https://notthebee.com/article/report-bi ... n=01142025
The Biden administration appears to be doubling down on a plan to kill barred owls in order to protect the northern spotted owl populations in Northwest forests.
But a group of bipartisan Oregon legislators says it's a cruel and wasteful plan. They're calling on the incoming Trump administration's proposed Department of Government Efficiency to reverse the decision. Two years ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a plan to shoot and kill an estimated 400,000 invasive barred owls at a cost of roughly $1.35 billion over the next three decades. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management said it's signing on to that plan, too.But the pitch to kill one bird species to protect another has drawn skepticism from the beginning. While federal officials say the Fish and Wildlife Service's plan will help protect spotted owl populations, animal rights groups say it may just slow what could still be an inevitable extinction.
'This simply isn't a sound strategy — fiscally or ecologically,' Oregon state Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis, said in a statement. 'As a staunch animal welfare advocate and a believer in evidence-based policy, I cannot support a plan that calls on taxpayers to front $45 million a year to cull a protected species. We certainly need to better address the decline we've seen in our spotted owl population, but this is not the way to do it.'
In the words of the immortal Forrest Gump , Stupid is as Stupid does.
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