See Spot Recover

Bush admin debuts final recovery plan for spotted owl

Posted at 3:43 PM on 16 May 2008

The Bush administration has released a final plan for helping out the northern spotted owl, after a prior plan was deemed to have been watered down by political interference. Critics admit the plan is an improvement over last year's draft -- which relied heavily on, ahem, taking out predator barred owls with shotguns -- but still wish more emphasis had been put on restricting logging in the threatened bird's old-growth forest habitat. "We are definitely concerned this is not going to be sufficient to recover the owl," says Steve Holmer of the American Bird Conservancy. "It does appear to have some pretty significant loopholes." U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say the spotted owl could be recovered within three decades if all goes well; the recovery plan will be reviewed in 10 years to see whether it's working.

sources: Associated Press, The Columbian, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
straight to the plan: 2008 Final Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl

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Comments: (2 comments)

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"predator"?

This is a very complex issue. At the base of it all, we should definitely disapprove of solutions that require the killing of one kind of animal in order to save another, in an ecosystem that has been messed up by human beings.

But just to be clear: It is possible that the barred owls, who are lately expanding their range into the traditional range of spotted owls, may sometimes prey on the chicks of spotted owls. But I strongly doubt that spotted owls are regular prey items for them. Surely the issue against barred owls is that they may be better at taking possible nesting sites away from spotted owls, and may be better at catching prey items that the spotted owls might have caught.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 5:17 PM on 17 May 2008

Non-Native Species

The issue re the barred owls is why they're expanding westward. If it's because humans have destroyed their natural habitat in the East, then fixing that habitat is the solution to an unnatural migration. But these owls are not moving westward by unnatural means, so this might be a natural phenomenon that should be left alone.

Of course, none of the above is meant to imply that killing trees in the West or other ecosystem destruction is OK, because it's not.

by Wolverine at 10:52 AM on 18 May 2008

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