Since 1990, the federal government has placed a stranglehold on the forest industry in Oregon and Washington and California in order to save a species of bird, Strix occidentalis caurina, better known as the Northern spotted owl.
The program has not been successful, experts tell us, with spotted owls declining 40 percent over the last 25 years. Meanwhile, the common striped barred owl, Strix varia, has horned in on the spotted owl territory. It’s a more aggressive bird.
What to do?
Why, call the barred owl an “invasive species” and shoot the interlopers, of course!
The slaughter, approved over a year ago, is now going forward, at the cost of a million dollars per year.
Though the government and reporters like to call the two species of owl “distant cousins,” they apparently interbreed, and their offspring — called “sparred owls” — look just like spotted owls. You might think that this is a problem that takes care of itself, but no. On with the slaughter!
Meanwhile, as Teresa Platts of the Property and Environment Research Center notes, vast sectors of national forest remain unlogged and unmanaged, while wildfire suppression continues … which leads, of course, to mega-fires. Coming soon.
The ways of animal flourishing, in the wild, are not the ways of the governments that aim to protect the wild. Both are cruel, but at least one can understand the processes of nature.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Owls to Spare?”
If they interbreed routinely, they are a niche breed, not a different species.
Sort of like Libertarians.
As a licenced resourse professional, I appreciate your exposing of the takeover, of government resource agencies since the 1970,s, by people with incompetent management skills and conflicting political objectives.
A lifetime of lost/eliminated jobs, a dead local economy driven to ruin by the federal government
and now the federal government interfering with nature just to keep and create federal jobs.
So this action killed one type of local job and the economy it supported and created layers of federal jobs.
Not to mention the increase cost of lumber and wood products.
The spotted owl and barred owl are the same species but different subspecies. The greenie-weenies in the field of biology categorized them as separate species so that they could use the Endangered Species Act to stop logging. (The ESA does not apply if only a subspecies is dying out.)
Our forests must be kept thinned and logged, owls can take care of themselves. Due to beneficial increased CO2, the trees, and all plants, are growing about 10% faster accumulating excess fuel for dangerous, destructive wildfires. Fire-break roads must be carved among the trees and brush before the fire starts, so men and machines can easily get to what will then be smaller, slower moving fires.
This will also help in using them for hiking and hunting.
I think that anyone found killing Barred Owls must be placed under citizens arrest and tossed into jail. Of maybe tossed into the lunchroom at the nearest saw mill. It is all about control and has nothing to do with Owls.
“The slaughter, approved over a year ago, is now going forward, at the cost of a million dollars per year.”
The installation of about a half-dozen bird shredding wind turbines fits the description: slaughtering birds and costing a million a year in subsidies and restraint payments!