Hunting an owl to save an ecosystem
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All right. So, Josh Partlow, you're a national climate reporter for The Post. And as I understand it, you have something that you want to share with me. Yes. I wanted to share with you some owl calls. Owl calls? Yes. Just like, hoot, hoot? Yeah, that's right. There's a specific owl call. It goes, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. Ooh, I like that one. Can you do it one more time? All right. Okay, here we go.

Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo. Okay, I got it. Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo. And here's the actual call from Cornell University's library. And the owl behind that call is called the barred owl. And this owl, the barred owl, it's been spreading up and down the West Coast. And the people I met are dedicating their lives to stopping this specific owl.

And how are they doing this? Well, we went into the forests of Northern California in the redwoods right along the coast, some of the tallest trees in the world. And I was there at night with this researcher, Danny Hofstadter. Danny's an ornithologist. He studies birds. Nothing in the chamber and nothing. We got out of his pickup truck. Danny grabbed his shotgun, his headlamp, his ammunition, and

We started walking up the trail into the forest. Walking alongside him is his dog, Charlie, a German short-haired pointer. How old's Charlie? He's a year and a half. Danny carries this small loudspeaker. It's small but mighty. That plays recorded owl calls, and he starts broadcasting some of these calls. Owl calls.

And Danny and his team of researchers are out there at night to stop these owls, the barred owls, by killing them. And they're doing this to save the coastal ecosystem. And he says to help another owl, the spotted owl, to survive. This is one of the country's biggest efforts to stop a species at spreading. It involves killing as many as half a million barred owls over the next few decades.

Some call it a mass killing, picking a winner, you know, in a competition between two species. But Danny says they just need to find a way to stop this invasion.

If we don't do anything to stall the invasion to better understand, we could have much more drastic consequences than just losing spotted owls. Not only the loss of some small forest owl species, but the loss of many amphibians and just, I mean, not only extinctions, but just reducing the amount of certain key species could have drastic consequences on ecosystem services.

From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine Powers. It's Thursday, December 26th. Today on Post Reports, the deadly campaign to save an icon of the Pacific Northwest. We follow reporter Josh Partlow into the forests of California, where Danny Hofstadter and his team are removing invasive barred owls. We'll hear why these removals are necessary and what this means for our wider ecosystem.

So Josh, you said that the barred owl is a particular threat to the spotted owl, like that the one is edging out the other. Why is this one owl so, like, potentially damaging to the population of this other owl? Yeah, they look remarkably similar. They're, you know, these brown and white owls, about a little bigger than a football. They're, you know, they're very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very

The barred owls are slightly larger and they're, according to Danny and these scientists who study them, they're much more aggressive than spotted owls. I mean, yeah. Like they'll hit branches with their wings to just sound more intimidating and they'll make like this racket out of nowhere and you're like, whoa. Other times they'll just give like a quick inspection, like just a...

Like right above you. I've been swiped at by barred owls. Not gonna lie, I've had friends who have had pretty deep cuts on their scalp from barred owl talons. - They like the same habitat as spotted owls, so they prefer the same nesting trees.

They're basically out competing spotted owls. It's really a bird that will eat anything that's out there. We've had turkeys, we've had dabbling ducks. Salamanders and frogs and... Lots of skunks, moles, squirrels, flying squirrels, wood rats, snakes, a lot of snakes. The scientists have even found house cats in their stomachs. Really?

They're killing cats? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Part of Danny's work is they do autopsies on all the barred owls they killed. So they have this laundry list of species that have been found inside their stomachs. So it's just doing better at competing and surviving in the wild. And it's been pushing the spotted owl towards extinction for the last few decades. So it sounds like part of this is concerns about the barred owl just like

taking over, eating a lot of stuff, and being really aggressive. But it also sounds like part of this is about the spotted owl, that because the barred owl is threatening the spotted owl, that that's a problem because we care deeply about making sure that spotted owls continue to be around. But I guess why is that? Like, what is it about the spotted owl that we as a country are invested in protecting this one type of owl?

Well, basically the spotted owl, at least for the Pacific Northwest, is an iconic species. Back in the 80s, logging companies were still tearing through the Pacific Northwest and clear-cutting forests and

environmentalists were trying to stop and delay those logging programs, but were struggling to do so. And they decided to use the spotted owl. It was protected under the Endangered Species Act, and its habitat was old-growth forests, the same ones they were trying to protect. It was a risky move because had it backfired, it could have really unraveled the Endangered Species Act. That was kind of this...

decisive moment, but I mean, it was brutal. It was called the Timber Wars. Interesting. So it sounds like that

For environmentalists, the spotted owl has been like a key strategy that if you couldn't find a way to keep forests and trees protected, that you could make the case like, look, this is a place where the spotted owl lives. By law, you need to protect it, but you also have to like not deforest the place where they live. Yeah, that's right.

it became the way that they could protect the forests of the Northwest. From what I understand, you actually grew up around one of the places where this conflict over this owl played out. Can you talk a little bit about that? I grew up in Olympia, Washington. And when I grew up, I remember...

In the Puget Sound, there were floating log booms all across the water. There were logging trucks rumbling through town. It was one of the first times I remember as a kid that I realized my hometown was divided, that people don't agree on certain things. And you had to take a side on this issue, whether it was the loggers or the owls. Oh, interesting. How did that become clear to you? Well, you could see it.

These convoys of logging trucks protesting, trying to defend the right to cut down these trees. The only reason why the environmentalists are using the owl is just to work on the emotions of the people. It's all the logs. It's the trees that they're after. You know, all over there was protests. This is American National Forest! We yield no more!

First! First! Why should the owl be protected 100% and a way of life not?

You could see it on bumper stickers, the spotted owl tastes like chicken or save a lager, eat an owl. I remember seeing these things on t-shirts. Clearly that was from like the pro-timber, like anti-conservation. Wow, spotted owl tastes like chicken. People don't actually eat the owl, do they? No, people don't actually eat the spotted owl as far as I know.

It sounds pretty heated. Yeah, it was a heated culture war type issue. Environmental activists in some cases would chain themselves to logging equipment or live in old growth trees that were slated to be cut down. If we cut down a tree like this and find that we've made a mistake, it takes...

200, 400, 600 years to correct our mistake. It was also a national issue. President George H.W. Bush campaigned on this issue on the side of loggers in 1992.

He was distancing himself from Clinton, but also from the vice presidential candidate Al Gore, who was a very pro-environmentalist and wanted to expand environmental protections. - This guy is so far off in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and out of work for every American. This guy's crazy.

Bill Clinton in the early 90s came out to Portland and had a big summit on trying to resolve this. And that work culminated in the Northwest Forest Plan. I can only say that as with every other situation in life, we have to play the hand we were dealt. The time has come to act. What was that plan or what was that solution? What did it do?

You know, it effectively ended the logging of old growth trees in the Pacific Northwest. It became too much of a red tape hurdle. And while there's still logging and there's still debate and controversy over, you know, what trees are being logged and where they're being logged, it's, you know, it's on a far smaller scale than it once was. And it's all because of the spotted owl.

Yeah, it's all because of the spotted owl. But even with this big win, biologists like Danny Hofstadter still feel this tension between conservationists and loggers. To this day, you know, we still don't really, as spotted owl biologists, we still don't really talk about what we do to strangers. You know, if people ask us, it's wildlife work. Especially if you, you know, in a bar, you know, in a bar in kind of a more forested environment.

I mean, because, you know, the bartender or people in the bar might have connections to logging. And, you know, the spotted owl is a bitter reminder of, you know, the decline of the logging industry. Wow. I'm so sorry that I didn't know any of this. I feel like as a Floridian, I guess it just didn't filter down to...

Where I was growing up, learning about local animals. So, Josh, I want to come back to this scene that you brought us to earlier. Danny in the forest where he is hunting these barred owls that are threatening the spotted owl. Take me back to that night and what it was like being with him in that place. Yeah, so the first night I went out with him,

We had hiked for several miles and hadn't heard anything and were sitting on the ground and looking up at the stars and talking about constellations and when he hears in the distance this hooting. And I didn't catch it at first, but he's very attuned to this. So we instantly jump into action and he heads off down the trail to try to get closer to where the sound was of this owl. And he hears it.

And he spots it. He also has a knack for spotting these owls. You can kind of see her wings, by the way. Oh, yeah. There. Now she's looking at us. Way up at the top of a fir tree, partially blocked by branches, he sees a female barred owl. It's a little bit far. I'm just curious. Was Danny an experienced hunter before he started this line of work?

No, not at all. And he has a very interesting story. He grew up in a family that was totally anti-gun. He's the son of academics. His grandfather won a Nobel Prize in physics. His father is a very big deal for some people. He's a cognitive scientist, Douglas Hofstadter, who won the Pulitzer for his book, Gertl Escherbach.

And Danny talked about this too. He never put pressure on me, which that was huge. You know, he was always into wildlife and animals growing up. When I was going out into the woods on hikes when I was younger, I would always try to identify trees or identify, look for specific animals.

And he was planning to go to veterinary school when he took an internship with the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona. And he told me how one afternoon in the soft light before dusk, he and others saw a spotted owl perched high in a Douglas fir. And he described the lichen hanging from its branches and the light streaming through. And this moment made a huge impression on him.

So I was like, that is just amazing. That's a species that I really want to, I can see myself working with going forward. One of those clouds parting kind of ways, I guess. So Danny is very much for preserving the ecosystem and saving his favorite owl species. But not everyone thinks shooting barred owls is a good idea.

After the break, we hear what Danny and his team think about the criticism of their owl hunts. And we'll head back into the California forest to find out how the hunt goes. We'll be right back.

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Head to zbiotics.com slash reports and use the code reports at checkout for 15% off. So Josh, it sounds like there is opposition to this plan of shooting the barred owls. Talk to me a little bit about that. What does that opposition look like?

Well, some environmental and birding organizations did endorse this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan to kill up to 470,000 barred owls over the next 30 years. But there are dozens of animal welfare organizations, including some local Audubon Society regional chapters here in the Pacific Northwest who have

staunchly opposed this animal wellness action a non-profit based in dc called this approach wholesale slaughter and they filed a suit recently in federal court to block the program like what would they propose instead well what do they think would be the right course of action here

I've spoken with people from Animal Wellness Action. And first of all, they say they don't believe that the barred owl is in fact invasive. They say it's native to North America on the East Coast and it's come here and species move and migrate all the time. And so this is a bird that's protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and it shouldn't be killed. So essentially-

They're saying let nature take its course. I mean, I don't think anyone's advocating for extinction of the northern spotted owl, but they just say this is an unacceptable way to go about it. What about something like sterilization? Couldn't they do that? Danny also talked about this. There's been a number of scientific papers that have come out that have explored different options, and there are other options, obviously.

Sterilization. So that doesn't really work because, I mean, you can sterilize barred owls. You could bait mice with sterilizing chemicals, but barred owls can live up to 20 years in the wild. So you can still have adult barred owls that are having just as much of an impact as they had been on spotted owls and on other species as well. And so, you know, you'd have a huge lag effect

I'm curious what it was like for you being out on this hunting trip. As someone who has thought so deeply about this and been reporting on this and reporting on what it all means, like to be out there looking for an owl that's going to get shot. I mean, I have to admit, I like seeing these birds. And when I was out there with Alexandra Houtnik, our photographer, it was like we really didn't want to see them get shot.

It'd be kind of sad if he actually gets this thing. I know. I'm trying to feel very neutral. The barred owl we saw that first night was too far away and the view was obstructed, so we hiked back to the truck and drove home. And you went out on a second night with Danny? Yeah, so the second night we went out in a redwood forest near the coast and we hike and we eventually decide to give up. It's getting late at night. It's probably around midnight.

And we're hiking back to the truck when he suddenly hears the barred owl call again. - Want to call it?

He can see this barred owl that's sitting on a bare branch 20 yards, 25 yards away, directly above him in complete clear line of sight. So at that point, he turns off his headlamp and loads his shotgun, puts in his ear protection. And then when everything's ready to go, he takes off.

He turns his light back on, shines it on the owl, and takes aim. And the owl dropped immediately and fell. And Danny and his colleague, you know, they jump into action, they go to work. This is their research. They determine things like its age and whether it's male or female. This is another way that we sex barred owls by the distance between them.

Wow. What was that moment like? It was difficult. I mean, it was really... You realize when this happens in front of you that this is not something to be taken lightly at all. I mean, this was... It was hard to see, this beautiful owl sitting there just being eliminated right in front of you. And what I wrestled with...

That night was something that Danny has also thought through extensively, what it means to shoot owls if you're someone who loves owls so much and to basically dedicate his life and his work to doing that. It is not easy. It is definitely not something I'd take lightly. It does become easier sometimes.

For a person who does it for longer, you just learn to compartmentalize it. And I'm sure there's people who could never do it or never compartmentalize it. But generally, me and my crew and the people doing this work have compartmentalized it. And anybody working with spotted owls generally, I mean, at this point, knows that this is the only thing that we can do to keep spotted owls on the landscape for now. And the results that we're seeing so far also help.

Because if we were seeing barred owls come back just everywhere and not seeing spotted owls come back, I mean, it'd be a different story. But the results on smaller scales and in the Sierra Nevada show that they do work. It does work.

Tell me more about what he means by that when he says the results work. Well, the first thing you have to keep in mind is that the spotted owls aren't doing very well. Studies have shown that the population of owls, spotted owls, is declining at about 12% per year. So what happens when people like Danny intervene? Well, the research from a logging company, from the United States Geological Survey,

shows that spotted owl numbers basically stabilize. And what Danny and his colleagues found is that this can also work across a much larger area. They're working over millions of acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and they're finding similar results. So it sounds like Danny has given this a lot of thought and that he has really been reflective about why he's doing this and why he thinks it's the right way to go about things and what it means to him.

What did you think about what he had to say there? Yeah, I mean, I think he's become convinced that this is the right path forward for a species that he holds particularly dear, the spotted owl. And he did tell me at one point that

You know, if the spotted owl went extinct, he would get out of working with owls. He couldn't, he wouldn't be able to bring himself to do this kind of work. At the same time, he's hoping that one day he won't have to go out on these night hunts anymore. I hope in 10 years, you know, that I start to be able to branch back out into working with more directly with the species that I kind of fell in love with, which is spotted owls.

I would like to not only be focused on barred owl removal going forward in the next decade, but if that's what it takes and I need to, I will dedicate my life to it. Josh, thank you so much for sharing this story. Thank you. Josh Partlow is a national climate reporter for The Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening.

If you're looking for the latest updates on the big news of the day, check out our morning news briefing, The Seven. We bring you through the seven stories you need to know about every weekday morning by 7 a.m. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts. Today's show was produced by Bishop Sand. It was mixed by Justin Garish and edited by Monica Campbell. I'm Martine Powers. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.