Steve Wilent

Would you shoot one large, beautiful owl to save a few large, beautiful owls of a different species? Would you shoot a few hundred thousand owls? Back in 2021, the findings of long-term research by a group of scientists showed that northern spotted owls benefitted when the numbers of competing barred owls was reduced. This was not surprising. Barred owls, cousins to the spotted owl, are larger, more aggressive, and more willing and able to use habitats other than old-growth forests, which spotted owls prefer. In 1990, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the northern spotted owl—there are California and Mexican subspecies, too—as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because of declines in the owl’s old-forest habitats. The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted in 1994, dramatically reduced the rate of logging of old-growth forests on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest.