͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌ ͏‌To prevent cruelty to animals, we promote enacting and enforcing good public policies. To enact good laws, we must elect good lawmakers, and that’s why we remind voters which candidates care about our issues and which ones don’t. If you’d like to unsubscribe, click here. [[link removed]]

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More Members of Congress Urge U.S. Interior Secretary To Halt Barred Owl Massacre and Not Burn A Billion in Taxpayer Dollars
Dear friend,
There is surging opposition in Congress to the Biden Administration’s colossally cruel and unworkable plan to hire contract killers to massacre North American native barred owls from Washington’s border with Canada all the way to Kings Canyon National Park deep into California.
I’ve been talking to lawmakers from both political parties and still haven’t found a single one who’s willing to offer full-throated support for this billion-dollar scheme to play God with our native species in North America.
On the other hand, there are plenty of lawmakers stepping up and saying this mass slaughter of owls must not proceed. Today, U.S. Reps. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Adam Gray, D-Calif. , released a letter signed by 20 Members of Congress to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum asking him to scuttle this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to wage an unprecedented assault on barred owls across 17 national forests and 14 units of the National Park Service. The lawmakers, including U.S. Reps. Val Hoyle, D-Ore., and David Valadao, R-Calif., asked Secretary Burgum to “defund” the plan and to “suspend the issuance of take permits.” The new letter can be found here [[link removed]] .
The lawmakers said they “wish to associate ourselves with concerns raised by 19 of our colleagues who wrote to you on March 7, 2025, about a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) plan to kill more than 450,000 barred owls across 24 million acres in the Pacific Northwest over the next three decades.” That original letter is available here [[link removed]] .
“Even if executed perfectly, the plan could not hope to achieve its aim of reducing barred owl populations in the area, because millions of barred owls occupy the surrounding forests (including in Canada, where USFWS cannot manage them),” wrote the lawmakers. “The plan fails to explain why barred owls from those surrounding areas would not be attracted to the same nesting sites and simply fly in to replace the culled owls.”
From the get-go, Animal Wellness Action has been leading opposition to this deeply misguided government program and said that these nighttime owl shoots would invariably fall short of the goal of protecting spotted owls because the control area is a staggering 24 million acres. Not only would the plan require a small army of sharpshooters to find and shoot these nocturnal birds, nothing would stop surviving owls in the surrounding area from flying in and replacing them. The plan would put the federal government on a never-ending owl-killing treadmill.
Our government should never have taken aim at a North American native owl species in the first place. Yes, they are competing with spotted owls. Animals compete in ecosystems. That’s what happens in nature. It’s not the role of government to conduct the impossible task of managing social relationships between animals in nature.
Now with the Trump Administration cutting programs, this plan should itself be a high priority targeting for sidelining and saving taxpayer monies.
The American public doesn’t want its government to conduct the world’s largest-ever raptor slaughter. It doesn’t want owl shooting in 14 units of the National Park Service in the Pacific Northwest. It doesn’t want the Endangered Species Act to be used as a sword in an assault on a North American native species. And it doesn’t want to spend a billion dollars of taxpayer money on a scheme that cannot work.
In two separate letters, 39 members of Congress, evenly divided by political party and spanning the entire spectrum in the U.S. House of Representatives, have said this plan must be scuttled.
Please send a letter to your U.S. Representative and two U.S. Senators today using the form below to ask them to continue to speak up and urge the Interior Department to abandon this forest-owl kill plan. [[link removed]]
CONTACT YOUR LEGISLATORS [[link removed]]
And, will you donate now to help us continue to fight this plan and make sure the woodlands of the Pacific Northwest don’t turn into killing forests for innocent owls? [[link removed]]
DONATE NOW [[link removed]]
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.
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.
For all animals,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Animal Wellness Action
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