Dear friend,

There are so many reasons to oppose the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s diabolical plan to allow “hunters” to kill up to 470,000 barred owls across as many as 24 million acres of land in California, Oregon, and Washington.

• It is doomed to fail and will invariably fall short of the goal of protecting spotted owls.
• It takes aim at a North American native owl species that has adapted to human alterations of their habitats.
• Shooting look-alike owls is a diversion from the real threat of habitat loss — the root cause of spotted owl depletion.

But let’s add one more reason for this federal wildlife agency folly: it will require an invasion of owl hunters into a set of National Park Service units throughout the Pacific Northwest, including many gems of that popular land system.

The lush forests of Olympic National Park will see hunters spending thousands of days and nights afield to shoot owls. Visitors to Crater Lake National Park will see hunters hiding behind Ponderosa pines and aiming at birds in flight or perched on the trees. The cathedral forests of Redwood National Park will have the echo of gunfire.

We will soon write to the superintendents of these national parks and urge them to opt out of this plan. The execution of the kill plan is at odds with the ecological and cultural values that the superintendents have agreed to uphold.

USFWS Plans Largest-Ever Raptor Killing Plan in the World

Late last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cooked up this plan to kill nearly half a million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. Now it’s approved, and the agency is recruiting private citizens to shoot thousands of owls.

Why? Perhaps, according to some theories, because climate change and human effects on forests and grasslands have prompted barred owls to expand their range. The birds who have traveled farthest west over the last 80 years now occupy the same forests where Northern spotted owls live.

Range expansion by species is as natural as the sun rising or the clouds forming. That’s how ecological systems work, and it’s occurring every day, with hundreds of species. Barred owls and spotted owls are already interbreeding and producing hybrid offspring that will be more adaptable to a changing ecosystem. That, again, is nature at work.

Our own government sanctioning this attack on a North American species seems like a mighty dangerous path to head down. Do we want agency personnel knee-deep in the business of killing native species to protect other native species in a world where we’ve scrambled the workings of land and ocean ecosystems?

If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes down this road of managing social interactions between animals, where will it end? There are more than 1,300 federally listed threatened and endangered species, and you can be sure that there are thousands of other species competing with them every day in our nation.

Turning Our National Parks into Killing Fields

Most national parks and national monuments in the United States forbid sport hunting and commercial trapping of wildlife. That’s done to protect wildlife but also to enhance the visitor experience. Unhunted wildlife populations are easier to see.

To kill 470,000 owls will require an invasion of iconic parks throughout the Northwest.

We now have a coalition of 200 organizations to stop this ghastly plan. That will grow as people understand that the superintendents of national parks have been hoodwinked into participating in this strategy, which, according to the agency, should continue for at least 30 years if it’s started!

We don’t want to be on duty and stand aside when our own federal government designs the largest intentional raptor slaughter project the world has ever known.

We cannot victimize animals for adapting to human disturbances of the environment. Smarter, more strategic, less violent uses of the agency’s limited time and resources are what’s needed.

This is a case of the federal wildlife agency not seeing the forest for the trees.

Please donate to our campaign to stop a heavy-handed, unworkable plan that will have the effect of opening up owl “hunting” in a set of our country’s national parks.

For all animals,

Wayne Pacelle

Wayne Pacelle President Animal Wellness Action