©Mael Glon/USFWS

The push to kill one kind of owl to save another has reached Oregon’s Elliott State Research Forest. Beginning Thursday, contractors will begin shooting invasive barred owls inside the 83,000-acre state-owned territory, in an effort to protect northern spotted owl populations. The state hired them to kill up to 350 barred owls over the next year as part of a bigger effort led by the federal government, according to Amy Price, research biologist at the Elliott state forest. “We are using the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s management strategy,” she said. “We could have come up with our own strategy, but we chose to follow them, because the science has already been done.” That federal agency has authorized the killing of almost half a million invasive barred owls across Oregon, Washington and California — and has an unlikely array of allies and opponents. 

Related coverage in The Northcoast Environmental Center: Future of a New Resident: Barred Owls