Affirmative Action meets Wild Kingdom;
Nothing’s worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon’s mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it’s still slipping away.
Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500 barred owls — the larger, more aggressive competitor that has routed spotted owls from much of their territory and become, along with habitat loss, the biggest threat to their survival
Note: The spotted owl is a vital member of the ecosystem, as it permits environmentalists to kill off the forestry industry.
Abe Froman – “I say let the owls fight their own war. America always gets embroiled in these regional wars and they never seem to end well.”
h/t Lee
#1 reason the killing will proceed: ‘One biologist estimated the cost at up to $1 million annually.’
follow the money.
I say let the owls fight their own war. America always gets embroiled in these regional wars and they never seem to end well.
Bad news for Asian students.
As with Asian students, the root cause of disproportionate population has been overlooked. I don’t know, exactly, what’s causing it, but I’m pretty sure the barred owls aren’t to blame. I think the spotted owls have just been harassed by environmentalists for so long, they just decided to quit reproducing.
coach you may have a better point then you know,I have watched something similer with grizzly bears here in Alberta.
All species become extinct sooner or later. Get over it.
Didn’t the spotted owl issue turn out to be complete crap 30 years ago? I seem to remember guys discovering owl nests in the letters on a store sign or some such.
Survival of the fittist I say,especially with owls.
Birds suck.
Trust me, I know.
Two species are competing for habitat. This is a cause for humans to interfere?
Does the word “hubris” ring a bell? Bueller?
I wonder how many spotted owls will be accidentally caught up in the great barred owl cull?
This also brings up the question of just who (no pun) is going to do the deed as I doubt if any eco-greenies have ever seen a shotgun, let alone own one. Best to stay out of the woods for a while.
Hubris writ large, and a “solution” possibly with unexpected consequences.
For example, if (and I say if) the barred owls are more efficient predators than the spotted owls,
killing them might lead to a rodent explosion, with who knows what consequences.
The next thing will probably be to kill polar bears to save the seals.
Not content to wage war against the natural climate cycle, environmentalists open up a second front to wage war against natural selection.
Mind, there is an argument the barred owls moved in because their habitat has been disrupted.
Mind, there is now a rumbling the human inhabitants of North America are starting to be disturbed about the disruption of their habitat.
I am not recommending shotguns. However a bit of common sense legislation change is in order.Cheers
Abe’s comment hereby nominated for thread winner.
“the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service hired an environmental ethicist to guide its discussions”
Would that job description exist in the private sector?
The problem with playing God in the public sphere is the political forces usually result in the exercise becoming a disaster. Most wildlife “management” is a joke. How can you manage something like Pacific Salmon, for example, while not controlling their predators. Fifty years ago Federal Fisheries officers shot killer Whales on sight along with Seals to save Salmon. They had 50 caliber machine guns on the decks of their patrol boats for “blackfish”. Can you imagine what would happen if they did that today? Lizzy May’s head would explode, possibly destroying her other office!
Preserving species such as the Northern Spotted Owl could be accomplished for less than one percent of the cost of the idling of 95% of the US national forest simply through domesticated rearing (a zoo). All species we enjoy today in the Northern hemisphere recolonized from small refugia or distant Southern habitats following the last glaciation. Nothing humans can do could compare to that kind of habitat alteration.
Adequate refugia exists in Parks, Protected areas, private Trust lands, and sensitive or inoperable habitats. Attempting to manage every hectare for every species and interest group on the remaining land base is the road to Hell or at least poverty and starvation.
Lizzy May’s head would explode, possibly destroying her other office!
~John Chittick
LOL
If brains were dynamite Lizzy wouldn’t have enough to blow her nose.
Whatever happened to the Prime Directive?
The only biodiversity carved in stone lies in the Burgess shale, the rest is as dust, blowing in the wind…
“I think the spotted owls have just been harassed by environmentalists for so long, they just decided to quit reproducing.”
I remember something similar mention just this past year dealing with another bird species: Penguins.
A yes here it is:
“PARIS (AFP) – Tagging penguins with flipper bands harms their chances of survival and breeding, a finding which raises doubts over studies that use these birds as telltales for climate change, biologists said on Wednesday.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110112/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingpenguins
Oops Envirowackos kill Penguins not Global Warming and it’s probably the same thing here. The wackos probably cause the owls to abandon the nests by sticking their nose into them all the time.
So the government is picking winner owls and loser owls.
Give a hoot! Please don’t shoot!
It’s threads like this that make me miss Spurwing Plover.
Shotguns are such a violent method of reducing the barred owl population. I think we should introduce cane toads. That will fix it.
Google shows the marbled murrelet to be an endangered species due to old growth logging.
Is it?
“Thursday, January 27:(2011)
Hundreds of MARBLED MURRELETS, around 200 ANCIENT MURRELETS, and other alcids,
including a single RHINOCEROS AUKLET, have been seen from a kayak in the waters
off Oak Bay during a period of about a week. There appears to be abundant food
in the area at present.”
http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/BCVI.html
I remember when the Spotted Owl controversy was just starting. We in the BCFS used to meet with our counterparts in the Washington and Oregon FS’s.
The guys from Oregon were very concerned at the time,said it would devastate the forest industry. We BC’ers didn’t think the environmentalists would ever get the power they have now,due to the fact that at that time, most people in charge were of the common sense variety.
We were wrong.
First,the saviours of the spotted owl claimed they needed +600 acres per breeding pair,but several consequent “studies” showed that number was far too low. The enviros upped the acreage to three square miles,then ten. It seemed every time you read an article about the Spotted Owl,it had just been discovered that they needed more range.
The Forestry guys were right, logging was devastated in Oregon,and a lot of it was curtailed in Washington. It was one of the first big victories for the Environmental movement,and they’ve never looked back.
My favourite of the “protected” species has to be the Snail Darter, a small fish (2 inches)in Tennessee that delayed the construction of a big power dam project for two years. Enviros swore the fish could only exist in the particular river where the dam was being built. I guess power was desperately needed because the project was exempted from the regulations after two years,and a lot of cost.
The Snail Darter was transplanted to another river where it thrived and the fish was taken off the “endangered” list.
In this case, THEY (environmentalists) were wrong.
I lived in Oregon when the Spotted Owl controversy just started. Pickets, demonstrations, awareness drives, tons of newspaper articles, the whole bit. Most normal people thought a few hectares set aside for the Spotted Owl would be enough and that the forest industry vital to Oregon would continue.
But those environmentalists just didn’t give up. Many Oregonians blamed those Californians (and their money) that flooded Oregon in those days…….and the perception you were either a neanderthal in the pocket of the rich loggers or a caring, virtuous defender of the environment.
H-owl!
It’s threads like this that make me miss Spurwing Plover.
I saw him at Ace’s on a few threads just last week but none since.
I say let the owls fight their own war. America always gets embroiled in these regional wars and they never seem to end well.
Posted by: Abe Froman at February 7, 2011 10:40 AM
Yea, but this is the West Coast we are talking about here.
On another note; Down heya in the south if you are out running the backroads between midnite and sunrise there’s a good chance by the time you get home you will find an owl in your grill. We call it self-inflicted extermination, or dive-bombing, or suicide by Chevy, or natural process of elimination. Owls can’t see sheyat when staring into a couple of halogens.
As has been noted elsewhere, the biggest irony?
The “Barred Owl” and the “Northern Spotted Owl”?
They’re different breeds of the same species – they interbreed with fertile offspring. One of the reasons there are so few Spotted Owls, apart from actual competition for food with the Barred Owl, is that the interbreeding seems to produce Barred Owls, or at least Owls-that-aren’t-Spotted-enough.
I was always unclear as to why I should care about the damned Spotted Owl as opposed to any other owl, and now I actively don’t care.
Sigivald- That’s interesting. There’s been a lot of talk about polar bears cross-breeding with grizzlies. It seems to bother environmentalists to no end. I think, deep down, these people are racist.
Thanks Kate for the heads up. I’ve gone from knowing very little about the little buggars and now know a ton. Thanks to Sigivald for the last bit on needed info. to make it “just fine”.
People trying to play God.
Let nature run its course. You god kings of the left, pollute all you touch. In the end you will only succeed in destroying both species.
News flash : your not supermen!
JMO
Is this akin to ethnic cleansing or what?
Next will be the culling of non-spotted dicks.
I wonder if the increased acreage requirement was for the spotted owl or just an excuse to increase the acreage on which logging was not allowed.
They best be using steel shot because … never mind.
“I say let the owls fight their own war. America always gets embroiled in these regional wars and they never seem to end well.”
Quagmire. Quagmire. Quagmire.
If they have been barred,then shooting them is justifiable when they come back.
I doubt that the disappearance of a species is the planetary cataclysm that environmentalists usually claim.
The smallpox virus is a “species” that was wiped out on purpose, and only good things came from that.
OO2,
Thanks. That nails it.
Just don’t forget these two facts.
1. The North American Spotted Owl is actually an owl imported from Europe and not native to North America.
2. They love to breed with any other variety of owl in their range and don’t restrict themselves to just spotted owls. Thus changing the characteristics of their offspring.