Hunters are to be dispatched into the forests of the Pacific Northwest to kill one species of owl, thus protecting another that is known to be endangered, according to the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service.
Today, the wildlife officials released a concluding environmental review of an experiment to determine if slaughtering barred owls will let northern spotted owls to regain their territory where they have been evicted in the past decade.
The plan has been evaluated since 2009. It will release a final plan within a month.
Paul Henson, Oregon State supervisor for Fish and Wildlife told CBS News, "If we don't manage barred owls, the probability of recovering the spotted owl goes down significantly."
With their plan of exterminating 3,603 barred owls, they will need a special permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which prohibits killing.
After losing the old growth forest habitat to wildfire and logging, Barred Owl is listed as the next threat in the plan for saving the endangered spotted owls.
“The Northwest Forest Plan, which cut logging by 90 percent on national forests in the 1990s, has done a good job of providing habitat for the spotted owl. But the owls' numbers have continued to slide. Unless barred owls are brought under control, the spotted owl in coming decades might disappear from Washington's northern Cascade Range and Oregon's Coast Range, where barred owl incursion has been greatest”, Henson stated.
The northern spotted owl is a sign of disagreement between the environmentalists and timber industry over the exploit of forests in the Pacific Northwest. The tiny bird was listed as a threatened species because of its declining number, which in effect, resulted to lawsuits and less logging.
Killing and capturing barred owls is their chosen alternative plan. However, capturing owls is far more costly and complicated and the Fish and Wildlife Service has found only five zoos or other facilities willing and able to take a captured barred owl, according Robin Bown, the wildlife biologist in charge of the evaluation.
This fall, the hunt will initiate where the barred and spotted owls are well-known, which is on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Northern California.
