Tweets -

Today's Seattle Times carries a very brief article on a draft
environmental impact statement in preparation by the US Fish & Wildlife
Service in Oregon addressing the proposed shooting of Barred Owls to
benefit Spotted Owls. Ultimately, this program could be expanded to
Washington and northern California, which could result in the killing
of 1,200 to 1,500 Barred Owls.

The Barred Owl - Spotted Owl debate has been going on for decades; this
is simply the latest grasping at straws.

The two most recent issues of Northwestern Naturalist carry a two-part
paper titled: "Killing Barred Owls to Help Spotted Owls I: A Global
Perspective" (91(2): 107 - 133), and "Killing Barred Owls to Help
Spotted Owls II: Implications for Many Other Range-expanding Species
(91(3): 251 - 270).

The abstract for Part I reads (in part): "Barred Owls expanded their
range to include western North America and have been competing with
federally threatened Northern Spotted Owls for a few decades. To help
protect Spotted Owls, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is considering
conducting a 3- to 10-y study in which as many as 2150 to 4650 Barred
Owls would be killed and, possibly, conducted long-term management of
Barred Owls. ...If the precedent-setting removal study as described
here is implemented,it would, during its 1st year, result in the death
of 36 times more raptors than in all other conservation-based projects
combined in the United States and its territories, and 84 times more
raptors than the largest ongoing effort worldwide. This study could
cost $1 million annually; simplifying the cost to dollars per Barred
Owl killed approximates $700 per Barred Owl for the first year and
$2800 per Barred Owl for each subsequent year."

The abstract for Part II reads (in part): "...I present information
concerning how frequently range expansions of North American birds and
other factors may precipitate similar management issues in the near
future. ... If thousands of Barred Owls are killed because they
expanded their range and are competing with a species of concern, it
seems likely USFWS soon would need to consider whether to lethally
intervene between many other species of native birds due to the high
frequency and large extent of range expansions..."

The author, Kent B. Livezey, is a US Fish and Wildlife Service
employee.

These papers describe an interesting potential departure in wildlife
management philosophy, one that is highly interventionist, and very
controversial within in federal wildlife management community. Livezey
presents a very professional discussion of the matter, one which also
does us the service of placing the proposal into a more public forum
than federal government documents.

Northwestern Naturalist is published by the Society for Northwestern
Vertebrate Biology (http://www.thesnvb.org/; it is the successor
publication to The Murrelet, published by the Pacific Northwest Bird
and Mammal Society, predecessor to the SNVB. Copies of the Northwestern
Naturalist should be available at the library of any academic
institution which has an ornithology program.

Doug



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Douglas Canning
Olympia, Washington
dcanning at scattercreek.com
dcanning at igc.org
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