A federal government plan for hunters to kill thousands of invasive owls to protect the rapidly declining northern spotted owl has ruffled the feathers of dozens of animal advocacy groups.
On Monday, a coalition of 75 animal rights and wildlife protection organizations sent a letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland asking her to scrap what they describe as a “reckless plan” to wipe out half a million barred owls in West Coast states over the next three decades.
The letter, spearheaded by the Animal Wellness Action group and the Center for a Humane Economy, lambastes the plan for being unworkable and short-sighted, arguing that it will lead to the wrong owls being shot and disruption to nesting behavior.
“Implementing a decades-long plan to unleash untold numbers of ‘hunters’ in sensitive forest ecosystems is a case of single-species myopia regarding wildlife control,” states the letter, signed by Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, and Scott Edwards, general counsel for the Center for a Humane Economy.
Federal wildlife officials believe the action is necessary to control the population of the barred owl — which they consider invasive — and give the threatened northern spotted owls a fighting chance on their home turf.
Okay those looks super similar to me, I think they look especially similar from afar. Are we sure Hunters are going to be able to tell the difference? Or rather bother to before they pull the trigger?
It does happen and they know about it. This has been going on for years, but not to this scale. The increase in cull numbers is why this is news, not that this process is new. This has been going on since the 1970s.
It gets more and more painful as the number of Spotted Owls dwindles. I feel this is just prolonging the inevitable at this point.
No offense to the OP, but this story wrecks my day every time I run across it because this was all so preventable.