Re: “Feds Suggest to Shoot One Owl to Save One other in Pacific Northwest” [Dec. 6, A1]:
The article is informative a few coverage that can scale back the affect on an endangered species. However a larger focus was wanted on the preliminary forces that created this determined coverage within the first place – human actions with out regard for penalties.
Lengthy earlier than barred owls started their increasing occupation of our northwestern area, we knew that the Northern Noticed Owl was a species whose livelihood depended closely on its unique habitat, the old-growth forests. With out them, the owls couldn’t preserve their populations. The fragmentation of those forest sorts isolates the owls which might be nonetheless current and limits their gene pool, which is detrimental to their vitality as a species.
The cliché “shoot the messenger” is apt right here. What have barred owls instructed us? We’ve got compromised our forest environments with our voracious and grasping urge for food for assets. Shedding the Northern Noticed Owl to extinction is one other and terrifying outcome.
Any coverage to scale back the inhabitants of barred owls should be complemented by restoring and preserving the a part of the previous forest that’s left to us along with all its distinctive and undiscovered secrets and techniques of life that should be recognized and maintained.
Tony Angell, Seattle