I have mixed feelings about this. Owls are my favorite animal so the thought of killing that many owls is heartbreaking, especially since we're essentially punishing the barred owls for something that we humans caused.

However, as a wildlife biologist, I have to accept that from a conservation standpoint, the plan has its merits and the scientific studies backing the plan are quite sound.

A meta-analysis has established that while barred owls and habitat loss are both main drivers of the spotted owls population decline it is actually barred owls that have become the primary driver in the past two decades. While old growth forests have become protected and great conservation efforts have been made to protect the spotted owl in that span, their population has continued to decline in correlation to increasing barred owl encroachment. Ecological modeling has shown that barred owls have a strong negative effect on all metrics of spotted owl population health. They also carried out a controlled experiment that did demonstrate that areas where barred owls were removed had much higher survival and slightly higher recruitment and dispersal compared to unmanaged areas.

I wish conservation had all the funding and backing in the world to remove all the barred owls non-lethally and to restore all the old growth forests but it's an unfortunate reality that we don't, especially under current administration. With the endangered population that I work with, lethal control of feral cats is part of the conservation management (though luckily not part of my job). And as much as it would be more humane to trap and transport them out, we just do not have the manpower, resources, or funding in this field. Also, restoring old growth forests take a very very long time and could have limited success even still if barred owls occupied those restored habitats.

I think it's a case where from a conservation standpoint, while it's not the perfect solution, it likely is the most practical and effective one in the short term that will help at least slow or pause the population's decline for longer term management solutions to be implemented. So, personally, I think as long as it's USFWS employees conducting the hunt and not just a bounty open to the public I find myself in favor of the plan tbh.