OK, I am going to make myself really unpopular here, but I feel that a dissenting voice is needed to all of you who want to start offing owls. This is not in response to just Wayne's comments, but to the thread as a whole.

Everyone agrees that Barred Owls were not introduced. Humans made it easier for them to move in, just as we made it easier for deer by chopping down all of the forests. These birds did what they were programmed genetically to do; they saw a niche they could exploit and they out-competed their smaller, specialist cousins, the Spotted Owl. None of this is in dispute here.

What I dispute here is when Wayne (and others) say "In my professional opinion, local Audubon chapters, etc., ought to be in favor of a limited Barred Owl control program if it would help to increase the numbers of Spotted Owls, which it almost certainly would."

Since we would not be replacing the old-growth forests that Spotted Owls need, nor would we be replacing the flying squirrels that they depend on for food, how exactly do you think that killing Barred Owls is really going to increase Spotted Owls? The only thing that is going to help the Spotted Owl is more old-growth forest, which even if we stopped all cutting right now, would take hundreds of years to regrow. As much as I love seeing Spotted Owls in the wild (and I have, at least 6 times), killing Barred Owls doesn't seem likely to help. All it will do is kill Barred Owls. (as an aside, the only way that I would even be a little bit for this plan, is if I knew that every single owl killed would end up in one of our many natural history museums).

I mean, look at Brown-headed Cowbirds for a second. By clearing vast swaths of forest, we made it very easy for this bird to move across the country. Brown-headed Cowbirds are now seen in pretty much every state (the lower 48 anyway). Efforts to control their populations mostly waste money. These birds can lay over 30 eggs in a single breeding season, so just removing a female doesn't do much. If you kill a female, another is ready to move in and take her place. Someone mentioned Kirtland's Warblers and cowbirds earlier in this thread, but the constant effort to control cowbirds is a ridiculous waste of time and funds for the most part. Ask a cowbird scientist; they'll tell you. It's a losing battle. In the end, all you do is kill cowbirds, you don't really help the target populations much, if at all.

So, now that a differing voice has been heard, y'all can go back to your destruction and killing. I always feel that there are other ways of thinking, and others ways to do things, but with other humans, it always seems to come back to killing. Sad. Just very sad.

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


"Wayne C. Weber" <contopus at telus.net> wrote:
Jon and Tweeters,

In my professional opinion, local Audubon chapters, etc., ought to be
in favor of a limited Barred Owl control program if it would help
to increase the numbers of Spotted Owls, which it almost certainly
would. It is highly likely that Barred Owls are present in WA, OR,
and CA only as a result of man-made habitat changes in central
British Columbia (widespread logging), which allowed them to
expand their range into areas west of the Rocky Mountains where
they did not originally occur.

Wayne C. Weber
Delta, BC
contopus at telus.net


----- Original Message -----
From: "Anderson / Chaney"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 7:20 PM
Subject: [Tweeters] Barred Owl "thinning" question


I don't wish to open a "political" discussion on Tweeters, but was wondering
if the local Audubon groups, etc., are addressing this?

Thanks for any info,
Jon. Anderson
Olympia, Wash
festuca AT olywa.us

AP Story:
Feds propose selectively killing cousins of threatened spotted owls

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) -- A few hundred aggressive cousins of the threatened
northern spotted owl may be rubbed out by government agents with shotguns
under a federal plan proposed Thursday.

The spotted owl was listed as threatened 17 years ago, but its numbers
continue to dwindle through much of its range, federal officials said as
they proposed a new plan to prevent them from dying out.

The barred owls have crowded the spotted owls out of prime habitat and, in
some cases, attacked them.

< snip >


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