The federal government will move ahead with plans to kill tens of thousands of barred owls in Washington, Oregon, and California to protect threatened spotted owls.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a decision on Wednesday to adopt a controversial barred owl management strategy that calls for lethal removal of the birds by shooting them with shotguns and, in some cases, capturing and euthanizing them.

Barred owls are native to the eastern U.S. but began expanding their range in the early 1900s and arrived in the Pacific Northwest around the 1970s. The invasive birds prefer the same habitat as spotted owls and compete with them for the same foods.

They are blamed as a primary cause for declines in northern spotted owl populations – along with habitat loss from logging on non-federal lands and wildfires.

“As wildlife professionals, we approached this issue carefully and did not come to this decision lightly,” said Kessina Lee, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Oregon office state supervisor.

“Spotted owls are at a crossroads, and we need to manage both barred owls and habitat to save them. This isn’t about choosing one owl over the other,” Lee added.

“If we act now, future generations will be able to see both owls in our Western forests.”

Megan Nagel, a Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson, said that spring of 2025 is the earliest that barred owl removals are likely to begin and emphasized the program would ramp up over time.

Animal welfare groups deride the plan as costly, unrealistic and inhumane.

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing the largest-ever plan to slaughter raptors anywhere in the world, and by a country mile,” Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said in a statement on Aug. 28.

“The agency is stepping onto a killing treadmill that it can never dismount. The two outcomes likely to result from the plan are a massive body count of barred owls and no long-term improvement in the survival prospects of spotted owls,” Pacelle added.

It would not be open season on the birds.

No public hunting of barred owls is allowed under the strategy and it is illegal for anyone to kill a barred owl without authorization under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. And, under the plan, no removals of the birds will be permitted outside approved areas in the Northwest and California.

The killing would be done by “professional removal specialists” who meet certain training and competency requirements, including an ability to differentiate barred owls from spotted owls, which are known for a distinctive, four-note “hoot, hoot-hoot hoooooot” territorial defense song.

These specialists could be government employees or contractors working with landowners or land management agencies, Nagel explained.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates a maximum of about 15,600 invasive barred owls per year could be removed over 30 years, which adds up to between 400,000 and 500,000 of the birds if the strategy is maintained over three decades.

While an environmental impact statement for the program used a 30-year time frame, Nagel noted that “it is not possible to forecast the duration of the barred owl management activities themselves.”

Permits under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to kill the owls are good for up to three years, but can be renewed.

At most, the federal agency says the strategy would result in the annual removal of less than one-half of 1% of the current North American barred owl population.

In the near term, plans call for a maximum of 2,450 of the owls to be killed in year one of the project, 11,309 in year two, and around 15,600 in year three.

The northern spotted owl was designated as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act nearly 25 years ago.

In the Pacific Northwest, it is known for its central role in the “timber wars” of the 1980s and 1990s, which pitted environmentalists concerned about saving old-growth trees against loggers.

This conflict eventually led to the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan, which put new protections in place for forests where the spotted owl lives.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that the rate of spotted owl population declines showed signs of improvement until about 2008 but accelerated soon after and that the downturn coincided with the expansion of barred owls into spotted owls’ territory.

Washington’s departments of Fish and Wildlife and Natural Resources are listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as cooperating agencies in the barred owl removal plan.

Julia Smith, endangered species recovery section manager with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the state agency backs the federal plan but has not made decisions yet about how to support implementation of it, or what department resources to devote to the effort.

“That’s something we have yet to determine because we were, too, waiting on the final federal decision,” she said. “We’re talking with agency leadership about it.”

The Department of Natural Resources didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, who leads that department, has previously voiced skepticism about the plan for killing the barred owls, suggesting it could have “unintended consequences” and that it might be “unworkable.”

Nagel, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency would “work with interested landowners and land managers, including State agencies, to implement barred owl management on their lands.”

“Each agency will determine how, and if, they will be involved in the Strategy,” she added.

“No one is required to implement the Strategy. Implementation is fully voluntary.”

Bill Lucia writes for the Washington State Standard, an independent, nonprofit news organization that produces original reporting on policy and politics.