U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has finalized a plan where it would kill up to half a million federally-protected barred owls in the Pacific Northwest over the next thirty years. The government says that this action is necessary to help ESA-listed northern spotted owls and soon-to-be-listed California spotted owls. But is this justice for spotted owls? Animal activists and attorneys, including members of the panel, believe the government is unfairly scapegoating barred owls for the human-caused factors that have imperiled spotted owls, namely logging, other habitat destruction, and climate change. Animal advocate groups have filed two lawsuits in an effort to prevent the killing of barred owls. Those lawsuits claim the plan is illegal under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Wilderness Act.
Advocates, ethicists, and members of the public are also worried about what the government's barred owl plan may mean for other species who adapt their habitats and range because of human development and climate change. Yet a number of environmental organizations and spotted owl advocates, including one of the panelists, support the plan. That panelists organization (along with some others) have moved to intervene in the lawsuits to defend the plan. The barred owl plan raises a number of difficult questions for which there are no easy answers, but the questions presented will be recurring ones that environmental advocates need to come to grips with. Panelists will address a number of topics: previous experiments with killing barred owls and litigation over those experiments; the details of the current barred owl management plan; why some environmental advocates support the plan and believe it will help spotted owls; the lawsuits challenging the plan; the ethical dilemmas presented by killing one owl species to help another; and the implications for other species going forward.
Panelists will feature:
Jessica L. Blome, Shareholder at Greenfire Law, PC
Stephen Hernick, Managing Attorney, Wildlife Law Program at Friends of Animals
Tom Wheeler, Executive Director and Staff Attorney at Environmental Protection Information Center
Avram Hiller, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy at Portland State University
This event is hosted by the Environmental Law Society at the College of Law. Registration is required, please register using this quick form: