Editorial: Bloody Solution to Owl Decline is the Right One

Staff Reports

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

The federal government dynamited the foundation of the region's historic economy to save the northern spotted owl.

The least it can do is authorize a little hunting to ensure the job's done right.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has not formally released its updated recovery plan for the northern spotted owl, but early hints suggest that one prominent — and sure to be controversial — tactic will be to authorize the widespread shooting of barred owls.

These larger, more aggressive cousins of the Northwest's most famous endangered owl have been colonizing the region's forests from Washington to Northern California since the 1970s. The intense competition for prey and habitat is thought to be one major reason spotted owl populations have steadily dwindled over the past two decades despite aggressive protection of federal forests.

Experiments in the past few years have shown that when barred owls are killed, spotted owls will quickly return to territory they'd been bullied out of. Scaling that success up, biologists under the recovery plan would target 1,200 to 1,500 barred owls in the first year, the Portland Oregonian has reported.

That's a lot of dead owls, but in the scheme of invasive-species management, it's far from unprecedented. The bloody truth is biologists routinely cull unwelcome outsiders that are crowding out rare and precious fish, birds and game.

Unlike many of those species, the barred owls didn't arrive via the hand of man. The East Coast natives just flew west and found welcome territory. It's easy to make the argument that nature is evolving on its own and we shouldn't stand in the way.

A further wrinkle: Barreds and spotteds cross-breed in the wild, in essence reuniting long-separated species lines. Driving off the barred owls might protect the genetic purity of the spotted owls, but at the same time it would prevent an apparently much-needed infusion of fresh blood. A farmer, in similar circumstances, would welcome the infusion of hybrid vigor, but the Endangered Species Act just doesn't work that way.

Until Congress changes that, we are stuck going to extraordinary, economy-choking lengths to protect the spotted owl. The other major plank of the recovery plan — even more habitat protection — reinforces the stakes there. The Northwest Forest Plan already scaled back logging dramatically over the past two decades. Are we supposed to lock up the forests that remain open to timber use and throw away the key?

No, if it's a choice between keeping what jobs remain in the woods and letting an outsider owl make the Northwest's endangered-species problems even worse, then the only tough question is what gauge shotgun to use.