Animal welfare advocates have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to kill up to nearly half a million barred owls in Pacific Northwest forests.
Barred owls, native to the East Coast, expanded their range out west in the 20th century and today outnumber northern spotted owls across most of Washington, Oregon and California, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Federal officials have said the cull is necessary to prevent extinction of the northern spotted owl, whose numbers are declining rapidly because of competition with the barred owls and habitat loss.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy allege in their complaint filed Thursday that the Fish and Wildlife Service violated federal law by not fully analyzing the impacts of the plan or considering other alternatives. The complaint was filed in federal court in Seattle.
The northern spotted owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act as threatened in 1990, and other species — such as salamanders, flying squirrels, wood rats and screech owls — have been depleted since the barred owl moved in, federal officials have said.
The agency says California spotted owls face similar risks from the barred owls.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy are among the more than 200 organizations that signed a letter opposing the plan to kill barred owls and urging Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to halt the plan and consider other efforts to protect spotted owls. The signatories include nearly two dozen local Audubon organizations, as well as owl protection and raptor rehabilitation centers.
The federal agency filed the decision on barred owl management in August, detailing a plan to kill barred owls in the three states over the next 30 years.
According to the plan, owls will be removed in coordination with landowners. Shooters trained under the agency's protocol will kill the owls with a 20-gauge or larger bore shotgun and lead-free shot.
The agency's plan says removal specialists will broadcast barred owl calls to lure them into areas where they can be identified and killed, usually at dusk or overnight, when they are active.
If the plan is fully implemented, the decision states a maximum of 452,583 barred owls could be killed. According to the agency, under "maximum implementation," the strategy would result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the current barred owl population in North America.
The Fish and Wildlife Service did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
"What I've tried to do, and what my organizations have tried to do, is look at many different elements of this rather than simply default to the idea that spotted owls are in trouble and we need to kill the barred owls," said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. "It's too simplistic and too unworkable."
Pacelle said the groups are concerned about opening up national parks to hunt owls. He also pointed to practical challenges, like finding people willing to hunt owls, covering a habitat that spans millions of acres across federal, state and private lands, and a lack of success in previous efforts to control wildlife.
"The Service's plan, if fully implemented, will leave us looking back in thirty years at a half a million carcasses of dead barred owls and no living spotted owls to be found in the forests of the Northwest," the complaint states. "This is because the Service has failed to address the core issues at hand."
The animal welfare groups allege in the complaint that the federal agency has not done enough to address what they argue is "the primary reason for the spotted owl's decline: dramatic habitat loss directly attributable to the harvest of old-growth forest for its timber."
The 1994 Northwest Forest Plan was intended to save the spotted owl by protecting 24 million acres of old growth.
"Let's not scapegoat barred owls for what was a problem of our own making," Pacelle said.
Native to North America for millions of years, barred owls, like other species, are adapting to human-caused climate and environmental changes, Pacelle said.
In a news release, the groups cite a paper from a former federal forest owl biologist that suggests more than 100 other native bird species engaged in "recent" range expansion, with 14 of them expanding over an area larger than the area where barred owls are moving.
The animal welfare groups allege the Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and National Environmental Policy Act.
The complaint alleges the agency didn't properly consider alternatives to the mass killing of barred owls such as nonlethal population control approaches and the creation and maintenance of spotted owl habitat.
The groups also argue in the complaint the plan will result in mistaken-identity kills of spotted owls and other owl species, which some public commenters also voiced concerns about.
The agency received nearly 9,000 comments on the environmental impact statement.
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