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Our New Plans to Protect Owls and Forests Won’t Work Without You
I f we give up now, there’ll be no stopping the timber industry and federal bureaucrats from attacks on forest owls and old-growth forests
By Wayne Pacelle
Senate Democrats voted last week not only to kill a half a million North American barred owls, but also to give Trump’s Department of the Interior the green light to start taking down old-growth forests in California, Oregon, and Washington — and to kill threatened spotted owls in the process.
A ghastly plan that its proponents originally described as resolving competition between barred and spotted owls has now been weaponized to kill them both.
Make no mistake, if the federal government starts killing barred owls, that activity will go hand-in-hand with cutting down the trees that spotted owls need to survive. They’ll kill the spotted owls as collateral damage and they’ll give the timber industry the permits it wants to increase the haul of public-lands timber by 60%.
Sadly, Democratic senators focused their voting decision on partisanship and process instead of sound and humane policy, and they handed the timber industry a tool to begin cutting ancient forests and shooting and otherwise hurting both species of forest owls.
Starting a decade ago, the timber industry paid for the initial studies to try to document that barred owls and spotted owls compete. It was a deflection, attempting to blame barred owls for the long-term decline of spotted owls rather than to accept that industry’s decades-long clearing of old-growth forests.
Democratic politicians bought the lie that barred owls are “invasive,” when any serious-minded scientist understands that barred owls live only in North America and they’ve engaged in a modest range expansion. If barred owls are invasive, so are bald eagles, red-shouldered hawks, blue jays, Anna’s hummingbirds, and hundreds of other bird species that live only in North America.
We change landscapes, forests, grasslands, and the Earth’s temperature and precipitation patterns and expect animals not to adapt? We destroy their homes and ask them not to fly and find a safe place to live?
Talk about blaming the victim.
The Barred Owl Massacre Compounds Problems for Spotted Owls
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., stood on the Senate floor last week with photos of owls and their young and rightly called this scheme what it is: absurd. He reminded his colleagues that the barred owl’s expansion into the West is a natural and adaptive behavior, not a capital crime. His plea was simple: let nature be nature. Spare both owl species.
Nearly half of Senate Republicans voted in favor of Sen. Kennedy’s resolution, S.J. Res. 69. But only three Democrats — Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — joined him in defending these beautiful birds from this calculated government-run assault. The rest voted to allow government-paid shooters to enter our national parks and forests to kill monogamous owl pairs by the hundreds of thousands, orphaning countless owlets too young to survive without parental care.
What’s worse, the ill-considered plan, supported by the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity and their newfound allies in the timber industry, is doomed to fail. We have amassed a growing list of highly credentialed scientists who say that very thing.
* Dr. Elaine Leslie [[link removed]] , former chief of Biological Services for the National Park Service and a leader with the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks: “Barred owl reproduction and juvenile dispersal will negate any short-term reduction in lethal take … Recolonization will occur rapidly.”
* Dr. Eric Forsman [[link removed]] , dean of forest owl biologists who worked at the U.S. Forest Service for decades: “As soon as you stop, barred owls will be back, and you will be back to square one.”
* Kent Livezey [[link removed]] , former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, author of 14 peer-reviewed papers on barred and spotted owls: “I do not believe that spending more than 1 billion dollars to kill almost one-half million barred owls is worth the carnage, expense, precedents, and distraction from what is the more-important issue: protection of biodiverse old-growth forests.”
As Livezey says, the price tag is immense: potentially $1.35 billion or more over 30 years. Imagine spending that money to protect habitat instead of destroying the birds who inhabit it.
We at the Center for a Humane Economy and our swelling coalition of more than 450 organizations, including dozens of local Audubon chapters, are not standing down. We are already in federal court challenging this plan. And we are asking Congress, if they didn’t like the Congressional Review Act resolution, to put a pause on the kill plan by defunding it for the next fiscal year and look at the science. Assess the views of scientists who don’t work for the timber industry and recognize that the plan is doomed to fail.
And pausing the plan also stops the timber industry from colluding with the Department of the Interior to issue “take” permits for spotted owls to cut down their old-growth-forest habitats.
If barred owls will simply fly back into these forests, what’s the point of spending a billion dollars to kill them? What’s the point of pretending that slaughtering one species will somehow “save” another, when the plan is going to unleash habitat destruction and logging that will shrink the suitable living areas for both species.
We are on the front end of a foolish 30-year plan. Sen. Kennedy called it hubris, and he was right. We need your help to prosecute the case that killing half a million owls, and doing so on lands that include 14 national parks and cutting down old growth forests on other public lands amounts, is a scandal.
Go to www.animalwellnessaction.org [[link removed]] and see how your senators voted. Use the on-line tool here [[link removed]*1ru0z03*_gcl_au*OTA3MjkxNjg0LjE3NjIxODE2MTM.*_ga*NTg2NDMxNjMxLjE3NTQwMDk0NjE.*_ga_HC8EFG07MZ*czE3NjIzNjM5MzckbzMwJGcwJHQxNzYyMzYzOTM3JGo2MCRsMCRoMTY3OTQ3MTk5OA..] to thank the lawmakers who voted to stop this madness. And go here [[link removed]*1ru0z03*_gcl_au*OTA3MjkxNjg0LjE3NjIxODE2MTM.*_ga*NTg2NDMxNjMxLjE3NTQwMDk0NjE.*_ga_HC8EFG07MZ*czE3NjIzNjM5MzckbzMwJGcwJHQxNzYyMzYzOTM3JGo2MCRsMCRoMTY3OTQ3MTk5OA..] to urge the senators who voted to kill owls and cut down old growth forests to pivot and act as protectors of owls and forests.
And please donate today. We can only continue this fight with your support. If we relent, the guns will start blazing and the majestic trees they live in will be felled and turned into planks and fenceposts. [[link removed]]

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There’s too much at stake.
For the owls, for the forests,
Wayne Pacelle [[link removed]] Wayne Pacelle
President
Center for a Humane Economy
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