There is a fundamental problem with your analysis. The reason so many rural westerners hate the Engandered Species Act is that the goals are reasonable but the methods used cause the impact to be concentrated in rural communities in the west. Oregon zoned my ranch commercial forest but I was not allowed to do forestry on a significant fraction of it to protect the spotted owl. The local economy was decimated. People lost good paying jobs and lived in poverty for the rest of their lives. Now my irrigation right is cut back on my current ranch in order to give more water to native salmon in the Deschutes. However, all the affluent fisherman are given thee green light by ODFW, they tromp around on the frog habitat and hatcheries dump millions of fish into the river to compete for habitat and food supplies with the native fish. The research is definitive that hatcheries have a negative impact on native fish but, oh, never mind. You are in favor of species protection because the impact is borne by someone else. According to you, the problem is caused by humans planting trees in the midwest but you want the solution to be at the expense of people in the west. The hybrid owl is great here and it won a natural evolutionary process. Every species is impacted by humans. Now we will have a bunch of "professsional" hunters tromping around in our forests blasting away at hundreds of thousands of well-adapted owls. Hope you all feel good about that.
We can do that. I talk about doing nothing as an option, but that will very likely mean that the Spotted Owl goes extinct. I'm not sure that choosing that form of harm to the environment is the best call.
While I am strongly opposed to man intervening is such a drastic way, there is still an aspect of such intervention that I never see discussed. Man is part of nature. How many millions of acres of forest are not burned because of man's ability to stop the spread of fires and/or quench the flames completely? You make a good, intellectual case that is well reasoned and not at all emotional to the point of being ludicrous. My greatest concern is when man does things to affect a certain outcome in nature because we can, rather than asking ourselves should we do it, what are the full ramifications of such an act?
Considering the full ramifications of an action is always a good idea, but it can never be done perfectly. So we always have to act with imperfect knowledge. I think the example of humans stopping fire is a good one. We thought that preventing forest fires was a good thing, but it turned out to be disastrous with much larger and more destructive fires than used to occur.
Pol Pot went to his grave thinking his logic was unassailable. They were wrong about the logging & they will be wrong about this. I am reminded of the environmental wizards who turned the Australian army loose to kill feral cats. Lo & behold, they developed a nationwide plague of rodent infestation. Evolution is evolution.
@CreepyComic Concerns about this type of intervention are certainly warranted. And I can understand wanting to stay away from mucking things up and just letting nature take its course. However, since the whole situation is due to human actions, letting the Spotted Owl die out is not really letting evolution do its thing. The fact that we made this problem seems to me to mean that we have some responsibility to fix it.
@GreenFurnNW I had not heard about this at all. I just looked it up. For one thing, it is illegal to kill owls. For another, Theo Von is originally from Louisiana, so that would make Barred Owl a likely species to be in the area. If the Thanksgiving dinner he means took place somewhere else, the likely species of owls might be different. Weird story!
There are so many ways that human intervention has gone wrong, this should feel like a bad idea. Sadly the situation is just so bad for the spotted owl that it may be necessary. Not just the trees having been planted in the plains, but the loss of that special habitat that Northern Spotted Owls need in the West so much which left them devasted in the first place, making them vulnerable. It's like removing invasive plants, except more morally dicey because of the consciousness of animals. 😢 Good summary of the topic, thanks!
Thanks! I think your parallel with invasive plant removal is a really good one. Maybe labeling the Barred Owl as an invasive species might help make the situation clearer. But it is still morally and practically dicey, I agree with you about that. Even if it is the best call, that doesn't make it a pleasant one.
@LadyIarConnacht That is absolutely a great thing to do, and there are numerous areas that are now protected so that old-growth forests can regrow. However, that may take hundreds of years. And even once those forests regrow, the Barred Owls are likely to push Spotted Owls out of them.
@alejandrorivera1782 Great question! They are not inherently more important. But the Spotted Owl is rarer, lower in number, more sensitive to disturbance, and more restricted in habitat needs. So, the Spotted Owls need more protection if they are going to survive.
Countless species on our planet have gone extinct for countless reasons. We are still discovering new species on this planet regularly. If you extrapolate this understanding backward in time, its hard to imagine how many species have come and gone, before humans were even a spec in the eye of evolution. We’ll likely never know in great detail how many wonderful species came and went. Spotted owls have been around for as long as humans can remember, but in the history of life on this planet that is less than the blink of an eye. Do we know how long spotted owls and barred owls have been a species? The oldest fossil record of an owl is from 60 million years ago. Try to imagine how many owl species there have been since then. The longest homo sapiens have been around is 300,000 years. Humans, being nostalgic creatures, have a really emotional connection to the world that we expect should not change. That's not a realistic view. Only 20,000 years ago, my home state of Vermont was covered by 4,000 feet of ice. Humans are affecting habitats, but are we going to stop doing that or reverse those changes? Not likely. If the barred owl is superior in its adaptations over the spotted owl, why would it be bad for nature to find a new balance?
@ervina02 It is a rather sad situation. The way I see it, if we do nothing, we end up with one beautiful bird. But if we do something (even something unpleasant), we may keep two beautiful birds.
@annhamilton3663 Good thought to bring up. I think that would be more of a concern if the total number of owls was going to go down, but the plan is that Barred Owls that are killed would be basically replaced by Spotted Owls. So the rodents will be in trouble either way.
Personally I think the Red-Tailed Hawk numbers need to be whittled down, along with coyote. I’ve spent my entire life hunting and exploring in Missouri, including managing up to a couple thousand acres, and I haven’t seen a Red Fox in decades. The barred owl is definitely very abundant. I personally love hearing and talking to them. I suspected sooner or later some of these birds of prey would be put on the chopping block. I guess I’m surprised an owl is the first to be listed. I didn’t realize the spotted owl was in such a pickle.
Yeah, being in a pickle is definitely the right word for the Spotted Owl! Coyotes have had an amazing history of being unstoppable by humans! They are very impressive survivors! I don't think Red-tailed Hawks are much of a threat to Red Foxes. Foxes are bigger than the hawks usual prey.
@abandonbelief It definitely looks like that (at least in part). The melting will mean the Spotted Owls being largely lost into the Barred Owl gene pool. So, it just comes down to what we think of that outcome.
The way things are going humans will be extinct in a few years...all do to bad decisions we have made...we cause so many problems that cant be fixed..😢
@roadstar499 I think most problems can be fixed one way or another. Sometimes a thing needs time, sometimes it is work that needs to be done. And I don't see the human species going extinct anytime soon, so I think we need to keep trying to figure out how to make things better for all living organisms.
Scientists will not apply some biological concepts to humans, only to non human species. Sub speciation being one of them. I understand the analogy. Just keep in mind modern science is both political and dogmatic, thusly certain topics are taboo, even when being obvious. Try bringing up klepto parasitism amongst certain demographics to scientists, you will lose your job and credibility regardless of the truth.
@@brianpeppers7455 There are certainly biases and blindspots in how people think about ideas and subjects. I'm not sure what you are referring to with kleptoparaitism, I'm particular. I know a bunch of scientists who study kleptoparasitism and have not lost their jobs.
@Stevekerbs Well, for one thing, wolves are not invasive in North America. And for another, the Elk population has gotten healthier since the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone.
@johnmallette3143 That is a great idea, and people are definitely working on that. However, since Spotted Owls really like old-growth forests, it is not a habitat that can quickly created. It needs time (hundreds of years) to grow. Also, even if we could create old-growth habitat quickly, there would be nothing to stop the Barred Owls from invading and kicking the Spotted Owls out.
@johnmallette3143 Thanks for checking out my channel. Human interference can have a lot of unintended consequences, but I think we have to take responsibility for our actions.
