Does shooting cormorants really do anything Rob? From my understanding of compensatory mortality, the loss of a number of animals only makes it easier for the remaining animals to survive, as there is less competition. I am studying Environmental Science & Resource Management at the UW (a 41 YO student, trying to graduate before my kid does, and he's a sophomore at Gonzaga), so granted, I am not as experienced discussing some of these things as others. Still, the idea of shooting Barred Owls, who by the way move in on their own, not because we introduced them, is abhorrent to me. I liken it to the California Condor problem. Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent to build a couple of remnant populations that are seemingly unsustainable because they can't even find enough food. Humans have to supplement their diet with cow carcasses. If humans stop feeding them, the condors would eventually die out due to starvation. They are a bird that was in severe decline before!
we
started messing with their environments, and they are like a patient who can't live without machines. Death with dignity seems like a better option, and put the money towards species that actually have a chance of becoming self-sustaining. And please don't get me wrong, I don't like to see creatures die. Anytime a wild animal has died due to an action of mine, I admit it, it hurts and I cry. I would love to see wild condors, but at what point do we finally decide that enough is enough?

Same with the Spotted vs. Barred Owl situation. We can't just plant massive, expansive stands of old-growth forest, it doesn't work that way. Barred Owls moved in probably for a variety of reasons, but the fact is that they are simply better at surviving and adapting than are Spotties. Eventually, even if humans had never arrived here, the Spotted Owl would likely get out-competed, although it would have taken longer. Some catastrophic event (tsunami, earthquake, volcano, etc.) could wipe out vast stands of old-growth forest and most of the population of Spotted Owls with it, and the different habitats that grew back in time would be better suited to Barred Owls, as they can adapt better, and eat a far wider variety of food. Humans cut down tons and tons of old-growth forest, to the extent that only remnants now exist, with little connectivity and linkages between stands. That made things very bad for Spotted Owls as it took away their main habitat, but it also affected th!
eir main
prey (flying squirrels, microtenes), the woodpeckers that drill the holes that Spotted Owls need for nests (Pileated Woodpeckers), and changed the habitat to a different structure more attenuated to a hardier species of owl, one that doesn't require such a specific habitat type and specific food types, one who could adapt. Before long, the Barred Owl started making its over the Rockies and found great habitat that it could move into. They like old-growth, but they also like other dense but younger types of forest as well.

OK, enough writing. If one takes most or all of my statements above as true, then the Spotted Owl may well be doomed due to loss of habitat already. If this is the case, is shooting Barred Owls really the only way to deal with this issue? The Barred's can't help that they are better, tougher, hardier birds than Spotted Owls are, that is just how nature works. And when nature has something like habitat destruction on a massive scale happen to it, the animals best able to adapt, do. I don't want to lose Spotted Owls either, but shooting Barred's just seems dumb. For once, can't humans learn to live with a problem, work with it some way, rather than just killing the problem? Oops, just showed my bleeding-heart-liberal side, LOL. It is a very tough subject, and I just wanted to add a bit to the discussion.

Brett A. Wolfe
Seattle, WA
m_lincolnii at yahoo.com




Rob Sandelin <floriferous at msn.com> wrote:
At one point biologists rounded up all the free ranging condors, stuck them in cages, and breed them for several years, finally releasing some back to the wild. Obviously this sort of intervention is very costly so preserving ES birds has a track record of spending money. I would think shooting barred owls for 5 years would be considerably cheaper than captive breeding. Apparently shooting Cormorants to protect salmon is a viable option, so shooting barred to protect spottys seems equally viable at least in the eyes of endangered wildlife managers.

I have heard references to west nile virus in Michigan and Wisconsin having a large impact on owls, but I have not found any primary documentation of this. If this rumor has substance, it might behoove ES biologists to consider some captive breeding pairs of spotty's while there are still a few pairs left. I understand that last year in the Andrews forest there was a complete crash of spotty breeding due to weather conditions killing the owlets. Not sure how many more breeding failures that population can withstand before failing all together.


Is it better to have genes in a zoo, or death with dignity?

Rob Sandelin
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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