Olympia – A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday urged the Trump administration to scrap plans to kill more than 450,000 invasive barred owls in West Coast forests as part of efforts to stop the birds from crowding out northern spotted owls, which are thought to be on the verge of extinction.
The 19 lawmakers — led by Republican Rep. Troy Nehls of Texas and Democrat Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California, claimed the killings would be “grossly expensive” and cost $3,000 per bird.
They questioned if the shootings would help native populations of northern spotted owls and the closely related California spotted owl.
Barred owls are native to eastern North America and started appearing in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. They’ve quickly displaced many spotted owls, which are smaller birds that need larger territories to breed.
An estimated 100,000 barred owls now live within a range that contains only about 7,100 spotted owls, according to federal officials.
Under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year, trained shooters would target barred owls over 30 years across a maximum of about 23,000 square miles in California, Oregon and Washington.
The plan did not include a cost estimate. But the lawmakers said in a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that it could top $1.3 billion.
US Fish and wildlife’s plan called for more than 2,400 barred owls to be removed this year and for that number to ramp up to more than 15,000 birds annually beginning in 2027.
Scientists for years have been shooting barred owls on an experimental basis and officials say the results show the strategy could halt spotted owl declines.