December 19, 2025
by Dr. Fran Santiago-Ávila
WW1 Science and Advocacy Director
“Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” The iconic call of barred owls echoes throughout northwestern forests, as they search for mates, announce their territories, and communicate with their families.
Barred owls “marry” for life. Husband and wife establish their home in a nest hollow that they return to year after year, feed and groom one another, and raise their young together. They share a bond grounded in devotion, commitment to family, and an affection that, in humans, we would simply call love.
But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), and some conservation groups have demonized these owls, labeling them as “invasive” because they migrated from the Eastern U.S. decades ago and calling them “highly aggressive” because of their ability to survive in the compromised conditions of our damaged forests. These public agencies have declared that these immigrants must be killed because they are outcompeting their less adaptable and assertive cousins, the northern and California spotted owls.
Under this rationale, USFWS has embarked on a 30-year plan to kill up to almost half a million barred owls in Washington, Oregon, and California. WDFW has said it will assist with these efforts by targeting barred owls living in the vicinity of spotted owls, although it is not setting a quota of owls to kill.
This plan is deeply misguided. Shooting owls won’t protect or rebuild the forest. It won’t restore the deep, mature woods spotted owls need to survive, or protect them from further attacks.
Simply put, this mass-killing project will not save the spotted owl.
Beyond that, this plan locks us into a grim, indefinite commitment. A sustained mass killing effort, year after year, decade after decade, will become our new approach to “managing” forests, rather than through healing, protection, and restoration.
Most importantly, it is unethical for us to scapegoat barred owls for the problems humans have caused, treating them as problems to eliminate simply because they thrive in the world we have altered.
The Plan is Unrealistic, Unworkable, and Doomed to Fail
Nobody pretends that killing barred owls will save spotted owls, who have been declining for decades as we continue to destroy their old-growth habitat.
Results from federal government experiments suggest that killing barred owls can slow the decline of northern spotted owls. But these experiments did not show increases in spotted owls—in fact, both recruitment and the rate of population change of spotted owls continued to decline even when nearby barred owls were killed.
The plan would train and designate “removal specialists” to shoot barred owls and barred-owl/spotted-owl hybrids at night, creating obvious concerns about safety, the mistaken killing of spotted owls, and the disruption and displacement of both species.
Without broad, long-term habitat protection and restoration, this mass killing project becomes a never-ending commitment, with shooters working annually for decades, and perhaps with no end in sight.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is accelerating the habitat destruction and fragmentation that drives the decline of the spotted owl. It has directed federal agencies to increase timber production by 25%, rescinded the Roadless Rule that protects 45 million acres of remote forest from logging and construction, started dismantling the protections afforded by the National Environmental Policy Act, and proposed sweeping changes to the Endangered Species Act that would cripple protections for species like the spotted owl.
Indeed, both the Trump administration and the logging industry have joined some conservation groups in supporting the barred owl removal plan, because the killing of barred owls can be used as “mitigation” to facilitate increased logging in the old-growth forests that serve as spotted owl habitat.
Not only will the barred owl killing plan not save the spotted owl, but it may actually serve as an excuse for accelerating the destruction of its habitat, thereby speeding its extinction.
Scapegoating Barred Owls is Unethical
Wildlife or “biodiversity” conservation should not be a ledger balancing one species against another. It should be about protecting habitat, respecting life, and restoring places that sustain it in all its diversity and dynamism.
As we rethink the future of forest owls — barred and spotted alike — we must confront a deeper truth: the crisis facing the spotted owl is, of course, not due primarily to inter‑species competition. It is the result of centuries of human disruption — logging, habitat destruction, suppression of natural fire regimes, and wholesale reshaping of ecosystems. We created the conditions that allowed barred owls to migrate westward. We reshaped the landscape.
If we accept that, then the choice becomes profoundly different. We should not view barred owls as problems to be eliminated. They are creatures with families, pair bonds, homes, and lives worthy of respect. Their presence in our forests is not a crime — it is part of nature’s response to human-induced change. That is what nature does: it adapts.
To launch a decades-long mass killing campaign is to assert dominance over wild families—a decision rooted in fear and control, rather than care. It assumes humans have the right to decide whose lives matter more; the same attitude that has landed us in our current predicament of biological annihilation. But, if we accept that humans have a responsibility to protect wild animals, we should also recognize we have a duty to refrain from using lethal force as a first, or only, tool.
We cannot kill our way to “biodiversity.” We cannot treat ecosystems like static spreadsheets, tallying and adjusting species counts. The protection of the natural world demands humility. It demands that we commit to restoring habitat, healing landscapes, and allowing nature’s dynamism — even if that means accepting uncertainty, change, and, with it, loss.
Protecting the Autonomy of Wild Lives.
At Washington Wildlife First, we believe the greatest act of respect is not to wage war on wildlife, but to protect the conditions under which the autonomy of wild lives — barred owls, spotted owls, and countless others — can persist, thrive, and adapt. We urge our supporters, our communities, and decision‑makers to embrace that ethic: to care deeply, act cautiously, and recognize that our responsibility lies not in mastering nature, but in bearing witness to it with humility, compassion, and respect.
It is in wrestling with issues like this that we decide who we are – tyrants or protectors.