of night, hunters armed with 12-gauge shotguns hit the woods of Northern California in search of barred owls. Pre-recorded bird calls lure the large predators from the treetops. As shots ring out, owls plummet from the sky.
From 2013 to 2019, 2,485 barred owls were killed like this on the West Coast. This wasn’t poaching. The hunters had the blessing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which greenlit efforts to eradicate the invasive owls.
Now, the federal government plans to expand this effort, aiming to slaughter 470,000 barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington. The project’s primary goal is to protect spotted owls, a native species whose numbers have plummeted 75% over the past two decades. Their decline is partly due to logging in old-growth forests, but the arrival of barred owls over the past few decades hasn’t helped.
Barred owls are native to eastern North America, but in the early 1900s, they began to move west. Unlike wild boars or American bullfrogs, which were introduced by humans, barred owls have made their way across the country on their own.
One theory is that as European settlers planted trees in the Great Plains, the owls were able to migrate west. By the 1970s they reached the Pacific Northwest. Over the past few decades, their population has boomed. They’re bigger, more aggressive and can eat a wider variety of food than their spotted relatives.
Killing these invaders seems to work; a study showed that spotted owl populations rebounded after barred owls were killed in their habitats.
As news of the government’s proposal spreads, so has resistance to killing owls. It’s divided wildlife experts and birders and raised larger questions about how to respond to the intractable problem of plants and animals thriving in places where humans say they don’t belong.
As a burgeoning birder myself, I’ve felt conflicted. Where is the line when it comes to eradicating invasive species and does it shift depending on a creature’s likability?
California has long been home to non-native species.
Millions of dollars are spent each year on eradication, as experts hustle to keep abreast of existing invasive species, and the appearance of new creatures and plants.
Some species are nipped in the bud with little protest, such as the European grapevine moth. It was first discovered in Northern California in 2009 and declared eradicated just seven years later. The channeled apple snail didn’t garner sympathetic champions armed with petitions, nor has the quagga mussel.
When Catalina Island Conservancy officials released a plan to shoot 2,000 invasive mule deer from helicopters, however, residents of the island revolted. Never mind that the deer have slowly been eating their way through native plants, allowing flammable, invasive weeds to thrive.
Similar outrage has arisen regarding the government’s plan to kill barred owls. In a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland last month, 75 wildlife and animal welfare organizations slammed the plan, raising concerns that it could result in further deaths of spotted owls.
The letter also questions whether migration patterns — spurred by nature or human interference — should even be penalized.
“Climate change will trigger all sorts of species movements, and we cannot responsibly judge which species have strayed too much from the confines of their current range,” the letter said.
Killing barred owls will help vulnerable spotted owls survive. And the feds’ plan doesn’t propose eliminating barred owls — just culling their population to give their counterparts a better chance at survival.
But it’s still complicated, according to Alex Godbe, executive director of All About Owls, a Petaluma-based educational organization. Godbe said she doesn’t believe barred owls are the villains here. She echoed the letter’s point about the fine line between a species invading a new area and broadening the scope of its territory.
“Losing the spotted owl would be unthinkable,” she told me. “But the culling of another species of owl in the hundreds of thousands is still hard to come to terms with.”
With their penchant for survival, barred owls will likely continue to find new places to live.
“We imagine the barred owls will keep expanding their range, so will the killing ever end?” Godbe said. “Could nature find a balance again, without the drastic measures to kill the barred owl and for the spotted owl to adapt somehow? Is there time? It’s a horrible dilemma.”
As I learn more about these owls, I’m stuck on the fact that it appears they broadened their range on their own, shifting their territory along with the country’s human population. This reminds me of coyotes, which are so excellent at adapting to new environments that they’ve expanded their range from the Southwest to San Francisco, where they’re beloved residents of Golden Gate Park. There’s a delineation in my mind between the human introduction of an invasive species and an animal simply taking advantage of a new, welcoming territory.
That doesn’t resolve whether we should do something about animals entering new regions. In the Bay Area, time is of the essence to decide. The region is still in the early stages of barred owl invasion, with only a few individuals at most seen each year, which makes getting ahead of the problem even more urgent, according to Renée Cormier, senior avian ecologist with Point Blue Conservation Science, who has tracked spotted owl populations in Marin County since 2006.
“Removal of barred owls in Marin and areas immediately to the north would be more effective than waiting until they’re more established in the county,” she told me.
I dove into this story about barred owls expecting to conclude whether the government’s plan is sound. Instead, I’m further from an opinion than when I started.
What responsibility do we have to protect vulnerable species?
I don’t have an answer, but I understand why the barred owl plan was proposed. So much of the devastation of the planet’s natural resources feels intractable; preserving even a small portion of the world’s coral reefs, for instance, is a gargantuan and expensive undertaking.
Comparatively, there is an incredibly simple solution to saving the spotted owl. It’s hard to walk away from that.