Let's let the owls work it out

I was 12 the first time I spoke with an owl.

Growing up in the Midwest, I'd seen it done many times. You stand in the woods at night and blow into cupped hands, mimicking the barred owl's quizzical call: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" Sometimes an owl hoots back. If you're really lucky, it comes to you.

After many tries I managed to summon an owl from the gloaming. It swooped soundlessly to a branch 10 feet away, where it eyed me sternly for minutes.

Talk about communing with nature. Rarely have I felt so aware of the world outside myself. So the idea of shooting these owls isn't going over well with me.

Last month, seven scientists proposed killing barred owls in Northwest forests. It would start as an experiment, to see if shooting the owls would help save our own iconic bird, the northern spotted owl.

Around the time I was hooting back in Ohio — the 1970s — barred owls finished a decadeslong migration to the Northwest. Ever since, they have made life hell for the smaller, gentler spotted owl, intimidating them, hogging food and territory, and even decapitating and eating at least one of the endangered birds.

Biologists now feel they must make a wildlife version of Sophie's choice: Thin out the barred owls or watch spotted owls slide toward extinction.

The proposal is the talk of the local bird world. Even some biologists who have no strong objections to killing wildlife say this one is an ethical morass.

"I see the research value in it, but then what?" says Kent Livezey, an owl biologist for U.S. Fish and Wildlife. "If it works, are we then going to shoot all the barred owls in Washington, Oregon and California?"

The federal government has not yet decided what to do.

Of course we kill wildlife all the time, for reasons having nothing to do with sport. Last year, the government killed 2.7 million animals and birds, from alligators to woodpeckers. In almost all cases it was to protect humans or their property.

This is different. This isn't about us. It's just owl versus owl. Or is it?

"There's a sense we are the ones who put the spotted owl in dire straits, through logging, and so some intervention on our part is justified," says Tim Cullinan of the Audubon Society, one of the seven biologists urging the kill experiments.

I saw a spotted owl once, in Olympic National Park. For a species on the run, it was astonishingly tame. I came within an arm's length, and it didn't move. The owl acted so trusting it was hard not to feel responsible for its fate.

But taking responsibility doesn't mean playing God.

The nature writer Bill McKibben has a theory that what sets humans apart is a capacity for restraint. We can decide not to do something even when we're capable of doing it.

Shooting one owl to save another is the opposite. It's meddling. It's hubris. It's wildlife management — an oxymoron to begin with — run amok.

We showed rare restraint in shutting down most logging in the federal forests.

We ought to show some more. Let owls be owls. Even if it means saying goodbye to our most famous one forever.

Danny Westneat's column appears Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.