Let’s Not Kill 450,000 Owls: It’s a testament to human arrogance and cruelty that this is even being considered.

For those who are coming straight to the comments, essentially the Fish & Wildlife Service is proposing culling tens of thousands of Barred Owls in order to prevent them from displacing Spotted Owls. The issue is that landowners can also apply for a culling permit, and the two species are close enough in appearance as to be indistinguishable from each other (especially at night), which means Spotted Owls are just as likely to be killed as Barred Owls.

In short: a good intention, a very bad idea.

Until the protection of the environment is placed above success of the timber industry, any of these schemes are pointless and there will be no place for Spotted Owls to exist.

Even protected areas are vulnerable to "salvage logging" that allows harvest of trees in areas of forest fires and to build "access roads" to those areas through those areas.

Forests need to be protected, and unless they are, Spotted Owls have no chance because like mammoths, the world they were built for will no longer exist.