Federal biologists are doing a formal study to decide
whether to do the experiment, and laying out the terms if they go
ahead. The study will be available for public comment and is
expected to be completed by fall 2010.
"This is to be done experimentally so we can nail down
whether, in fact, removing barred owls could improve spotted owl
demographics, and also to look into the feasibility of doing that,"
Fish and Wildlife biologist Robin Bown, who is overseeing the
evaluation, said Wednesday.
He said a small-scale experiment with killing barred owls
in northern California in 2005 created an uproar so Fish and
Wildlife held meetings with interest groups to consider the ethical
and moral implications of a larger experiment, and secured their
agreement to look into an experiment.
"There is a range of opinions" among scientists and
interest groups, said Bob Sallinger, conservation director of the
Portland Audubon Society, who took part in the ethical discussion.
"We are still struggling with where we come down."
The highest priority needs to be placed on avoiding
extinction, Sallinger said. But unless habitat protections continue
for old growth forests where the spotted owl lives, "killing barred
owls is not going to accomplish anything."
The spotted owl went from a seldom-seen denizen of old
growth forests to the cover of Time magazine in the 1990s as
environmentalists forced the federal government to cut back logging
on Northwest national forests to protect its habitat.
Despite the cutbacks, spotted owls continue to decline,
most steeply where there are high populations of more aggressive
barred owls that are native to eastern North America.
Scientists believe barred owls migrated from eastern
Canada across the Great Plains in the early 1900s, using forests
that popped up as people controlled wildfires and planted trees
around farms. They arrived in Washington in 1973, and their numbers
have taken off in the past decade.
Bigger, more aggressive and less picky about food and
forests than spotted owls, barred owls drove spotted owls to
marginal territories, sometimes mating with them and sometimes
killing them.
Controlling barred owls was a central strategy of the Bush
administration's overhaul of the spotted owl recovery plan to make
way for more logging. That plan was challenged in court by
environmental groups and is being reconsidered by the Obama
administration.
Fish and Wildlife is considering doing the experiment in
existing spotted owl study areas near Cle Elum, Wash.; the Coast
Range of Oregon; and the Klamath Mountains of southwestern Oregon,
Bown said.
The work could involve trapping or killing barred owls in
half the area and comparing the reaction of spotted owls there to
those in the area still beset by barred owls, Bown said.
"If we are going to remove them, a shotgun will probably
be the method of choice, because it is most reliable," she said.
"There will be very strict conditions to have close to a 100% kill
rate. We don't want to be wounding animals. We don't want to be
teaching them. And we don't want to be removing nontarget
species."
Public comments on what should be considered in the study
will be taken until Jan. 11.