Kill Off The Competiton, Round And Round The Liberal Head Spins

The northern spotted owl is a beautiful bird. It’s also threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And now, the government is taking drastic measures to ensure it’s survival by advocating the “removal” of the bird’s major competition, while also seemingly targeting loggers.

“Removal” of the birds is really just another way to say shooting the barred owl, the spotted owl’s rival. And it’s part of a group of recommendations announced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to help revitalize the spotted owl population:

Management of the encroaching barred owl to reduce harm to spotted owls. Most of the recovery actions the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has carried out since finalizing the spotted owl’s 2008 recovery plan deal with the barred owl threat. A major part of this is developing a proposal for experimental removal of barred owls in certain areas to see what effect that would have on spotted owls, and then to evaluate whether or not broad scale removal should be considered. This portion of the 2008 plan was not significantly revised.

The Seattle Weekly explains how “removal” has worked in the past:

Though the USFWS policy hasn’t officially been released yet, The Oregonian reports that it’s likely to include a strategy to kill off between 1,200 and 1,500 barred owls from northern California through Oregon and Washington.

Killing off invasive species is a common practice in wildlife management, but barred owls aren’t invasive–they’re native. And several environmental groups are arguing that killing them won’t help the problem unless people are prepared to shoot the owls by the thousands every single year.

But there are problems for the old growth K-Mart sign loving Spotted Owl

 One biologist estimates the cost of such a plan to be $1 million annually.

Plus, by seemingly all accounts, the barred owl is simply a stronger and better-adapted species. It eats a wider variety of food and nests in a wider variety of places than the spotted owl.

Does this sound vaguely familiar? Survival of the fittest.