No, They’re not Really Going to Shoot 450,000 Owls

With headlines such as “Federal agency plans to cull 450,000 barred owls to boost another species,” media nationwide announced the eyebrow-raising plan by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to protect the threatened and declining spotted owl from extinction. With its six-figure headline, the proposal has reverberated across the Pacific Northwest, provoking debates about how to ethically manage ecosystems that have been horribly mismanaged.

But the headlines are misleading. Megan Nagel, spokesperson for the USFWS, clarified that “This is not a target number for removal but is the maximum allowed” over the 30-year project period. The number – 450,000 – is a permitted cap, not a goal. According to those who work in spotted owl recovery, that level of killing is simply not going to happen. As for where barred owls will be killed, the plan itself limits that, and it probably won’t be anywhere near where you live. 

The Owls

Barred owls, an invasive yet somewhat-native bird that is the target here, used to be rare in the Pacific Northwest. The range maps in the field guides of my childhood show them as non-existent here. I recall a July evening in 1997 when I made my way to Wildwood Park near Puyallup to see my lifer barred owls. It was a family with new fledglings. Peering from low horizontal branches, they seemed as curious about me as I of them. I had learned of their presence from a local rare bird alert.

They’re not rare anymore. I regularly encounter them in my backyard in Port Townsend. Like brown-headed cowbirds and great-tailed grackles, they have spread far beyond their native North American range due to human modification of the landscape. Like bark beetles, their population has boomed with the forestry practices of European colonization. 

Many other species, of course, have gone the other way, declining due to habitat loss. Few have declined more than the spotted owl, a smaller cousin of the barred owl. From the Pacific Northwest to California’s Sierra Nevada, this owl is a key predator in old growth forest ecosystems. One of their favorite prey items is the flying squirrel.

Technically listed as federally threatened, spotted owls are endangered and declining, largely due to the loss of old growth forests. With these habitat changes, barred owls, which use a wider variety of forests and even residential areas, have moved in, spreading from the east and the Canadian boreal forest down thru the Pacific Northwest and into the mountains of California. They displace and kill spotted owls – and also western screech-owls. Writing in the Journal of Wildlife Management, Linda Long and Jared Wolfe summarized, “Barred owls exert an overwhelmingly negative influence on spotted owls, thereby threatening spotted owl population viability where the species co-occur.”

The last spotted owl in British Columbia disappeared a few years ago. On the Olympic Peninsula, where I go birding most days, I’ve never seen a spotted owl or a western screech-owl; they are both quite rare now.

The Plan

After a decade of pilot studies, the USFWS concluded that removing barred owls around nesting spotted owls works. In the absence of barred owls, spotted owls live longer and reproduce. Thus, their proposal – which they call a Strategy with a capital ‘S’ – is to kill barred owls to protect spotted owls.

After multiple public comment periods, the Strategy was finalized on July 3, 2024, as the “preferred option” in their Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The Record of Decision, the final legal seal, was issued August 28, 2024. For all this field work, analysis, reporting, paperwork, and public outreach and comment, they get a Special Purpose permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to kill barred owls.

The USFWS also maintains a website dedicated to this project, with a comprehensive list of FAQs.

The alarming number, actually 450,033 owls killed, is derived by assuming that approximately 15,000 owls will be killed each year for 30 years. Table 3-7 of the Final EIS has the exact calculations, which estimates the “maximum number of barred owls removed” under the permit. They actually included an option, which they rejected, that estimated removing over 700,000 barred owls. Given that the Strategy comes without funding or staffing and is largely limited to areas around the few remaining spotted owls, both of these six-digit numbers are fantasy.

The Logistics

Just how are barred owls removed? Using agency staff or trained contractors, barred owls are called in using a recording of their call and then shot with a shotgun. It’s pretty straightforward. During the pilot studies, 4,500 barred owls were killed and not a single spotted owl was shot by mistake.

Barred owl culling, however, is quite labor intensive. Assuming 15,000 owls are shot in one year, that would mean an average of 41 per night. Adjusting for holidays, weekends, and bad weather, that would increase to about 80 owls per night of work. Assuming a two-person hunting team can remove two pairs – 4 owls – per night on a good night, that would mean 20 staff devoted full time to barred owl removal. These are all optimistic numbers.

This gets us to the first limitation: staffing. Where are these staff coming from? Very few would come from the USFWS itself. The Strategy is dependent on “cooperating agencies.”

They list 11 such agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, and state agencies such as the Departments of Fish and Wildlife from Washington, Oregon, and California. They also mention that tribal and local agencies may be partners. At the bottom of their list, they add this caveat which seems to upend the definition of cooperation: “Designation as a cooperating agency does not imply that the agency supports the proposed Strategy or other alternatives that may be developed, and participation as a cooperating agency does not diminish or otherwise modify the agency’s independent statutory obligations and responsibilities under applicable Federal laws. Further, participation as a cooperating agency does not imply any future commitment of resources.”

That is to say, these agencies – the ones who will actually implement the Strategy – are not yet “cooperating.” They may not want to touch it with a ten-foot pole, may not have the money or staff time for it, and may find it in conflict with their other obligations. These could include anything from promoting camping and backpacking to deer hunting in barred owl target zones.

The second limitation is funding. The EIS acknowledges “Funding will be an important part of implementing the action. However, it is difficult to apply or budget for funding without the specifics of the action.” Apparently, targeting up to 80 owls per night is not specific enough. There are published estimates that range from $700 to $2,800 per owl removed. This works out to $56,000 to $224,000 per night of work, numbers that are simply infeasible. Regardless, the Strategy does not specify a funding source.

Concern regarding funding was raised repeatedly in the public comments, as was staff capacity. The USFWS’s response, which was repeated several times in the EIS, reminds the reader that the Strategy would be implemented “if funding and staffing were to be available.” They also used the ultimate fallback: “regulations do not require analysis of costs” at this stage. Right now, it’s just an idea and a permit.

They did add, “We anticipate that funding will come from a variety of sources based on the implementing entities,” which is another way of saying they are expecting that partnering agencies will provide both funding and staffing.

As for federal support, they say, “The Service cannot speculate on the level or source of funding that a Federal agency may choose to use for barred owl management…. Federal and State agencies operate on annual or biannual budgets and cannot guarantee specific funding actions over long periods. That does not reduce their commitment.” But it does reduce their commitment.

The final limitation comes from the Strategy itself: geographic scope. Barred owl removal is limited to the blue polygons outlined on the maps in the EIS (see Figures 2-2 thru 2-4). Especially in Washington, these are mostly national forests and parks. Reading deeper, barred owl management would be further limited to just half of each polygon at any one time.

While removal could occur anywhere within a polygon, “management would be focused on removing barred owls from within and around sites where northern spotted owls are present.” This makes sense. If you want to protect spotted owls from barred owls, target the barred owls near the spotted owls. “Near” is defined as within about two miles of known spotted owls.

Nagel summarized: “Barred owl removal would occur in strategic areas, within the mapped areas in the Strategy or around remaining spotted owl sites.” She added, “Barred owl management will not occur within neighborhood parks.”

This an enormous limitation because spotted owls are so rare. In much of Washington, there are so few spotted owls left that there simply aren’t many barred owls near them to shoot. Recent research has found spotted owls have declined 80% in Washington since the early 1990s (when they were already rare). In Oregon, they have declined at least 70% at most study sites. In California, declines were only 25 to 50%. This is all correlated with the spread of barred owls from north to south.

This part of the Strategy adds to the workload, because it means finding spotted owls first and then targeting barred owls in their vicinity. Neither of these steps are easy. Spotted owls are largely limited to unlogged forests, which tend to be in remote, difficult-to-access areas, often with very steep terrain. That’s why they were never logged. Just getting to promising locations typically involves a long drive on a mountainous dirt road, several miles of hiking, some of it off trail, and probably an overnight backpacking trip.

If a team making this journey is lucky, they may encounter more than one spotted owl territory on such a trip, but probably they’d just encounter one, or zero. At the spotted owl location, based on my personal experience, is probably one pair of barred owls that pose a threat to them. After hiking in, setting up camp, and waiting until near dark, the barred owls must be called in and then shot. Sometimes it works like a charm. Other times it doesn’t. Two spotted owl surveyors I spoke with told me that both spotted and barred owls can be surprisingly “skulky” and quiet, even when you know they are there. In that case, after that long drive and hike, the team would hear crickets. When I asked these surveyors about how these wildlife management agencies might be able to support staff to shoot 80 barred owls per night, every night, for 30 years, they thought it was absurd.

The Future

Setting aside these grandiose estimates, if only a dozen barred owls were removed from, say, Olympic National Park, in the vicinity of spotted owls, that could mean the difference between spotted owls persisting or becoming extirpated on the Olympic Peninsula. The Strategy – the permit and plan to shoot barred owls if necessary – is thus a good one. But it’s nothing more than just another tool in the toolbox. It will not be used 450,000 times. It will probably only be used a tiny fraction of that.

The key, as always, is habitat. Without functional old growth ecosystems, spotted owls will not exist. The reverse could also be said – without spotted owls, old growth ecosystems are incomplete. Fortunately, there are thousands of acres of second growth under protection. This century, some of that will be maturing into old growth. Hopefully, this Strategy will enable spotted owls to be part of these forests. Most of us will never hear a shot. But, in the future, our kids may hear them hooting – if they’re willing to backpack in.