11/19/2025
I love hearing and sometimes seeing barred owls from my back deck in Maryland. But barred owls have moved west, with our unintentional help, and are killing off an owl native to the magnificent old forests of the Pacific Northwest, the northern spotted owl. Sometimes saving a species calls for removing members of another species. A bill to block the removal of barred owls, and doom the spotted owl to potential extinction, was resounding defeated in the US Senate recently. It was reassuring to see how strong the support still is for science-based wildlife management and endangered species throughout the conservation world, from hardcore hunting to hardcore green groups.
The northern spotted owl population has been rapidly declining, largely due to an unexpected culprit—the barred owl. A proven wildlife management strategy offers the potential to avoid extinction.