[Tweeters] (DR: The political illustrations are notable)—-"Kill the barred owls!agree U.S. Senate Democrats with Republicans” - Animals 24-7

[Kim Thorburn via Tweeters]

Hi,

I believe that Washington just adopted a recovery plan during its periodic status review of the spotted owl this year. The plan involves introduction of captive-bred or translocated spotted owls to identified healthy habitat territories and then barred owl management for their protection. As far as I know, there have been no introductions yet.


Kim



Kim Marie Thorburn, MD, MPH

Spokane, WA

(509) 465-3025 home

(509) 599-6721 cell



________________________________
From: Tweeters <tweeters-bounces at mailman11.u.washington.edu> on behalf of Steve Hampton via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Sent: Sunday, November 2, 2025 7:00 AM
To: TWEETERS tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: [Tweeters] (DR: The political illustrations are notable)—-"Kill the barred owls!agree U.S. Senate Democrats with Republicans” - Animals 24-7

Thanks, Dan, for sharing this. It's a bit of a bizarre article, positing that saving Spotted Owls will allow more logging. I didn't follow the logic.

But the larger issue is the widespread assumption that this is a budgeted plan with an allocation of millions of dollars. In fact, all along the "plan" is nothing more than a permit (a "take permit" from the USFWS under certain conditions) -- it comes with no budget, no staffing, and needs volunteer donation of staff time from other agencies to be implemented. In short, it will never be implemented in a widespread way. I described this in my Post Alley article here:

No, They’re not Really Going to Shoot 450,000 Owls<https://www.postalley.org/2024/09/12/no-theyre-not-really-going-to-shoot-450000-owls/>

Things got wonkier this summer when a Texas Republican identified the project as wasteful government spending - even though it had a budget of $0 - and went on a crusade against it, which was picked up by right-wing media. This was during the DOGE era. Then the legislator and the right-wing media started citing each other. It was an example of bad math, bad legislative staff work, and bad journalism. He was just using it to blow his horn. I explained that here:
The bad owl math that haunts us<https://substack.com/home/post/p-169221688>

Now it seems that Dems and Reps have simply let the permit stand, with a budget of zero, and are leaving it alone.

To my knowledge, the only place where owl removal has occurred is in northern California, where the Barred Owl expansion is still young and many Spotted Owls still remain. I've not heard that any agencies - federal, state, local, or tribal - in WA have participated in it yet.





On Sun, Nov 2, 2025 at 5:35 AM Dan Reiff via Tweeters <tweeters at u.washington.edu<mailto:tweeters at u.washington.edu>> wrote:
Tweeters,
I found this current article to be an interesting read.
The political illustrations are notable.

A past five year program covering the area below  Blewett Pass resulted in what I found to be observable signs of success.

Please understand that just because I post an article doesn’t mean that I agree with the content or opinions.

To view other current articles from other sources, Google some of the key words of this Subject line.
Steve Hampton also wrote a past, thoughtful article regarding the controversies regarding eliminating some Barred Owls in carefully selected locations.
Dan Reiff, PhD

https://www.animals24-7.org/2025/10/30/kill-the-barred-owls-agree-u-s-senate-democrats-with-republicans/

Sent from my iPhone
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--
Steve Hampton
Port Townsend, WA  (qatáy)


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