A Wildlife Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Claire Carlson discusses the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls to protect the Northern spotted owl, even though their biggest threat is habitat destruction by humans.

An Owl’s Fight for Survival in the Northwest
From Claire Carlson, The Daily Yonder, DailyYonder.com
December 18, 2024

Barred owl (left) and Northern spotted owl (right). Images from Canva.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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In August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized a plan that involves the mass killing of the barred owl, an invasive species that infringes on the habitat of the Northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. 

Over the next 30 years, 450,000 barred owls could be killed in California, Oregon, and Washington to protect the Northern spotted owl – but there’s no promise that this plan will even work. 

Unlike other invasive species that were introduced by people to their new environments – Burmese pythons in Florida, mongoose in Hawaii, the domesticated cat literally everywhere – the barred owl moved to the Northwest on its own. 

Originally from the eastern part of North America, the owl started moving west in the early 20th century. The Fish and Wildlife Service theorizes that it could have been a natural expansion of the owl’s habitat, or a reaction to changes in the boreal forest and the Great Plains caused by European settler activity. Either way, the barred owl did what any species, human or otherwise, is built to do when its survival is at risk: adapt.

I still remember the first time I saw a barred owl in a wooded park just west of Portland, Oregon, hooting shrilly a handful of feet above my head. I stood there quietly as it swiveled its head one direction, then the other, before blinking down at me with its almond-shaped eyes. I know some people say looking an owl in the eye is bad luck (the first season of Reservation Dogs taught me that), but on that day it felt more like a gift to be in the company of this barred owl, a witness to its fight for survival. 

And it's a fight that this particular owl is currently winning. It shares many of the same food sources as the Northern spotted owl, but it’s larger, more aggressive, and more adaptable. Simply put, the barred owl is better at surviving than the spotted owl, whose numbers have been declining for years.

In the late 20th century, the spotted owl was at the center of the timber wars, a fight between Oregon loggers and environmentalists over forest that was economically essential to rural timber communities, but also vital to ecosystem health in the Northwest. It provided habitat to the spotted owl, which, because of its threatened species status, was granted federal protection through the Endangered Species Act. This means that the government is required to protect habitat that is critical to the species’ survival.

In the spotted owl’s case, this critical habitat consisted of old growth trees in the Northwest; the exact trees that loggers wanted to cut down. Environmentalists were able to use the Endangered Species Act to halt logging in certain parts of Oregon.

But 30-some years later, spotted owl numbers still haven’t made a comeback in the Northwest. Many people blame the barred owl for this, but the reality is more complicated than that. 

Sure, the barred owl is a threat to the spotted owl, but the bigger issue is humans. Deforestation, wildfires (about 85% of fires are human-caused), and rodenticide use all pose a significant threat to the survival of the spotted owl. 

As climate change causes temperatures to rise, the health of the old growth trees the bird relies on diminishes as insect outbreaks and wildfires become more common. The National Audubon Society estimates that by 2080, the spotted owl will have lost 98% of its winter habitat range because of warming temperatures.

Without also addressing these human-caused threats, killing 450,000 barred owls feels like a swing and a miss in protecting the spotted owl. The only guaranteed outcome of this plan is a bunch of dead birds. 

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: May 23, 2025
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See also: Barred Owl (Strix varia)