A Violent Dilemma
Looking into USFW’s controversial strategy for barred owl management in the Pacific Northwest
Story by Emily Davis
Spotted owl illustration by Sofie Pichler
Spotted owls, native to the Pacific Northwest, are at risk of being outcompeted by the highly aggressive and much larger invasive barred owls. In the past six decades, barred owls have been taking over habitat, food and other resources from spotted owls, causing the population numbers of the smaller birds to drastically decline. Spotted owls are currently listed as an endangered species in Washington and federally listed as a threatened species.
Inhumane as it may sound, scientists have now proposed a plan to save the native spotted owls that involves shooting hundreds of thousands of barred owls.
Around 1900, European settlers removed obstacles that kept barred owls on the East Coast. Human interference, such as tree removal in the Northern Great Plains and potential effects of early climate change that ceased harsh weather of the Northern Boreal Forest, allowed barred owls to move west. Barred owls have since taken over in the Pacific Northwest due to their aggressive nature, broad diet, ability to nest in a wider range of habitats and quick reproduction rate.
“[Barred owls] weren’t originally part of the ecosystem that’s been evolving for thousands of years,” said Emilie Kohler, northern spotted owl species lead for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “So they have prey overlap, they eat some of the same prey species, they inhabit some of the same habitats. … After a number of years, we realized that they were competing.”
As explained by Robin Bown, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFW) lead for development of the Barred Owl Strategy and Environmental Impact Strategy, barred owls were first documented near Mount Baker in the 1970s. In the ‘90s, a study at Mount Baker acknowledged that barred owls might be an issue for spotted owl populations, but the scale of the problem wasn’t fully understood.
Later, in 2004, after conducting a routine five-year review of spotted owls, researchers determined that barred owls had a significant impact on spotted owl populations. By 2011, barred owls were listed as one of two primary threats for spotted owls, the other being habitat loss.
Starting in 2013, USFW conducted extensive experiments to test whether removing barred owls would improve the conditions for spotted owls. The experiments stopped in 2021 after proving that removing barred owls is a successful short-term strategy for increasing spotted owl populations.
According to USFW, the removal of barred owls had a strong positive effect on the survival of spotted owls in all the study areas throughout California, Oregon and Washington. Additionally, it had a weaker, but still positive, effect on spotted owl recovery. Where barred owls were removed, spotted owl populations stabilized. In areas with no removal, spotted owl populations continued to decline, at a rate of 12% annually.
Studies have shown that 80% of spotted owls have been lost in the Cle Elum Ranger District, Mount Rainier Ranger District and Olympic National Park. Additionally, spotted owl populations have been declining at rates between 5% and 9% from 1995 to 2018.
“Now we’re looking at functional extirpation in Washington within the decade,” Kohler said.
Functional extirpation, Kohler clarified, “is where there may be pockets of [a species], but they’re not really contributing to the stability of the population. They’re not increasing the population by being there. They may not be serving the same role in the ecosystem. They’re essentially extinct in Washington within a decade.”
With the results of experiments carried out by USFW and similar agencies, USFW developed and proposed the Barred Owl Management Strategy to lessen the impact of barred owls on spotted owl populations.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Barred Owl Management Strategy was published on Nov. 8, 2023. It consists of 264 pages of highly detailed information on the purpose of the barred owl management strategy, the biology of the birds, the potential impact of the strategy, ideas for removal methods and much more.
According to the EIS, it’s critical to manage the invasive barred owl before the spotted owl is extirpated so that Recovery Criterion 1 can be met. Meeting Recovery Criterion 1 would entail that the spotted owl population is maintained or increases over 10 years. As stated in the plan, “under the Strategy, management of barred owl populations would be accomplished by lethally removing barred owls, thereby reducing or eliminating barred owl populations.”
The removal is designed to reduce the number of barred owls in an area, be as humane and quick as possible, and cause little to no danger to other species. Additionally, the management plan includes strict requirements for entities to follow, such as submitting maps of where they will be removing the owls, a list of veterinary sources in case of accidental injury, and evidence of their knowledge and culling expertise.
“We are allowing removal for specialists with the appropriate training,” Bown said. “So, it’s not just anybody who wants to go out.”
Bown added that “it is voluntary ... We can’t and won’t force anyone to implement barred owl management.”
The USFW Barred Owl Management Draft states that “the protocol is designed to ensure a quick, humane kill, minimize the potential for non-fatal injury to barred owls, and strongly reduce the potential for non-target species injury or death.” These rules would be put in place to limit the harm to surrounding species, cut down on the possibility of errors, and ensure a quick and painless death of the target animal.
According to Kohler, plenty of thought went into the recommendation of lethal removal. Experts explored alternative strategies in depth, such as transporting the barred owls back to the East Coast, placing them into captivity and sterilizing them.
The idea of transporting the barred owls back east, however, caused concern about disease transmission. A highly pathogenic avian influenza could potentially spread if the birds were moved. Furthermore, because of the high density of barred owls still on the East Coast, surveys would need to be done to ensure that it wouldn’t disrupt their ecosystem.
Capturing and holding the barred owls was another idea, but raptors don’t thrive in captivity. It would also take a huge amount of time and effort to safely get them into captivity. This method would require a large number of highly trained professionals to safely capture the owls, and even then, the risk of death during transport would remain for the birds.
Finally, the experts considered sterilization, but they ultimately concluded that this would cause undue stress to the owls, making it a less ethical option overall. Furthermore, sterilization would have to be done surgically, and the animals would then have to be monitored to track their health.
So USFW decided on lethal removal as the quickest, most efficient and most humane way to manage barred owl populations.
Barred owl illustration by Sofie Pichler
“I would love if we didn’t have to remove barred owls in order to recover spotted owls,” Kohler said. “But that’s unfortunately the way it is. ... This wouldn’t be suggested if it wasn’t the only option that we have.”
Even with the extensive reasoning provided by the USFW Barred Owl Management Draft, the plan continues to face some skepticism.
Trina Bayard of the Washington Audubon Society, a widely recognized nature organization, was hesitant to even comment on the strategy, stating in an email that “the National Audubon Society is refraining from commenting on the proposed strategy to cull Barred Owls for the benefit of Northern Spotted Owls and California Spotted Owls.”
However, Stuart Earley, executive director of Tahoma Bird Alliance, a chapter of the Washington Audubon Society formerly known as the Tahoma Audubon Society, was quick to respond after his organization met about the issue. Earley stated on behalf of Tahoma Bird Alliance that they don’t believe that a management plan involving culling birds is appropriate – particularly when it has been acknowledged that it’s not a viable long-term solution. They feel that long-term and sustainable solutions, such as the preservation of old forests, are what’s necessary for the future of all birds.
“Our view is that humans need to fully understand the impacts that their actions have on damaging ecosystems,” Earley stated. “We can try and put right our own mistakes by understanding what we have done, and in this case doing much more to preserve old forest habitats, but slaughtering one wonderful bird species to preserve another locally, because we have made the habitat more suitable for that bird species, does not feel morally correct, and using lethal means to control barred owl populations should not be used to excuse more devastation of old forest.”
According to Kohler, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) is also currently looking at increasing spotted owl populations. The service is considering wild translocations, captive rearing, Northwest forest plans, forest practice rules, habitat conservation plans and programmatic Safe Harbor agreements as options.
At this point, the sheer number of barred owls could negate the effects of any conservation efforts to revive spotted owl populations. Still, some conservationists are optimistic that the USFW strategy will have a positive long-term effect on spotted owl populations. The strategy is a 30-year plan, expanding to more areas every decade, with the end goal being no longer needing to manage barred owl populations. However, there are many factors affecting spotted owl populations, such as wildfires, timber harvest and habitat quality to name only a few.
On the other side of that, due to globalization and climate change, it’s been made easier for certain invasive species to thrive in places they weren’t previously even able to live in.
“We know that if we do nothing – if we made that choice, a decision to do nothing – northern spotted owls are likely to go extinct in the very near future,” Bown said. “Well, all federal agencies have a responsibility under the Endangered Species Act, which was passed by the representatives of the American public and is relatively popular across the country. The law very specifically says we are supposed to use our authorities to carry out programs to conserve threatened and endangered species.”
The barred owl management strategy is a controversial proposal to save one species at the expense of another. USFW is currently reviewing input on the plan after a two-month public comment period, and a final decision will be made this summer on whether the strategy will be implemented.
Whatever they decide, only time will tell if it was the right call for the owls.