The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is scapegoating barred owls for its decades-long failure to better protect northern spotted owl habitat. Instead of admitting its mismanagement and coddling of the logging industry—the real reason northern spotted owls are threatened—and trying to restore habitat, the agency approved a senseless plan that allows the mass slaughter of 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years.

Friends of Animals has filed a lawsuit to stop the insane plan to save spotted owls, which is slated to being as early as spring 2025 and would extend to California, Washington and Oregon.

“FWS’s disastrous plan proposes to manage natural competition with a shotgun rather than address the root cause for declining populations of wildlife, namely habitat destruction and climate change,” said Jennifer Best, Director of Friends of Animals Wildlife Law Program. “It’s downright cruel and unethical. It demonstrates a blatant disregard for the lives of individual owls, and it is particularly dangerous as it sets a precedent for labeling all species who migrate and adapt to a changing environment as invasive.”

FoA’s lawsuit argues that underlying FWS’s decision is the false premise that barred owls are an invasive species. Barred owls were not introduced to the Pacific Northwest by humans.  They are believed to have migrated from eastern United States in response to changing climatic and geographic conditions in the last hundred years.

Plus, there is new evidence that the barred owl has actually resided in the Pacific Northwest for thousands of years, calling into question FWS’s narrative that they are new arrivals, but this data is barely mentioned in the FWS’s Environmental Impact Statement.

“Not only is this plan alarming, it’s also illegal,” Best said. “FWS has violated the National Environmental Policy Act because it failed to explore reasonable alternatives and failed to take a hard look at the impacts of the proposed lethal management strategy. In addition, such needless killing of protected wildlife is something that was never contemplated or authorized by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.”

Best added: “It is especially jarring that FWS also proposes to carry out this action in federally designated wilderness areas. The Wilderness Act mandates that FWS manage these areas in a limited way so that they are unaffected by humans.”

Adding insult to injury, FoA’s lawsuit points out that FWS’s initial barred owl mass slaughter “experiment” —about 2,500 barred owls were killed—had little measurable effect on northern spotted owl populations. Not to mention, since the new plan allows people to shoot barred owls in the dark, there is a great risk that spotted owls will accidentally be shot since these species look and sound a lot alike.

The lawsuit makes it clear the mass slaughter of barred owls will not change the outlook for spotted owls: They will still not be protected as endangered; their habitats will continue to be negatively affected by the logging industry, human development, and climate change.

“We are not just fighting for the lives of hundreds of thousands of owls, we’re fighting for a future of wildlife management that values the lives of animals, including the ones who naturally adapt to a changing environment,” said Stephen Hernick, Managing Attorney for FoA’s Wildlife Law Program.

“In a world with rapidly changing climate, we will see far more animals adjusting their habitat. FWS should focus on protecting all animals, not killing those who adapt.”