A plan to shoot 450K owls, to save a different owl, could be in jeopardy

An unusual alliance of Republican lawmakers and animal rights advocates, together with others, is creating storm clouds for a plan to protect one threatened owl by killing a more common one.

Last August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan to shoot roughly 450,000 barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington over three decades. The barred owls have been out-competing imperiled northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest, as well as California spotted owls, pushing them out of their territory.

Supporters of the approach — including conservation groups and prominent scientists — believe the cull is necessary to avert disastrous consequences for the spotted owls.

But the coalition argues the effort is too expensive, unworkable and inhumane. They’re urging the Trump administration to cancel it and lawmakers could pursue a reversal through special congressional action.

Last month, The Times has found, federal officials canceled three owl-related grants to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife totaling roughly $1.1 million, including one study that would remove barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

A female barred owl sits on a branch in the wooded hills, Dec. 13, 2017, outside Philomath, Ore.

(Don Ryan / Associated Press)

Two were nixed before federal funding was allocated and never got off the ground, Peter Tira, a spokesperson for the state wildlife agency, said. Another, a collaboration with University of Maryland biologists to better understand barred owl dispersal patterns in western forests, was nearly complete when terminated.

“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we are eliminating wasteful programs, cutting unnecessary costs and ensuring every dollar serves a clear purpose,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement when asked whether the grants had been terminated.

Another lever would be for Congress to overturn the owl-kill plan altogether using the Congressional Review Act.

The Government Accountability Office concluded in a late-May decision that the plan is subject to that act, sometimes used by new presidential administrations to reverse rules issued by federal agencies in the final months of prior administrations. Both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution to undo it.

In the months leading up to the GAO determination, bipartisan groups of U.S. House members wrote two letters to the secretary of the Interior laying out reasons why the owl-cull plan should not move forward. In total, 19 Republicans and 18 Democrats signed the letters, including seven lawmakers from California — David Valadao (R-Hanford), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), Gil Cisneros (D-Covina), Josh Harder (D-Tracy), Linda T. Sánchez (D-Whittier), Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and Adam Gray (D-Merced).

Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas), an ardent Trump supporter, signed the initial letter, and is “currently exploring other options to end this unnecessary plan, which prioritizes one species of owls over another, and wastes Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” communications director Emily Matthews said.

Kamlager-Dove said also said earlier this year that she objected to killing one species to preserve another. “And as an animal lover, I cannot support the widespread slaughter of these beautiful creatures,” she said.

If a resolution is introduced, passed and signed by President Trump, the plan will be over. The Fish and Wildlife Service would not be allowed to bring forward a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which supports reducing the barred owl population, called the specter of the Congressional Review Act “very scary.”

It’s “an intrusion by Congress into areas where we’re relying on high agency expertise and scientific understanding,” he said. “It’s vibes versus science.”

A California spotted owl is shown inside the Tahoe National Forest in California on July 12, 2004.

(Debra Reid / Associated Press)

Wheeler said he believed it was more likely the program would be deprioritized amid budget cuts than eliminated through the Act.

“If we don’t move forward with barred owl removal, it will mean the extinction of the northern spotted owl, and it will likely mean the extinction of the California spotted owl as well,” he said.

Science is on its side, he said. A long-term field experiment showed that where barred owls were killed, the population of spotted owls stabilized.

For animal welfare activist Wayne Pacelle, who has galvanized opposition to the owl-cull plan, it’s a hopeful turn of events.

“Even if they had full funding for this, we don’t think it could possibly succeed,” said Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy. The land area where the barred owls need to be controlled is just too vast, he said. And barred owls from elsewhere, he said, will simply fly in and replace those that are felled.

As few as 3,000 northern spotted owls are left on federal lands. The brown raptors with white spots are listed as threatened under both the California and federal Endangered Species Act.

California spotted owls are also in decline, and federal wildlife officials have proposed endangered species protections for two populations.

The two sides of the fierce debate agree that barred and spotted owls compete for nesting sites and food — such as woodrats and northern flying squirrels.

Barred owls and spotted owls are similar in appearance and can even interbreed. But barred owls are more aggressive and slightly larger, in addition to being more generalist when it comes to what they’ll eat and where they’ll live, allowing them to muscle out their fellow raptors.

Federal wildlife officials and some conservationists consider barred owls invasive.

As Europeans settled the Great Plains, they suppressed fire and planted trees, allowing barred owls to expand westward from their origin in eastern North America, biologists believe.

“I would call this an invasion, and I would call these non-native species,” Wheeler said.

On the flip side, some see the owl arrival along the West Coast as natural range expansion.

There are also conflicting views of the cost of exterminating so many owls.

Opponents estimate it will cost about $1.35 billion, extrapolated from a $4.5-million contract awarded to a Northern California Native American tribe last year to hunt about 1,500 barred owls over four years.

A 2024 research paper, however, concluded that barred owl removal in the range of the northern spotted owl would cost from $4.5 million to $12 million per year in its initial stages, and would likely decrease over time. At $12 million a year, the 30-year plan would run $360 million.

Pacelle’s Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have also sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in U.S. District Court in Washington state over the plan. Friends of Animals, another animal welfare group, filed suit in Oregon.

Wheeler’s Environmental Protection Information Center has intervened in the suits in defense of the plan, and those cases continue to advance.