Tag Archives: fish and wildlife service

Will feds decimate one owl species to help another?

From CFACT

By Bonner Cohen, Ph. D.

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Nearly 500,000 barred owls in northern California, Oregon, and Washington state will soon be under the gun if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes ahead with its latest scheme to save the endangered northern spotted owl.

In November, the Fish and Wildlife Service unveiled its barred owl management proposal, the centerpiece of which is the removal of approximately 500,000 barred owls via the shotgun or other forms of euthanasia from the habitat of its smaller cousin, the northern spotted owl.

“Barred owl removal is not something the Service takes lightly,” Jodie Delavan, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Service, told McClatchy News on March 26. “However, the Service has a legal and ethical responsibility to do all it can to recover northern spotted owl populations.” A final barred owl “management strategy” and a record of decision is expected later this year, Ms. Delavan told McClatchy News.

Since the barred owl is protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, killing them — in this case, by the hundreds of thousands — will require a federal permit or regulation. And that is a step the feds appear to be prepared to take.

That the barred owl is covered under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act is quite appropriate because the bird — beginning in the early 20th century — began migrating westward from eastern North America. By the 1980s, it was well established in the Pacific Northwest, where it occupies the same habitat as the smaller northern spotted owl. The two species feed on the same prey, with the more aggressive barred owl outcompeting its cousin, sometimes even killing northern spotted owls.

When the problem first garnered public attention in the early 1990s, the preferred explanation from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmental groups was that the commercial logging of old-growth forests was responsible for the loss of the northern spotted owl’s habitat and thus was behind the bird’s dwindling numbers. Saving old-growth forests, where Douglas fir and hemlock prevail, was seen by the Clinton administration as the preferred solution, and policies were put in place that restricted logging on federal land in the Pacific Northwest. Those policies succeeded in shutting down many sawmills and destroying timber-dependent communities throughout the region.

The Clinton administration even orchestrated an “Owl Summit” at which federal officials and environmentalists congratulated themselves for caring so much about the fate of the northern spotted owl. Those who pointed out that the problem lay not with old-growth forests but with the encroaching barred owl were ignored.

Over 30 years after the summit and the bird’s being added to the Endangered Species List, the situation faced by the northern spotted owl has worsened. While ignoring the mistake it made in blaming the loss of old-growth forest for the northern spotted owl’s declining numbers, the feds now acknowledge that the problem lies with the barred owl. Seizing the bull by the horns — to mix metaphors — the Fish and Wildlife Service initiated an experiment that involved the killing of 2,485 barred owls with 12-gauge shotguns in five different areas, the Modesto Bee reported March 26.

Having concluded that nonviolent removal of the barred owls was impractical, the feds appear to have settled on a lethal approach. This means showing a preference for one species of owl over another, with the “invasive” barred owl coming up short. But is the barred owl really an invasive species, or is it simply expanding its territory, as many species of birds and mammals are prone to do?
The Owl Research Institute, a Montana-based nonprofit focused on owl conservation, is reviewing the government’s proposal.

“Central to this discussion is the determination of whether Barred Owls truly meet the criteria for an invasive species, or if they represent a more adaptable species capable of natural expansion by themselves, as some have suggested,” the institute said in a March 26 statement emailed to McClatchy News.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is operating under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, a statute that has fallen woefully short in fulfilling its mission of recovering species at risk. In the case of the northern spotted owl, the law was used in the 1990s to curtail commercial logging in the Pacific Northwest. That was a political goal pursued by environmentalists in and out of government. As is now clear, it did nothing to improve the lot of the northern spotted owl.

Today, federal wildlife managers are seriously considering an avian version of ethnic cleansing to carry out their “legal and ethical responsibility” under the Endangered Species Act. The statute allows bureaucrats to play God, even if their policies turn out to be ungodly. If they go through with their plan and shotguns are trained on hundreds of thousands of owls, the Endangered Species Act will have reached a new level of absurdity.

This article originally appeared at The Washington Times

BONNER COHEN: This Landmark Conservation Bill Has Been An Abject Failure For Fifty Years

From The Daily Caller

BONNER COHEN

AUTHOR, FIXING AMERICA’S CRUMBLING UNDERGROUND INFRASTRUCTURE

December 23, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by President Richard M. Nixon. The statute has put enormous power into the hands of bureaucrats at the two federal agencies that administer it – the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). It has also been adroitly used by environmental groups who have sued the federal government under the ESA to stop projects not of their liking through the broadest possible designation of a “critical habitat” for a plant or animal said to be either threatened or endangered.

But on the ESA’s stated goal of “recovering” species at risk, the law has been a spectacular failure, according to a new report from the Western Caucus Foundation. The report, “The Endangered Species Act at 50,” was written by Robert Gordon. Active in environmental policy for over 30 years, Gordon has held many high-level positions, including senior advisor to the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, deputy assistant secretary of policy management at the Department of Interior, and senior advisor on endangered species for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.

“Unfortunately, at the half-century mark, with the listing of 1,667 species as threatened or endangered species, there are only 62 officially ‘recovered’ species” Gordon points out. “Of these, 36 – nearing 60% – are not real conservation ‘success stories.’ These ‘recoveries’ are hollow, as they are inaccurate proclamations attributable to an erroneous original determination that the species was endangered or threatened. The ESA’s poor showing is compounded by the fact that for some species that have been recovered, the recovery is not primarily or even substantially attributable to the ESA.”

“Scientific Integrity Problem”

Relying almost exclusively on the federal government’s own data, the report uncovers widespread dishonesty about what the public is told about the ESA:

  • “More than half of the 62 ‘recoveries’ are not legitimate and owe their delisting primarily to the use of erroneous data or analysis to list the species.
  • Disguising species added to the list as ‘recoveries’ has been a long-standing practice.
  • The same deception has occurred with many species that are proposed for delisting or that have been downlisted and claimed as evidence of ESA effectiveness.
  • USFWS ceased reporting other measurements (in its biannual Report to Congress) that could have provided an additional yardstick for measuring progress and, instead, substituted bureaucratic fluff.
  • The listing standards, the process, or both, have led to more than twice as many wrongly listed species as recovered species.
  • Continuously mislabeling species as ‘recovered’ reveals a scientific integrity problem in the implementation of the ESA.”

“These errors are not without consequence,” Gordon points out in the report. “Each mistake consumes money and time through required bureaucratic actions. Many of these mistakes remained on the List for decades and resulted in regulatory burdens and economic costs. Not only does misreporting these species as ‘recovered,’ hide the ESA’s true conservation record, but it also obscures that waste of conservation resources, and the economic impacts and regulatory burdens on private property owners were imposed on the basis of bad data. Officially proclaiming these errors as recoveries resulted in more waste than would have occurred if the species had been properly delisted on the grounds of original data error. The deceptive record hinders Congressional oversight and misrepresents the program to the public.”

The report points out that the mislabeling of species as “recovered” has been going on for decades. “As far back as 1988, the Government Accounting Office reported this regarding three birds found on the islands of Palau. GAO reported, “although officially designated as recovered, the [Palus owl, dove and flycatcher] owe their ‘recovery’ more to the discovery of additional birds than to successful recovery efforts.”

Gordon cites several recent cases in which FWS has been less than candid in its use of the term “recovery.’ One egregious example is the tiny Monito gecko, whose numbers were put as low as 18 by one survey, earning it a spot on the Endangered Species List. That survey, however, was taken during the day. It was later learned that the Monito gecko is nocturnal, and its estimated population was raised to 7,661. In 2019, the gecko was declared “recovered” by the FWS. (RELATED: BONNER COHEN: Elites Have Come Up With Their Greatest Excuse Yet To Suppress The Rest Of Us)

When listing the running buffalo clover in 1987, FWS reported that it was “one of the rarest members of the North American flora,” with just four known individual plants existing in one county, in one state. “By the time it was delisted as a ‘recovered species’ in 2021, 175 populations, in more than in more than 80 counties and in six states – with one population numbering more than 60,000 – had been found,” the report notes.

“Dismal Recovery Record”

The lessons to be drawn from the institutionalized deception practiced by ESA bureaucrats are clear.  

“Congressional oversight committees should take a hard look at the data and the science used in listings and delistings,” Gordon recommends. “This dismal recovery record further reinforces the need to modernize the Act so that it can be focused on effectively conserving legitimately threatened and endangered species.”

Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT.