🦉 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants hunters to shoot more than 500,000 barred owls to help protect other native species.

Barred owls are an invasive species in the Pacific Northwest, originating on the U.S. East Coast, and they pose a huge threat to native protected species, including northern spotted owls.

As part of a draft management plan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) wants to cull these invasive owls, and hopes to enlist hunters to shoot half a million of them over the next 30 years.

Barred owls have been in the Pacific Northwest since the 1950s, and they now outnumber northern spotted owls across Washington, Oregon and California. They pose such a threat to northern spotted owls as they are more aggressive and have a more varied diet, eating anything from insects and amphibians to fish and other birds. They are also larger and more territorial than the native owls, meaning that they displace the northern spotted owls, disrupting their nesting, competing with them for food, and even attacking them when they come too close.

In areas where barred owls are present in higher numbers, northern spotted owl populations are declining rapidly. They are now listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, with populations having declined by between 35 percent and 80 percent over the last 20 years.

https://www.newsweek.com/invasive-sp...thwest-1850348