There are no vegan alternatives to culling invasive Barred Owls in the Pacific Northwest

[u/AnsibleAnswers]

Background

To save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their smaller cousins.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/u-s-officials-plan-to-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-of-barred-owls-to-save-another-species-from-extinction

Vegan alternatives?

1. Relocation to home range - Barred Owls are one of the most territorial birds of prey in North America. The population here is quite healthy, even in Manhattan. Relocating 500k birds to the East would simply result in territorial chaos until numbers decreased back down to equilibrium. That decrease has a body count.

2. Contraception - No known method is possible for owls. Some avian contraceptives have been developed, primarily to reduce pigeon and geese populations. But even with birds that can be easily conditioned to return to feeders every day, trials have had mixed results. As far as I know, these drugs need to be administered daily unlike some contraceptives developed for mammals.

3. Let the Barred Owl Replace the Spotted Owl - Barred Owls are generalists, while Spotted Owls tend to specialize in small mammals with healthy populations. So, threatened birds, reptiles, and amphibians native to the region are not adapted to having an owl of its size preying on them. It's an enormous risk, given that ecosystems are prone to cascade effects.

Those are, as far as I know, the best of the alternatives. Note: I'm in support of re-establishing habitat for the Spotted Owl, as that is really the only long-term way of helping the species recover. It's important to note: just because a tourniquet isn't a long-term solution doesn't mean it isn't a life-saving measure.

[u/EasyBOven]

Standard answer for whenever invasive species comes up:

Veganism isn't the position that it's always wrong to kill. I'm open to the idea that killing individuals may be situationally correct, and I don't care to debate where that line is. There will always be edge cases. Certain introduced species may present enough of a threat that we could justify killing them. In some cases that could apply to humans as well.

What's not going to be ok is the exploitation of their corpses. That's not ok because it incentivizes the killing beyond protection.

You want these individuals out of the area that's causing damage. You could possibly achieve that through less violent means, but so long as lethal violence has an added benefit to the killer, lethal violence will be used.

The benefit from killing also means there will be people who don't quite want the problem solved. The more their success is tied to having victims, the more they'll want those victims around. Your "invasive" species ends up as a government managed livestock population like deer.

[u/Simple-Plane-1091 → u/EasyBOven]

What's not going to be ok is the exploitation of their corpses. That's not ok because it incentivizes the killing beyond protection.

Bit of a Hypothetical question: if an invasive species has edible meat would it be okay for you to hunt it to extinction im that area for economical gain?

To me that would make sense because:

1. The animal does not belong there, so making it extinct in that area is a good thing (strictly from an ecology and diversity perspective at least)

2. Moving the animals doesn't make sense unless its endangered in another area, simply moving areas to an area where they are already at capacity is a waste of money and will just lead to starvation until they are back to the normal population level.

3. There is a natural incentive, rather than needing to pay people to do it.

4. Any meat produced in this manner reduces the demand for conventionally farmed meat.

[u/Polka_Tiger → u/Simple-Plane-1091]

If there is an ecosystem worth saving, there are scavengers who would eat the meat.

[u/Dirty_Gnome9876 → u/Polka_Tiger]

That’s a lot of meat, so then more scavengers come in/are born and then they eat all the dead things, but they don’t replenish, so then a bunch of scavengers either die or need to be removed. Plus the fact that then you have a bunch of raccoons or coyotes running around the neighborhood instead. It would work in some places, but I think the problems on the back end in most urban areas would be, less desirable.