The plan will also enable killing of threatened spotted owls and also open up timber cutting in old growth forests
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy today expressed deep disappointment with Democrat Senators for sinking a resolution led by Senator John Kennedy, R-La., to disapprove the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Barred Owl Management Strategy,” which sets in motion the largest slaughter of birds in U.S. history. The Senate blocked the measure from proceeding by a vote of 25 – 72, with 22 Republicans backing the measure but just three Democrats voting for it.
The Interior Department and the West Coast timber industry plan to use the barred owl management plan as “mitigation” and legal justification to issue spotted owl incidental take permits to timber companies, allowing them to then cut down the old growth forests where these rare owls live.
“Senator Kennedy did a brilliant job of deconstructing the rationale for the kill plan and correctly argued that personnel with the Interior Department were playing God and substituting their judgment for Mother Nature with their unworkable and costly plan,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “It was an unholy alliance of the Trump Interior Department, the timber industry and leading environmental organizations acting in lock step working against S.J.Res. 69. The mania of environmental groups who want to kill North American barred owls threw them into the arms of big timber and the Interior Department and they are enabling a massive expansion of timber production. Owls and old growth forests are now on the chopping block.”
The Barred Owl kill plan calls for shooting upwards of 450,000 barred owls across California, Oregon, and Washington. The plan covers roughly 24 million acres — an area larger than the state of Indiana — and would even authorize owl shooting in 14 national parks and 17 national forests, including Olympic, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Redwoods, and Yosemite national parks.
“It is unconscionable that this plan turns the Endangered Species Act from a shield into a sword, using it to kill half a million barred owls and orphan countless owlets,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. “It’s now going to be weaponized to enable killing of threatened Northern spotted owls, too. This plan amounts to a war on both species of owls and the weapons are guns, chain saws, and bulldozers.”
The groups expressed concern that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) may use the barred owl shooting plan as a “mitigation” strategy to offset incidental take authorizations for Northern spotted owls, thus circumventing Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for spotted owls and dramatically expanding timber cutting that will foreseeably harm them.
The groups charged that using the ESA to target native wildlife to reduce the effects of competition opens up a radical misuse of the law. There are 1,300 species listed as threatened or endangered, and nearly all of them face competition from other species in the wild.
“The ESA was designed to stop human actions that put animals at risk of extinction,” added Mr. Pacelle. “It was not designed to referee the workings of nature, including competition between species.”
The scale and cost of the plan are unprecedented. Estimated at roughly $3,000 per owl, it would be the largest government-sponsored killing of birds of prey ever attempted by any nation. The coalition opposing the plan — now nearly 450 strong — includes Audubon societies across the three affected states, rural Oregon lawmakers, Washington’s former public lands commissioner, and the editorial boards of the Los Angeles Times and The Columbian.
A companion measure in the House of Representatives, H.J.Res. 111, led by Reps. Troy Nehls, R-Tex., and Scott Perry, R-Penn., is co-led on the Democratic side by two range-state lawmakers, Josh Harder, D-Calif., and Adam Gray, D-Calif. Before the House and Senate resolutions were introduced, House lawmakers sent two bipartisan letters — on March 7 and May 21 — signed by 37 members of Congress, including 19 Republicans and 18 Democrats, urging Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to halt the plan. The House measure dies with the defeat of S.J.Res. 69.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy are pursuing a legal action in a U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore. and are seeking to scrap the Barred Owl Management Strategy as violation of federal law.