WA lands commissioner wary of federal plan to kill thousands of owls [View all]

Washington’s public lands commissioner, Hilary Franz, is voicing skepticism about a federal proposal to kill thousands of barred owls in the Pacific Northwest to help the threatened northern spotted owl.

Franz wrote in a letter sent this week to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that she’s concerned about “unintended consequences” and that the plan “could be unworkable given the scale of the overlapping habitat for barred owls and spotted owls.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to kill about 500,000 barred owls, living on millions of acres of land between California and Washington, over three decades.

Hunters would shoot the owls with shotguns in most cases, according to a draft environmental impact statement released in November.

https://washingtonstatestandard.com/briefs/wa-lands-commissioner-wary-of-federal-plan-to-kill-thousands-of-owls/