Thumbnail photo by Alex Merritt

Guardian Article

Canadian cabinet ministers have rejected a plea by the country’s environment minister to save an endangered owl, casting doubt on the species’ survival in the coming years.

I try to keep things positive here, but I felt this was important to share. Since January, British Columbia had been required to take emergency action to protect the last wild spotted owl and it’s habitat, but they have not only ignored that, they have continued destroying the forest in which it lives.

“How is the fact there is only one wild-born spotted owl left in Canada not the definition of an emergency?” said Wilderness Committee Protected Areas Campaigner Joe Foy. “Minister Guilbeault found in January there was an imminent threat to the owl’s recovery due to the B.C. government’s logging authorizations, and yet B.C. has continued unabated logging of the owl’s home throughout the spring and summer. How does the federal cabinet just say ‘no problem’ to that?”

Quote from Wilderness Committee announcement

Previous efforts to reintroduce the owl have failed, with most of the new owls dying. Spotted Owls are a less aggressive species and can be driven out or killed by Great Horned Owls or Barred Owls. Like most owls, they require old growth trees (about 200 years old) to provide nesting areas, as they cannot make their own nesting cavities. They are also non-migratory, so they don’t have anywhere to go and are butt very adaptable to different environments like some other species.

There are still Spotted Owls asking the US West Coast, but they are in similar trouble with owl populations falling dramatically. In addition to the Spotted Owls being killed by habitat loss and other owls, programs have been established to kill the Barred Owls that have been taking over the habits, so 2 species are suffering as a result.

Here is a final article about Ethics and Environment explaining the role old growth forests play in the owl life cycle and the need to preserve all species of life.

What kind of society would trade the magnificence of these virgin forests and the splendor of the life that inhabits them – owl, elk, bald eagles, and mountain goats – for paper cups and two-by-fours? To allow such a tradeoff is equivalent to destroying a great work of art that has taken centuries to create, and that will be a source of rich experience for generations of hikers, backpackers, bird-watchers, and millions of others seeking a natural world away from our teeming concrete cities.

All three articles are worth a read. Please make sure you keep these things in mind when you have a chance to vote for change and to hold these people accountable.