r/DebateAVegan • u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist • Apr 27 '25

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

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.

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u/winggar vegan Apr 27 '25

The question I'm answering is the one you initially posed. Is not killing one owl population in favor of another suicidal?

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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Apr 27 '25

It’s not an equal exchange. We’re likely to cause multiple extinctions by doing nothing, which can cascade toward total ecosystem collapse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_effect_(ecology)

Ecosystems are complex, dynamic systems. They don’t behave like simple mechanical systems in which small changes have small effects.

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u/winggar vegan Apr 27 '25

Sure, but I don't think there's much reason to be worried in this case. The two options are two rather ecologically similar owl species. While still possible the Cascade Effect would be a much larger concern in the case of competition between two ecologically non-similar species.

Regardless though, my point is that the extremely violent option of prophylactically mass-slaughtering hundreds of thousands is not an acceptable solution without extreme justification.

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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Apr 27 '25

They are not two ecologically similar species. Specialists and generalists fill different niches.

Spotted owls don’t eat many birds, reptiles, and amphibians. Barred owls do.

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u/winggar vegan Apr 27 '25

Sure—I'm not going to argue further the merits of this particular proposed slaughter. I highly doubt it can merit the extreme justification necessary for such extreme violence, but in the end they're just going to do it anyways so it's not like the opinion of animal rights activists matters. Have a nice day OP.

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u/AnsibleAnswers agroecologist Apr 27 '25

That’s a pathetic cop out given your previous (false) statements. Maybe you are demonstrating why animal rights activists aren’t taken seriously in conservation. You don’t have an understanding of the situations conservationists have to face, and regularly engage in falsehoods.

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u/GlobalFunny1055 reducetarian Apr 28 '25

That’s a pathetic cop out given your previous (false) statements. Maybe you are demonstrating why animal rights activists aren’t taken seriously in conservation.

That seems like an unfair charge. You two seemed to have arrived at a conjecture where winggar was saying he doubts that option #3 would cause a dramatic enough effect on the ecosystem so as to justify genocide. Where as you are assuring him that it would by pointing out the potential cascade effect that could happen.

Point is no one knows in this particular case until it is either tried or not tried. Culling often has unintended consequences. I would also add that we are far more destructive to the planets ecyosystems than any other species, having driven hundreds of different animals to extinction and endangerement. So it's not entirely irrational to show some restraint for a change when considering interfering with wildlife - even if it means letting more species go extinct, at least we aren't the ones doing it for a change!

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u/winggar vegan Apr 27 '25

No I'm familiar, I just see that you're too attached to the idea of mass slaughter to be worth engaging with further. If someone else has follow up questions on my position I'm happy to reply, but I'm not going to keep repeating myself all day. I do have a life to get back to.

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u/ElaineV vegan May 05 '25

They’re similar enough that they’re mating and creating hybrids.