Paul's point, I believe, goes to the heart of this question: Does killing
barred owls solve the problem or a symptom? So often in our society,
especially when the government is involved, we take actions and spend
(waste?) money "solving" the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself.


I think the question that must be answered is this: Why are barred owls
successful and spotted owls unsuccessful?

Killing hundreds of barred owls without changing the environmental factors
that have made them successful (and/or spotted owls unsuccessful) will
accomplish nothing. Without changing the underlying environmental factors,
mored barred owls will be produced and will take over the territory once
inhabited by the barred owls that we kill. Nothing will have been
accomplished except the government will have spent some of our tax dollars
and a number of innocent animals will have been murdered.

Personally, I feel fairly confident that the underlying environmental factor
that makes barred owls successful and spotted owls unsuccessful is us,
humans. From personal experience, I know that the barred owl does very well
around humans and human society. Spotted owls do not. In short, I feel
quite confident that our society is the problem. It follows that, unless we
drastically change our society, killing barred owls now will accomplish
nothing. Are we prepared to decide that we are going to murder hundreds of
barred owls every 10 years?

Kol Medina


_____

From: tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu
[mailto:tweeters-bounces at mailman1.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Paul
Sieracki
Sent: Thursday, May 03, 2007 9:53 AM
To: Dianna Moore; Tweeters
Subject: RE: [Tweeters] re: killing Barred Owls doesn't help


Just piping up here..
I am not an owl expert but,
Would non lethal population control methods be suitable, such as
sterilization, to maintain or slowly reduce barred owl populations in the
area? This has been proposed and tentatively tested on wolves and caribou
populations.
Would killing of barred owls just create a void where more owls may move in
requiring more killing? If removal of individuals is important short term
I would also be reluctantly in favor of that but not long term.

Paul Sieracki
208.448.2790


View the spatial blog:
South
<http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/659783/an/0/page/0#659
783> Selkirk Mountain Caribou and Snowmobiles

on Google <http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html> Earth.


_____

> From: dlmoor2 at coastaccess.com
> To: Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Date: Thu, 3 May 2007 09:24:43 -0700
> CC:
> Subject: [Tweeters] re: killing Barred Owls doesn't help
>
> Exactly my point, Brett. If it would help to kill off the Barred Owls, I
too
> would favor that....but I don't think it will. As long as humans continue
to
> "go forth and multiply", species will be forced out of existance. We as a
> species ourselves just don't get it.
>
> Dianna Moore
> Ocean Shores, Wa.
> dlmoor2 at coastaccess.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tweeters mailing list
> Tweeters at u.washington.edu
> http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/tweeters


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