The Oregon Department of State Lands says it will shoot and kill barred owls in the Coast Range starting on Thursday, becoming the first agency in the state to take part in a controversial federal effort to curb the invasive birds and boost dwindling northern spotted owl populations.
The agency said it has secured permits to kill up to 350 barred owls per year in the 83,000-acre Elliott State Research Forest in Coos and Douglas counties, northeast of Coos Bay. The culling will take place year-round for at least 15 years and cost as much as $1.2 million.
The effort is part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to kill more than 450,000 barred owls over 30 years in Oregon, Washington and California. The agency says barred owls outcompete legally protected spotted owls for food and territory. Animal rights groups have called the killing cruel and unethical while some conservation groups support it as a way to save spotted owls.
Given its controversial nature, very few public agencies or other groups have thus far publicly acknowledged they are actively carrying out the owl removal.
The Oregon Department of Forestry told The Oregonian/OregonLive it will also participate in the effort but does not expect to receive a federal permit until next year and has not yet identified where or when barred owl removals would occur or how many owls will be killed, agency spokesperson Tim Hoffman said.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, on the other hand, said it does not plan to participate in barred owl removal.
In addition to the Coast Range, barred owls are slated to be killed in the Oregon Klamath region, the Western Oregon Cascades and Eastern Oregon Cascades, according to the federal plan.
The effort in the Elliott appears to be an attempt to save what officials say is a tiny spotted owl population.
A recent survey detected just three individual spotted owls in the research forest and approximately 775 barred owl detections between March and July this past breeding season, though some of those might have been the same barred owl, said Amy Price, the Elliott State Research Forest’s research biologist. She said the forest historically supported approximately 44 spotted owls at 22 breeding sites, plus additional owls not tied to those sites. The agency is working on baseline owl surveys this fall to establish better population estimates, she said.
The Elliott has been a flashpoint in Oregon’s timber wars for decades. Once managed for school-fund timber revenue, it was reborn as a research forest in 2022 after years of conflicts over endangered-species protections and a failed sale. Its new conservation plan allows timber harvest while requiring species recovery measures.
Price said the decision to kill barred owls was not made lightly. She said multiple research studies have shown a strong correlation between removing barred owls and the survival of spotted owls.
“There is a lot of heartburn, a lot of heartache in choosing one species to prioritize,” she said. “It’s a desperate situation for the spotted owls, and we wouldn’t be here if they were doing fine.”
But Price said success would mean far more than keeping the Elliott’s three remaining spotted owls alive. The goal is for spotted owls to return to vacant nesting territories, establish breeding pairs and raise enough young to rebuild a self-sustaining population.
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