Opinion | Would You Kill 500,000 Owls to Save Some Others?

Very soon, the federal government may authorize the killing of nearly a half-million barred owls in the Pacific Northwest in a desperate bid to save the northern spotted owl. The killing could go on for decades.

As philosophers in Oregon whose work focuses on scientific and ethical issues regarding animals and the environment, we believe that the reasons given for this mass slaughter are deeply problematic. More broadly, this attempt to pick ecological winners and losers in a rapidly changing world shows how ill equipped the Endangered Species Act is to protect rare and important ecosystems.

Barred and spotted owls are related species that probably diverged about seven million years ago. Barred owls, which are considered native to the eastern United States, are increasingly appearing in the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests where the threatened northern spotted owls breed and live. Where the two birds overlap, the barred owls tend to outcompete the northern spotted owls, taking the best nest sites and harassing, killing or occasionally mating with spotted owls.

In the 1980s, the northern spotted owl became the centerpiece of a bitter controversy over the logging of old-growth forests, which it depends on for its survival. By 1990, its numbers had dwindled to the point that the federal government classified the bird as “threatened,” which led to sharp limits on logging in its territory. Nonetheless, its number have continued to decline because of the ongoing loss of its habitat — and the competition with the barred owl.

After a period of experimentation and debate, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the Endangered Species Act, has concluded that it must protect spotted owls by permitting federal, state and tribal governmental agencies, private companies and individuals to shoot 470,900 barred owls over the next 30 years. The killings could begin soon.

Although the agency refers to barred owls as “invasive” on the West Coast — meaning they have moved into new territory where they are threatening native species — it isn’t even clear that barred owls are unnatural interlopers. Barred owls are thought to have migrated from the eastern United States through the Great Plains and southern Canada, eventually making their way to British Columbia and then on to Washington, Oregon and California. As this story goes, the barred owls’ arrival is a recent event.