Senator (above) John Kennedy took to the Senate floor Tues., Oct. 28, 2025 and spent over 23 mins. to colorfully eviscerate $1.3 billion U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service plan to shoot to death 450,000 barred owls.
Owl-killing would take place over 30 years, ongoing, across all three western states (CA, OR, WA), and be the largest wildlife mass-killing plan ever carried out by the U.S. government. The reason given? To supposedly protect the endangered Northern spotted owl from competition from the larger barred owl — even though the barred owl is itself protected for almost a century by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA).
The details and justifications for the owl-slaughter, as you’d expect, are as disturbing as they are unscientific. More details are in other posts, including one on this website, HERE. And by animal advocate Wayne Pacelle’s passionate objections to this mass owl slaughter on his Animal Wellness Action website, HERE.
In brief, the rationalization given by the USFWS (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service) is that in order to help the smaller Northern spotted owl species survive, 10% of all barred owls, which compete with their cousin species for limited habitat, must be killed. Thus protecting the smaller spotted owl.
SOME OF THE MANY REASONS THE SLAUGHTER IS ABSURD and POINTLESS
For one, killing barred owls will only encourage other barred owls to move into that territory. And the nocturnal noise and disturbance of hunters will drive off spotted owls too. And the migrations of both owls are most profoundly affected not by competition among owls, but by logging, which will continue in both eastern and western forests.
Ignored is the inconvenient truth that barred owls and spotted owls mate, producing what humans label “sparred owls” — which by itself discredits the necessity of killing one species to save the other.
But the push to “protect” or “save” the “pure” spotted owl reveals the prejudice, ignorance and controlling impulses of the human species, projected onto the animal kingdom. When our anthropogenic categorizations and limitations and rules-monitoring and inter-breeding are controlled in humans, it is called racism. But even anti-racist humans can’t recognize their own ‘racist’ impulses; that lethal control of inter-breeding of animals in the wild is driven by the same ignorance which drives racist behavior. And belies the same basic lack of understanding of how animal (and plant) species are always on the move, both geographically and genetically. This is the nature of Mother Nature.
But this not the nature of mankind with his penchant for control driven by ignorance, fear, and greed.
Suffice to say the mass slaughter of barred owls is only the latest, but perhaps most egregious, outrageous and common sense-denying example of Invasion Biology, the ideology which TreeSpirit writes about extensively. Invasion Biology is the widely disseminated collection of pseudo-scientific ideas, research papers and theories concluding that we humans must and should pick winners and losers in the process of natural selection — and in almost every case, we must exterminate, poison, kill, shoot, trap, or even completely eradicate the designated loser.
Senator Kennedy calls the barred owl slaughter plan, “playing God,” which is as chillingly accurate a label as any. The vast majority of mainstream environmental and even some animal protection orgs like Audubon and The Nature Conservancy and even The Sierra Club have bought in to this animals (and plants) killing ideology. Many even “partner” with chemical manufactures who make billions of dollars by selling poisons to kill so-called “invasive” species.
VIDEO: Senator Kennedy on the Senate floor shoots down the USFWS owl-shooting plan:
The barred owls slaughter however is not driven by herbicides or pesticides sales. Different corporate interests are at work here, though of course still financial ones.
THE REAL REA$ON FOR THE OWL SLAUGHTER
It’s private industry profit-driven of course, as plans costing over $1 billion taxpayer dollars nowadays typically are. In this case, it’s a complicated but understandable.
The timber industry is prevented from logging forests where endangered Northern spotted owls live, since they protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). (The Trump Administration, even more of a friend to the timber industry than even the Biden Administration which first advanced the owl slaughtering plan, is also out to gut the ESA. Of course.) But the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service can grant “incidental take” permits — Orwellian bureaucratese for “kill” permits — for the protected spotted owls if a company does something which benefits the owls. The agency rationale being that killing is okay to get a net benefit to the endangered owl (or other species).
This loophole is blasted wide open with the shotguns of the owl-slaughtered plan, dubbed the, “Barred Owl Management Strategy” (BOMS). Hello again, George Orwell.
The BOMS mass owl slaughter was created as a devious work-around for logging in forests with protected spotted owls. Because if spotted owls can be claimed to benefit from the killing of 450,000 barred owls across millions of acres in three states then, Voila!, “take” permits can be granted to timber (logging) companies killing spotted owls too. And since the owl-shooting will take place at night by independent contractor shooters, they will inevitably shoot a good number of spotted owls since they too are indistinguishable to even most birders. Especially at night. Sick & twisted, anyone?
So the Endangered Species Act has thus been devilishly weaponized to kill about 1/2-million owls of one species to allegedly help owls of another species. While forests which are homes to both owls — and millions of other wild animals — can continue to be logged… which — now get this — is why barred owls (and spotted owls too) are have migrated across the continent in the first place.
The victim, barred owls of eastern U.S. forests, are forced out of their forest homes because of logging (including for the filthy and destructive wood pellets industry). And then when they migrate to survive, over years, they are labeled the perpetrator who must be controlled, stopped, shot.