WONDER, ORE. — To save the northern spotted owl, federal authorities have listed the bird under the Endangered Species Act, set aside 7 million acres of forest for owl habitat, and imposed stiff fines on those who harm the chocolate-colored football-sized raptors.
But the spotted owl population is still in deep peril nearly 15 years after President Clinton brokered a compact to protect its old-growth habitat. So the government has hit on another approach to saving an icon of the Pacific Northwest: shooting its cousins.
Under a proposal controversial in scientific and environmental circles, federal wildlife agents in Oregon, Washington and Northern California would be allowed to use shotguns to kill hundreds of barred owls.
The larger, more aggressive barred owl, which is not native to the Northwest, has stymied recovery efforts of the meeker spotted owl in the last two decades.
The barred owls muscle the spotted owls from their habitat and eat them -- or, very occasionally, according to wildlife biologists, mate with them. The rare hybrid offspring, informally known as a "sparred owl," has a "very strange hoot," as one wildlife biologist put it, "sort of like a spotted owl being strangled."
Critics say the shooting proposal ("suppression," as it is known in government parlance) is an example of the Bush administration altering scientific findings to accommodate commercial interests -- in this case, the logging industry.
"This is clearly a shell game," said Dominick DellaSala, an environmental scientist on the Fish and Wildlife Service Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Team, which has worked on a plan. "It is a deception to deflect the blame away from habitat destruction. That is and that remains the biggest threat to the spotted owl."
DellaSala and at least one other member of the team say its recommendations were ignored by what DellaSala has characterized as "a secret 'oversight committee' " in Washington, D.C., that deemphasized habitat protection and instead pointed to the barred owl as the greatest threat to the spotted owl's survival.
Officials in charge of the recovery plan sharply dispute the notion that the final report was a bow to industry pressure to open more Northwest forests to timber harvesting. In this owl-versus-owl saga, they say, it is abundantly clear that the spotted owls need help, fast.
