The U.S. Government Is Killing Owls with Taxpayer Money

Photo via Leigh Valley Zoo

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In August of 2024, President Biden’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, operating under the Department of the Interior, issued a plan to kill roughly 453,000 North American Barred Owls. The Barred Owl, native to the Northeastern United States, has seen its habitat, which it has called home for over 1,000 years, decimated by deforestation, resulting in increased congestion in the region. 

Due to the lack of space, the Barred Owl started migrating to the Western region of the United States. The “problem” with this is that the forests of Washington and Oregon that the Barred Owls are moving into are also home to the Barred Owl’s cousin, the Spotted Owl. Being that both species of owl are cousins, and even occasionally marry one another, it would seem no one is the wiser. 

Enter the Department of the Interior (DOI). The 1st United States Congress created the DOI to manage America’s national public lands and natural resources more effectively, not the life that occupies them. Nevertheless, the Trump DOI has chosen to adopt and enforce the Biden Administration plan to terminate 10 percent of an entire species of bird. 

The continuation of this policy has been framed as a matter of ecological necessity. The Barred Owls are better hunters than the Spotted Owl, contributing to a slight decline in the Spotted Owl population, although it is not an endangered species. “It is DEI for owls,” says Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

The policy reveals a bipartisan blind spot, a willingness by both parties to believe that large-scale intervention can “correct” an ecosystem that humans themselves destabilized. What makes this stance so wrong is the simple fact that ecosystems are like markets; they regulate themselves. It is not the responsibility of any federal government nor individual to regulate ecosystems, as this would contradict the fundamental principles of natural regulation that have governed ecosystems for millennia.

The government having no grounds or jurisdiction to dictate any ecosystem should be reason enough to stop this detrimental policy entirely. Although, aside from the policy being a paramount example of government overreach stemming from bureaucratic hubris, the plan is also flat-out dumb. It will not work.

The reasons this plan is destined to fail are abundant. First, it relies on an incentive-based pay system in which hunters receive $3,000 for every owl they kill. Such a structure invites unethical behavior and cutting corners, mainly when accuracy determines payment. The Barred Owl and the Spotted Owl look remarkably similar, and in the dead of night, when both species are active and visibility is low, the risk of mistakenly killing the very bird the policy is meant to protect becomes almost inevitable.

Equally concerning is that the policy does not differentiate between female and male owls, not even their babies; every owl still shares the same price of $3,000. This exposes innocent baby owls, who have yet to leave their tree cavity and develop their distinctive thick feathers, to a barrage of bullets from a financially incentivized hunter’s shotgun. 

Another reason this policy would be an absolute disaster is related to the bullets themselves. Nothing in this policy regulation prevents hunters from using lead shot. Lead shot contains lead, a highly toxic and hazardous element prohibited in most hunting environments, since any animal that comes into contact with it, whether by ingesting fragments or scavenging contaminated carcasses, can suffer severe poisoning and die. That means that if even one hunter decides to use lead shot, eagles and hawks could be at risk of becoming collateral damage. 

Above all, the reasons for this policy’s insanity are a misunderstanding of basic animal behavior. If the Barred Owl starts being hunted effectively, they will migrate north to Canada. They have already migrated from one coast to another due to insufficient living standards. If insufficient living standards present themselves once again, the Barred Owl will do what any animal would do: adapt. 

However, this basic understanding of animal behavior is lost underneath the bottomless pit of bureaucratic hubris and government agency vanity.  

This interventionist mindset has historical precedent, and it rarely ends well. One is reminded of Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Four Pests Campaign,” in which the Chinese government ordered the extermination of sparrows to protect grain yields. Without sparrows to control insect populations, locust swarms devastated crops, being a significant contributor to famine throughout China. 

While the Barred Owl policy may not be as catastrophic, it follows a similar pattern: a government believing it can micromanage an ecosystem through targeted killing, while ignoring the complex interdependencies that define ecological health. 

This policy, funded by taxpayer money, is perhaps the most nauseating aspect of it. Over one billion dollars of taxpayer money would be allocated to contracted hunters tasked with reducing the overall population of an innocent species.

To conclude, a government that presumes it can reorder nature by force risks not only wasting resources but repeating the very mistakes that created these imbalances in the first place. Ultimately, it is neither the right nor the responsibility of any administration to interfere with the natural world. This policy ought to end.

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This article was edited by Colin Mitchell and Isabella Valentino.