A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers is calling on the Trump administration to cancel a controversial plan to kill up to nearly half a million barred owls to protect the vulnerable northern spotted owl.
Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan to shoot the owls in California, Oregon and Washington over three decades. In a March 7 letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, 19 U.S. representatives — including Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles) — say the strategy will cost about $1.35 billion to implement.
“In the spirit of fiscal responsibility and ethical conservation, we urge you to halt all spending on this plan to mass kill a native, range-expanding North American owl species,” states the letter co-led by Kamlager-Dove and Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas).
Supporters of the strategy — including federal wildlife officials and prominent scientists — believe scrapping it will have disastrous consequences for northern spotted owls, which have suffered precipitous declines as barred owls have muscled them out of their territory. A recent study also estimated the cost of the plan to be far lower than the lofty figure cited by the legislators.
“We’re at risk of losing one of the signature species of Pacific Northwest old-growth forests,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior said that the agency doesn’t comment on congressional correspondence but that it would carefully review the letter.
Barred owls and spotted owls are similar in appearance and the birds can even interbreed. But barred owls — which originally hail from the eastern U.S. — are more aggressive, less picky about food and reproduce faster, allowing them to outcompete their fellow raptors.
Barred owls are considered a top threat to northern spotted owls, which are scarce but widely distributed in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. If barred owls’ expansion is left unchecked, some experts believe they’ll go on to decimate California spotted owls — which inhabit California’s central and southern mature forests.
But some animal welfare groups and legislators say shooting thousands of barred owls is not the solution, citing moral reasons in addition to the potential cost.
“As a conservationist, I believe it is contradictory to kill one species in order to preserve another,” Kamlager-Dove said in a statement. “And as an animal lover, I cannot support the widespread slaughter of these beautiful creatures.”
Other legislators who signed the letter to the Interior secretary include Rep. Josh Harder (D-Stockton) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
A California spotted owl photographed in the San Gabriel National Monument, Angeles National Forest, in 2009.
(Ann Berkley / USFS)
Lawmakers in the letter also questioned the workability of the plan. They said the government “has conducted wildlife control programs with limited success” and there was no precedent for the vast scale of the plan that was approved.
Greenwald, however, said there have been extensive pilot studies on barred owl removal that worked. He pointed to other examples of successful animal control programs, including trapping brown-headed cowbirds to benefit the least bell’s vireo, a small endangered bird.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have sued in U.S. District Court in Seattle to stop the owl-killing plan. Another animal welfare group initiated a similar suit in Oregon.
The more than $1-billion cost for the plan cited by legislators is extrapolated from a $4.5-million contract awarded to a Northern California Native American tribe last year to hunt about 1,500 barred owls over four years.
The “price tag in this political environment is a big fat target,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. Pacelle has appealed to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — headed by Elon Musk, who has led much of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts — to nix the plan.
However, a 2024 research paper concluded that barred owl removal in the range of the northern spotted owl would cost from $4.5 million to $12 million a year during the initial stages, and was likely to decrease over time. At $12 million a year, the 30-year plan would run $360 million.
Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which supports tamping down the barred owl population, said it wouldn’t just be the federal government footing the bill.
“It is a collaborative process between multiple private, state, federal and tribal entities so that the costs are going to be spread across multiple different entities,” he said. His group has intervened in the two lawsuits against the federal government in defense of the plan.
In recent weeks, federal job cuts have upended surveys for the northern and California spotted owls. Conservationists say the data are needed to protect the raptors.
There are as few as 3,000 northern spotted owls left on federal lands. The brown raptors with white spots are listed as threatened under the California and federal Endangered Species Act.
California spotted owls are also in decline. In 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed that a distinct Southern California population be listed as endangered under federal law. A Sierra Nevada population was recommended for threatened status.
