US Fish&Wildlife Service to shoot more than 500,000 barred owls

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Feds Propose Shooting One Owl to Save Another in Pacific Northwest
https://hamodia.com/2023/12/07/feds-propose-shooting-one-owl-to-save-another-in...
(The Seattle Times/TNS) — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to enlist shooters to kill more than 500,000 barred owls over the next 30 years in the Pacific Northwest to preserve ...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-government-wants-hunters-to-shoot-500000-owls/ar-AA1l959m

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants hunters to shoot more than 500,000 barred owls

As part of a draft management plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) wants to cull these invasive owls, and hopes to enlist hunters to shoot half a million of them over the next 30 years.

Barred owls have been in the Pacific Northwest since the 1950s, and they now outnumber northern spotted owls across Washington, Oregon and California. They pose such a threat to northern spotted owls as they are more aggressive and have a more varied diet, eating anything from insects and amphibians to fish and other birds. They are also larger and more territorial than the native owls, meaning that they displace the northern spotted owls, disrupting their nesting, competing with them for food, and even attacking them when they come too close.

Experts are confident that this program will successfully protect the spotted owls, however, as studies have found that killing barred owls stabilized spotted owl populations. The management plan hopes to only eradicate around 30 percent of the total barred owl population, which should be enough to take the pressure off the spotted owls.

"We know we can't fully eradicate them, but we know we can create [refuge] areas with much lower barred owl density that allows spotted owls to survive and thrive," Kessina Lee, state supervisor for the Oregon office of FWS, told the Seattle Times.