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Are they an invasive species?
Unfortunately so. They are an Eastern US species that has been moving ever westward. And they are, in bird law terms, 'huge dicks'. They've been systematically kicking Spotted Owls out of their traditional roosting spots for about a decade now. Spotted Owls are pushovers, so they've been losing breeding ground. And barred owls are not just dicks to other birds, they don't like humans much either.
Have we considered that that's their secret to success?
Being dicks sure worked for out well for humans.
Wait a second, humans are driving themselves extinct by emitting too much carbon
Were they introduced to the west by humans? If this migration is occurring without human intervention this is just evolution doing its thing.
It's going to be hard to remove human influence on this equation considering almost everywhere the human influence is present.
Agreed, I think a lot of conservationism can even go too far in removing or preventing natural adaptation to the human presence. I was mostly referring to cases where humans can transport species between local ecosystems in a way that wouldn't occur otherwise, which can result in an environmental imbalance that doesn't always fix itself since such changes in range don't usually occur naturally on a scale as large as with, say, the introduction of the brown marmorated stinkbug into North America from Asia.
I've never had a lick of problem with the barred owls. The northern spotted owls look rather similar really. They also interbreed.
I hate this owl murdering nonsense. Why are we funding this?
Conservation, I'd guess. Northern spotted owl seems to be threatened species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_spotted_owl#Influence_of_barred_owl_invasion
Because we need to balance what we've broken. It's the responsible thing to do
We didn't break it. It's evolution. The barred owls simply out nest out, compete and out survive the northern spotted owls.
First, it was claimed that the northern spotted owls could only live in Old growth forests, but that was proven to be false. I've personally seen that it was false because they lived near me.
Then they said that the barred owls and the northern spotted owls did not interbreed, and I felt that that was false because I was pretty sure I came across hybrids. That was then proven to be the case too.
It is illogical to conserve one species by making another endangered. Nothing will change that makes the northern spotted owls better at breeding and surviving than The Barred owls that are similar in size, shape and even coloration.
They only lived east of the Great Plains until we started building cities and planting trees, as they need high, safe perches for nesting and sleeping. When humans created that for them, they expanded westward all the way to California and started competing with (and killing) other species of owl.
So, yes.