It’s hard to imagine the federal government paying hunters to shoot and kill owls, but that’s exactly what has begun in the Pacific Northwest and California, where the destruction of up to 450,000 barred owls is underway in a desperate bid to save spotted owls.
Following years of planning, and despite public backlash, objections from Congress, animal rights organizations and an ongoing lawsuit, the shooting of thousands of barred owls has started.
The Yakama Nation Tribe in Washington, using grant money provided by the federal government, is currently hunting and killing up to 1,500 barred owls on reservation land, while the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California, operating off a $4.5 million federal grant, has started removing barred owls from area forests.
A team from the University of Wisconsin has been participating in the shotgun culling of barred owls for several years.
The UW team has helped destroy 3,373 barred owls in California — around a third of the state’s population — as part of a key study researchers say shows the removal of the brown-and-white striped raptors slowed the decline of the threatened California spotted owl.
“Removals stabilized spotted owl populations and halted the establishment of barred owls,” researchers wrote in the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology. “Our work provides direct support for the federal strategy to address this pressing issue and highlights general strategies to maximize conservation while minimizing invader killing.”
Opponents, including animal welfare groups, biologists and environmentalists, have tried to stop government-sanctioned massacre, arguing it won’t increase the spotted owl population and is inhumane and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
“We’re going to be picking winners and losers in nature,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, which seeks to prevent animal cruelty and is suing to stop the plan. “Natural movements of animals are going to be judged as trespassing, and we are going to try to kill off these other animals to put our thumb on the scales for northern spotted owls. And it’s not going to work.”
The battle has reached the halls of Congress, where lawmakers continue to lobby the Trump administration to stop the culling. They cite an estimate from Animal Wellness Action that calculated the culling would cost the government up to $1.35 billion, or $3,000 per barred owl.
“In the spirit of fiscal responsibility and ethical conservation, we urge you to halt all spending on this plan to kill a native, range-expanding North American owl species,” a bipartisan group of 19 lawmakers wrote to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
There appears to be no immediate plan to halt the program. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it is issuing barred owl hunting permits it says will save the spotted owl from certain extinction.
The shooting will take place not only on tribal and private land but in the nation’s federal parks and forests, including Yosemite National Park, Redwoods National Park, Crater Lake and Mount Rainier.
The “invaders” — barred owls — began migrating from the eastern half of the United States a century ago when trees once cleared for bison began to regrow. Barred owls are now found throughout the habitat range of the spotted owl.
Their westward movement is a problem, researchers and government officials say, because the more robust barred owl competes for the same nocturnal prey and nesting areas in the increasingly limited old-growth forests that the spotted owl also favors.
While there are plenty of barred owls — roughly 3.5 million in North America — the population of spotted owls has declined significantly, despite restrictions put in place decades ago to prohibit logging in their habitats. They also have a lower reproduction rate than barred owls.
Spotted owls are listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The most recent study cited by U.S. officials found a decline of between 2% and 9% annually.
In one 2023 analysis, researchers estimated the Sierra Nevada population in Northern California had shrunk to as few as 2,218 spotted owls. The decline is far worse in Canada, where researchers say they haven’t seen a spotted owl in the wild since 2023.
Fish and Wildlife officials are determined to prevent their extinction in the U.S. and said the barred owl removal plan, which received final approval in 2024, “will ramp up over time” with the help of landowners and land managers who will hunt down and kill the elusive creatures.
They will use a tactic opponents call “hoot and shoot.” It involves hunters playing recorded owl calls to lure barred owls to them. Once in sight, hunters will kill them with a shotgun.
Barred owl hunters are also authorized to use nets, foot traps and “noose poles” to snag barred owls around the neck and then kill the creatures using an approved euthanasia method.
Animal Wellness Action and another animal welfare group, Friends of Animals, are suing to halt the federal government from handing out the special permits to hunt barred owls, which are protected along with the spotted owl and the nation’s 17 other owl species.
The lawsuit challenges the government’s labeling of the barred owl as an invasive species because they are native to North America and migrated west naturally, rather than through human intervention.
The lawsuit also argues that the data showing spotted owls’ recovery after the removal of the barred owl is flawed.
U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson has yet to issue a ruling in the case.
Mr. Pacelle said the government’s plan to remove barred owls will never solve the problem because the species will continue migrating west and replacing the barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington that the government is paying millions of dollars to destroy. The spotted owl’s main threat is the destruction of old-growth forests, he said.
“This is going to be a never-ending avian predator control program that the taxpayers are going to fund. It’s not going to do anything practical to help the northern spotted owl.”
The Washington Times reached out to the University of Wisconsin researchers and the Yakama Nation Wildlife Management Program.
The Interior Department declined to comment.
