Tweeters-

Kent was my junior author on two papers published in the journal of Raptor research concerning Spotted and Barred owls. He is neither an authority nor an expert on either species. He has published a lot but has never done any original research. He either rides piggyback on someone else's work or synthesizes what others have done.

His ethics have come under scrutiny of late. He was but is not now a member of the working group tasked with developing the removal experiment, in part because he published these two papers covertly. For his prior two papers he was originally the junior author, and published those two papers behind the senior author's back as well. He used my data for the first of those two papers without my knowledge or consent, and there have been quite a few other complaints against him as well.

I personally would not take anything Kent had to say at face value without digging into it further.

Kent makes a huge deal out of the fact that Barred Owls are raptors and how this would be unprecedented. I'm not sure why this is important and it's a bit lame as well. In 2009, Wildlife Services (USDA) intentionally killed or euthanized 5,538 raptors (as well as 1,259,714 European Starlings). And this does not count private permits.

I believe he leaves out some important elements in his fervor to make this a sensationalistic issue. We had been killing Spotted Owls for many years through habitat removal, only recently slowed down (not stopped because of continued logging on state and private lands). We also created large areas with habitat favorable to Barred Owls, which will incorporate managed land within their territories, over Spotted Owls.

Barred Owls are to Spotted Owls like kicking someone when they are already down. I keep track of both species in a very large area (northern half of Gifford Pinchot NF) and find local areas where Spotted Owls are still holding their own. I have hopes that some level of co-existence can be achieved but also that Spotted Owls may need a little help to do so. It should also be noted that invading species sometimes mushroom in population only to reduce to a stabilized number. That may be a reason to give Spotted Owls a little help now to be able to take advantage of a possibly better future situation.

If killing several thousand Barred Owls (a tiny fraction of their total population) can help Spotted Owls from becoming extirpated, I'm all for it. It would be a much poorer Washington state without Spotted Owls.

Bob Pearson

Packwood, WA