(Beth Clifton collage)
Trump administration may turn scheme to kill 450,000 barred owls over to sport hunters
WASHINGTON D.C.––Five weeks into the second Donald Trump administration, the only birds faring well appear to be budget hawks, a lately much feared metaphorical species, and vultures picking the bones of whatever remains of the U.S. National Park Service, National Forest Service, and Fish & Wildlife Service after extensive staff cuts.
There is still faint hope that newly appointed Fish & Wildlife Service director Brian Nesvik will ax the $1.35 billion departmental plan to kill as many as 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years in a “Hail Mary” effort to preserve the estimated population of 3,000 to 5,200 endangered northern spotted owls on federal land.
The idea is to protect spotted owls from from habitat competition, without stopping logging in and around the old growth forests that are the threatened spotted owls’ only habitat.
(See Hey Musk & Ramaswamy: save $1.35 billion! Ax the barred owl-killing scheme!)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Sport hunters may be asked to kill owls to save money
But Nesvik, 44, director of the Wyoming Game & Fish Department from 2019 until his retirement in 2024, is believed to be more likely to job out the planned barred owl massacre, authorized by the Joe Biden administration, to sport hunters.
Nesvik in Wyoming pandered to sport hunters on every topic that came before him: conservation of elk, wolves, grizzly bears, even chasing down and crushing wolves with snowmobiles.
(See Trump picks RFK Jr., Gabbard, Nesvik, Patel, & Usha Vance: hope or barf?)
(Beth Clifton collage)
Federal owl biologist corps down by two-thirds
If shooting barred owls is delegated to sport hunters, indications are that the hunters will be working with even less guidance and supervision in which owls they kill, where, than they supposedly were to have when the scheme surfaced.
“Each spring,” explained Alex Baumhardt for the Oregon Capital Chronicle on February 26, 2025, “the U.S. Forest Service hires dozens of seasonal biologists to venture into remote Northwest forests on federal land and set up acoustic recorders to monitor for sounds indicating the presence of northern spotted owls.
The federal hiring freeze imposed by Trump minutes after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, however, “means the Forest Service cannot hire the more than 40 seasonal scientists to count the owls, according to Taal Levi, an associate professor of wildlife biology at Oregon State University who works on the owl monitoring project.
Barred owl. (Beth Clifton photo)
U.S. Forest Service muzzled
“The monitoring typically involves about 60 scientists working from central California to Canada, Levi said,” only 20 of them full-time staff.
The hiring freeze, Baumhardt added, “also means the agency will likely go without dozens more scientists needed to monitor threatened and endangered salmon, frogs, and other fragile species, according to Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.”
Continued Baumhardt, “Damon Lesmeister, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service who has led federal owl monitoring projects for years, told the Capital Chronicle he can no longer talk to journalists without permission from the agency’s public affairs staff. And an unnamed spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to questions.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Nature fills the vacuum”
Emailed Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy president Wayne Pacelle to ANIMALS 24-7, “This is just one more reason why the barred owl kill plan,” which his organizations have sued to try to stop, “won’t work. Even if the U.S. Forest Service and Fish & Wildlife Service were fully staffed, and had a billion dollars to throw around, nothing would stop surviving barred owls – and there are plenty of them – from claiming the nesting sites recently purged of their conspecifics [spotted owls].
“Nature fills the vacuum,” Pacelle recited, “and in this case, it means barred owls will reclaim territory. With fewer personnel, and fewer dollars, the kill plan will be less robust, and it will be even easier for barred owls to fill in the gaps. The plan was unworkable even at full capacity.”
Spotted owl, grizzly bear, & hunter.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“The hoot & shoot”
Picked up Pacelle a day later, in an email to supporters on February 27, 2025, “The ‘hoot and shoot,’ as it is locally known — is a bad idea whose days are numbered.
“From the get-go,” Pacelle reminded, “we’ve said that these night-time owl shoots would invariably fall short of the goal of protecting spotted owls because the control area is a staggering 24 million acres. Not only would the plan require a small army of sharpshooters to find and shoot these nocturnal birds, but nothing would stop surviving owls in the surrounding area from flying in and replacing them. The plan would put the federal government on a never-ending owl-killing treadmill.
“Now,” Pacelle hoped, “with the Trump Administration cutting programs, this plan should itself be a high-priority targeting for sidelining. Conducting a scaled-down kill will be even more futile. It will be that much easier for surviving owls to replace the owls shot by the hunters.
Barred owl rests on a branch.
(Beth Clifton photo)
Visits to Hooter’s
“The American public,” Pacelle asserted, “doesn’t want its own government to conduct the world’s largest-ever raptor slaughter. It doesn’t want owl shooting in 14 units of the National Park Service in the Pacific Northwest. It doesn’t want the Endangered Species Act to be used as a sword to allow an assault on a North American native species. And it doesn’t want to spend taxpayer money on a scheme that cannot work.”
So far, though, the closest approach of the Trump administration to evincing any interest in owls have been visits to Hooter’s.
(Beth Clifton collage)
10 million hunters scatter lead across the land
Pacelle on February 23, 2025 also expressed hope in an email to Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy supporters that the Trump administration, Congress, and state legislatures might belatedly act to end all use of lead ammunition.
“Nobody should use bullets that keep killing long after discharged from a firearm,” Pacelle began. “But that’s exactly what happens when hunters load lead rounds into their shotguns and rifles, take aim at their quarry, and scatter lead throughout the biotic community.
“Think of 10 million hunters, fanning out across America’s forests and fields, hitting and missing quarry,” Pacelle explained.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Toxic fragments
“Acting independently but with dangerous cumulative impact, they inject wild animals and pollute the wild with toxic bullets and fragments on more than a billion acres of public and private lands.
“When a hunter dresses out a deer, elk, moose, or pronghorn,” Pacelle detailed, “if he has used lead, the carcass will be riddled with toxic fragments, many of them too small to spot and remove. The hunter need not ask the consumer—family, friend, or foodbank customer––if they want lead with their venison. It’s infused in meat and marrow.
“At the kill site, he also leaves behind the skin, sinew, bones, blood, organs, hooves, and other parts of the animal’s body—a ‘gut pile’ that is a smorgasbord for eagles, vultures, foxes,” and other scavenging species, including California condors, a critically endangered species ranging over the entire U.S. southwest.”
American bald eagle on top.of an old barn. (Beth Clifton photo)
47% of eagles suffer from lead poisoning
Pacelle mentioned an “eight-year study of 1,210 bald and golden eagles across 38 states, co-authored by dozens of wildlife scientists,” earlier reported by ANIMALS 24-7, “who “determined that up to 47% of eagles had ‘bone lead concentrations above thresholds for chronic poisoning.’ According to the study, a third of eagles had “acute [lead] poisoning.”
(See Sluggish on getting the lead out: feds again play pro-hunting politics and Bald eagles get national honors & more lead shot in their guts for Christmas.)
Suggested Pacelle, “There may be more than 20 million wild animals of all species who die every year from lead poisoning,” including as well as scavenging species, “ground-feeding birds mistaking the lead fragments for seeds.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Lead shot banned at National Wildlife Refuges since 1991
Waterfowl also suffer from ingesting lead shot and fishing sinkers lost in the bottom sediments where ducks, geese, and swans dabble for their food.
“More than a generation ago,” Pacelle recalled, “over the objections of the National Rifle Association and other extreme hunting groups, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in 1991 banned the use of lead ammunition in waterfowl hunting [at National Wildlife Refuges].
“But state wildlife agencies—often repeating the mantra that they engage in science-based wildlife management—continue to allow and excuse lead bullets in all states but California,” Pacelle continued.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Stupid as lead
Why have the other 49 states not acted?
“According to one peer-reviewed study published in 2022 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,” Pacelle remembered without drawing the obvious connection, “exposure to leaded gasoline lowered the IQ of about half the population of the United States. The study focused on people born before 1996—the year the U.S. banned gasoline containing lead.”
Merritt & Beth Clifton.
This could explain the entire present U.S. political paradigm.
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