Plan to cull owls creates odd political bedfellows

Timber industry joins environmentalists in pushing for the effort in Oregon to proceed.

- BY LILA SEIDMAN

UNDER a controversial plan, up to 450,000 barred owls, like the one shown, would be killed to ease conditions for northern spotted owls.

(WADE PAYNE Associated Press)

The strange political bedfellows created by efforts to save spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest just got even stranger.

Already Republican members of Congress were allied with animal rights activists.

They don't want trained shooters to kill up to 450,000 barred owls, which are out-competing northern spotted owls, under a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan approved last year that would unfold over three decades.

Now, timber interests are aligning with environmentalists in favor of culling the owls.

Some logging advocates are afraid nixing the plan will slow down timber harvesting. Roughly 2.6 million acres of timberlands in western Oregon managed by the Bureau of Land Management are governed by resource management plans contingent on the barred owl cull going forward, according to Travis Joseph, president and chief executive of the American Forest Resource Council, a trade association representing mills, loggers, lumber buyers and other stakeholders.

The area can produce at least 278 million board feet per year under current plans, "with the potential for significantly more," Joseph said in a mid-October letter to Congress.

If the cull is scrapped, he said, the federal agency probably will need to restart Endangered Species Act consultation for the northern spotted owl, which is listed as threatened. It's a process that could take years. According to the letter, it would create "unacceptable risks and delays to current and future timber sales."

Timber production goals laid out by the Trump administration also could be jeopardized.