Barred owl and spotted owl

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a plan to start killing 15,000 barred owls a year in the Pacific Northwest, starting as soon as this fall. This extraordinary initiative — more than a dozen years in the making — is intended to save the imperiled northern spotted owl from extinction. Barred owls have been moving west into spotted owl territory for decades, aggressively outcompeting them for prey and nesting sites. If its plan is adopted, the federal agency will soon launch what’s expected to be a three-decade campaign in which certified hunters will eventually shoot nearly half a million barred owls. Bridget Moran, with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Bend, Oregon, has been working on the strategy. “The spotted owl is at a crossroads. We have the science to indicate what we can do to conserve spotted owls, and [it’s] telling us that we must manage barred owls in addition to habitat to save them.”