(Beth Clifton collage)
Throwing money down a rat hole will not save spotted owls, who only eat red tree voles
WASHINGTON D.C.––Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle has a $1.35 billion budget cut recommendation for Department of Governmental Efficiency co-directors Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy:
Ax the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service plan to kill as many as 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years in a “Hail Mary” effort to preserve the estimated population of 3,000 to 5,200 endangered northern spotted owls on federal land, without protecting the old growth forests that are spotted owls’ only habitat.
Killing 450,000 barred owls might keep them from expanding into spotted owl range, competing with spotted owls for prey and habitat––or might not, since spotted owls were already in steep decline decades before spotted owls came, thriving in second growth where spotted owls rarely if ever venture.
(See Why would anyone want to shoot half a million barred owls?)
Barred owl. (Beth Clifton photo)
Politically easy cut for Trump administration?
Cutting the barred owl-killing budget might be politically easy for the newly inaugurated Republican majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, and for the incoming Donald Trump administration.
The previous Donald Trump administration in 2021 tried to open up 3.4 million acres of old growth on federal land to expanded logging.
The presence of spotted owls on some of that land thwarted Trump.
The new Donald Trump administration is likewise expected to favor old growth logging, but with Republican majorities in both the Senate and the House, is also expected to favor weakening the “critical habitat” provisions of Endangered Species Act that have made the spotted owl the emblem of scenic landscape preservation, rather than of actually saving endangered species.
Barred owl. (Merritt Clifton photo)
A third of the western barred owl population is at risk
The west coast logging industry, headquartered mostly in states that did not vote for Trump, whose Congressional delegations are overwhelmingly comprised of Democrats, might oppose cancelling the scheduled barred owl massacre, just in case protecting spotted owls somehow again gets in the way of logging.
But hardly anyone, in politics or out, seems to believe that killing a third of the western population of barred owls is a worthwhile conservation objective––except, of course, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the several major conservation organizations whose legal strategies, decades ago, created the present conundrum.
Spotted owl chick. (Beth Clifton collage)
“Here is a government program run amok”
Charged Pacelle on January 3, 2025, as the new Congress was sworn in, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is strong-arming the National Park Service to open up some of our most iconic parks to owl hunting. Many of the units are household names and lifelong destinations for so many of us — Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, Olympic National Park in Washington, Redwoods National Park in California.
“The control area is a staggering 24 million acres!
“At a time when there is so much talk of cutting government waste,” Pacelle suggested, “here is a government program run amok. A colossal waste of money and life. A government assault on a forest owl species [barred owls] protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for a century.
“A recent grant by the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation — whose largest donor is the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service — provided a benchmark cost estimate for the program,” Pacelle explained.
(Beth Clifton collage)
$3,000 per owl
“The foundation funded a $4.5 million grant request by the Hoopa Valley Tribe,” of northern California, to kill up to 1,500 owls. Taking the total grant cost and applying it to the number of owls to be killed, the cost estimate per owl is $3,000.
“With this investment-to-cost ratio as a new baseline for an economic analysis, the cost of killing 450,000 owls across the Northwest over 30 years would be $1.35 billion.
“That’s a budget buster,” Pacelle assessed, “since the entire annual budget for recovering all 1,300 federally listed threatened and endangered species is $82 million.
“Funding a doomed plan,” Pacelle pointed out, “may doom dozens of other species.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Opposition tripled in six months
Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy in March 2024 filed notice of intent to sue the Department of Interior, of which the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is a branch, co-signed by 75 other organizations concerned with animals and habitat.
By November 2024, when the lawsuit itself was filed, the supporting coalition included “more than 250 organizations,” Pacelle said.
George W. Bush, a Republican, was U.S. President in 2005, when the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service first proposed to shoot barred owls to encourage spotted owl recovery.
The scheme subsequently survived through the administration of Barack Obama, a Democrat; the first Donald Trump administration; and the administration of Joe Biden, another Democrat.
Barred owl rests on a branch.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Boondoggle began more than 50 years ago
But the political reasons for shooting barred owls in the name of protecting spotted owls really have little or nothing to do with either Democrats or Republicans, and everything to do with conservation fundraising and political strategy more than 50 years ago, in the very first years after passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, during the Richard Nixon administration.
Indeed, the conservation fundraising issue began even before that, in the early days of high-volume direct mail fundraising, soon after the 1969 privatization of the U.S. Postal Service introduced bulk mail discounts.
The 1966 Endangered Species Preservation Act had already created the first U.S. Endangered Species list, seven years before the 1973 Endangered Species Act added mechanisms to protect the listed animals and plants.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Desperately seeking eco-Smokey
In the interim, fundraisers for some of the “Big Six” U.S. conservation groups––the National Wildlife Federation, the Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Wilderness Society, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, only founded in 1970––soon realized that they could ride the rise of environmental concern if they could find an animal to symbolize the cause, much as Smokey Bear had already come to symbolize forest fire prevention.
Through much the same process of showing photos of various potential symbolic species to focus groups that in 1971 made Woodsy Owl the animal totem of the U.S. Forest Service, the direct mail gurus discovered the potential appeal of spotted owls.
Tested but rejected, temporarily, were other endangered species list candidates who were at the time either perceived as dangerous to humans, such as wolves and grizzly bears, or less well known, such as manatees, or at the time seldom seen, such as whales, before the rise of the whale-watching industry.
Spotted owl chicks.
(Tom Kogutus/USFWS aia Wikimedia photo).
Cute, cuddly, non-threatening
While the public did not recognize spotted owls in particular, owls in general were well-known, well-liked, and spotted owls in particular were small enough to seem cute, cuddly, and non-threatening.
The passage of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, including provisions for protecting “critical habitat” for listed species, inspired a further search by several of the “Big Six” conservation groups for “umbrella species,” whose “critical habitat” might cover the range of many other potentially endangered species.
If the critical habitat provisions of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 could be invoked on behalf of “umbrella species,” the reasoning went, many other animals and plants could be protected, along with much scenic landscape, without the “Big Six” and a multitude of other upstart organizations having to fight costly and exhausting battle after battle on behalf of unknown, obscure, and/or relatively unpopular but also endangered species.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Sought to protect whole Pacific Northwest
First, though, Endangered Species Act protection had to be won for the “umbrella species.”
Barred owls at the time were not even on anyone’s radar screen as potential “friendly fire” victims, having first been documented in Washington in 1973.
The “Big Six” joined battle in the names of spotted owls, bald eagles, wolves, grizzly bears, and declining salmon runs, in hopes of putting almost the whole of the Pacific Northwest, the part of the U.S. hosting the most species then perceived to be endangered, under protected conservation status.
In hindsight, the “umbrella species” conservation strategy of the early 1970s was naïve. Instead of putting almost a quarter of the land mass of the Lower 48 states under protected status, the “umbrella species” strategy put many endangered species in the crosshairs, from wolves and grizzly bears to some of the most obscure varieties of brine shrimp.
Spotted owl, grizzly bear, & hunter.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Shoot, shovel, and shut up”
Hunters, fishers, loggers, ranchers, miners, trappers, and others increasingly saw their economic interests––often their personal livelihoods––in potential jeopardy, leading to the mantra of “Shoot, shovel, and shut up” uttered in response to any discovery of endangered or threatened animals on private property.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 had been passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, but by 1980 the “umbrella species” conservation strategy had already evolved into the political “wedge strategy” dividing urban from rural voters, creating the “red state” versus “blue state” dichotomy that prevails today.
Meanwhile, years before restoration of wolves and grizzly bears became politically controversial, “spotted owl” became fighting words throughout the west, largely because it was legally questionable whether spotted owls––northern, western, or Mexican––should ever have been considered endangered in the first place.
California, northern, & Mexican spotted owls.
(Beth Clifton collage)
No chance of spotted owls “recovering” to abundance
Spotted owls had always been known to be a scarce, if broadly distributed species, strongly favoring old growth forests inhabited by red tree voles, almost exclusively the spotted owl food source.
There was never any likelihood of spotted owls “recovering” to abundance, because old growth forest by definition takes 150 years or longer to grow. The old growth forest that existed in 1973 was all that would ever exist within the lifespan of any living person or animal.
But “umbrella species” theorists pushed to include younger forest land adjacent to old growth as “critical habitat” for spotted owls too.
And that is where the conflict between barred owls and spotted owls developed. Instead of expanding outward into younger growth with few if any red tree voles, spotted owls remained isolated in old growth, while newly arrived barred owls came to occupy the adjacent younger forests, including second growth.
Red tree vole.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Another idea
Shooting the barred owls now may protect the illusion that “critical habitat” exists for spotted owls to recolonize, but they never actually occupied most of that habitat in the first place, not since the very first time it was logged, or was burned over by wildfire.
Neither will spotted owls ever occupy it within the foreseeable future, unless red tree voles can be persuaded to occupy it first, displacing the meadow voles, creeping voles, and grey-tailed voles who already live there.
Merritt & Beth Clifton.
Should the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service choose to try extirpating meadow voles, creeping voles, and grey-tailed voles in favor of red tree voles, the most successful vole predators at hand are barred owls.
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The post Hey Musk & Ramaswamy: save $1.35 billion! Ax the barred owl-killing scheme! appeared first on Animals 24-7.