Quoted by The Epoch Times
To safeguard the native northern spotted owls from competitive and predatory behavioural barred owls, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed a plan, published on July 3, to cull nearly half a million invasive barred owls over the next 30 years.
The plan will be executed in countries:
- Washington
- Oregon
- California
As per the plan, nearly 450,000 owls or roughly 15,000 per year will be removed from current North America. The trained professionals will be hired.
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“Barred owl management is not about one owl versus another,” Fish and Wildlife Service Oregon’s state supervisor Kessina Lee said in a statement. “Without actively managing barred owls, northern spotted owls will likely go extinct in all or the majority of their range, despite decades of collaborative conservation efforts.”
This plan is set to begin early next spring.
But there are opposition and concerns rising as well from Animal Rights groups regarding legal and ethical issues. They stated that culling is cruel as well as potentially ineffective. It also lacks transparency regarding costs.
“The Biden Administration’s barred-owl kill plan is the largest-ever scheme to slaughter raptors in any nation in the world by a country mile,” Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service is turning from protector to persecutor of American wildlife,” Mr. Pacelle continued. “Its plan is wildly expensive without protecting a single acre of forest habitat, and it is doomed to fail because there’s no way for the agency to prevent surviving owls from recolonizing nest sites.”
