Lawmakers urge Trump administration to cancel barred owl-killing plan, say it would cost too much
Source: Associated Press
Lawmakers urge Trump administration to cancel owl-killing plan, say it would cost too much
By MATTHEW BROWN
Updated 6:36 PM EDT, March 10, 2025
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 a smaller type of owl that’s facing potential extinction.
The 19 lawmakers — led by Republican Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas conservative, and Democrat Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California liberal — 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, which have long been controversial because of logging restrictions in the birds’ forest habitat beginning in the 1990s, 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.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/killing-owls-cost-congress-spotted-owl-1a297a18ecc31bbf2f6a9d8d61cf3761
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