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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2018
Court OKs killing barred owls for spotted owl protection
By MATEUSZ
PERKOWSKI
EO Media Group
Killing barred owls to help
threatened spotted owls isn’t
prohibited by an international
treaty aimed at protecting
migratory birds, according to
a federal appeals court.
Since 2013, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service
has shot barred owls as part
of an ongoing study to see
if their removal will mit-
igate the decline of spot-
ted owls, which are smaller
and more sensitive to habitat
disturbances.
Friends of Animals and
Predator Defense, two animal
rights groups, filed a lawsuit
accusing the government of
violating the Migratory Bird
Treaty Act, which imple-
ments international agree-
ments to prevent the extinc-
tion of bird species.
While that statute permits
the killing of migratory birds
for scientific purposes, the
plaintiff argued that provision
only applies to studying birds
of the same species. Under
the law, the Fish and Wild-
life Service cannot kill barred
owls to study the effects on
spotted owls, since they’re
AP Photo
A barred owl is shown in a wilderness area near Index, Wash.
different species, according
to the plaintiffs.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals has rejected this
theory, ruling that the Migra-
tory Bird Treaty Act’s lan-
guage and intent is broad
enough to encompass the
barred owl removal research.
The plaintiffs’ interpreta-
tion of the law would have a
“bizarre result” in which the
government could kill barred
owls “to display them in
museums but could not take
them to prevent the extermi-
nation of spotted owls, even
though the effect on the barred
owl population would be min-
imal,” the court said.
Spotted owls have long
affected the West’s timber
industry due to restrictions on
logging in areas occupied by
the bird, which is protected by
the Endangered Species Act.
The plaintiffs are disap-
pointed by the ruling, which
sets a troubling precedent not
only for barred owls and spot-
ted owls but for other inter-
species conflicts as well, said
Michael Harris, legal director
for Friends of Animals.
“We don’t really have a
structure to deal with this, and
it’s something we need to fig-
ure out,” he said.
Private timber compa-
nies have already shown that
removing barred owls will
help spotted owls, so the
Fish and Wildlife Service’s
research is unnecessary, Har-
ris said.
“It’s about getting the pub-
lic to stomach the shooting of
the bird,” he said.
Also, if the agency were to
make killing barred owls an
official policy — rather than
calling it an experiment — it
would have a harder time pass-
ing muster under the Migra-
tory Bird Treaty Act, he said.
It’s not clear that spotted
owls would be declining due
to competition from barred
owls if the West hadn’t lost so
much old growth forest habi-
tat due to logging, Harris said.
The plaintiffs would pre-
fer the government to concen-
trate on preserving the threat-
ened species’ habitat rather
than making a scapegoat of the
barred owl, he said. “You’ve
got to let nature, at some point,
work itself out.”
Since the Fish and Wild-
life Service’s study began, the
agency has killed nearly 1,150
barred owls in Oregon’s Coast
Range and Klamath Basin,
as well as Washington’s Cle
Elum area and California’s
Hoopa Valley.
Early analysis of the
removals hasn’t yielded any
statistically significant results,
said Robin Bown, a biologist
with the agency. However, the
amount of data collected is
still relatively small.
“The more years you have,
the more confident you get,”
Bown said.
Since the removals began,
it does appear more spot-
ted owls are “hanging on” in
areas without barred owls than
in control areas where they’re
present, she said.
However, this correlation is
largely anecdotal at this point,
she said.
Studying
the
effect
of barred owl removal is
time-consuming because once
adults are shot, their children
can soon re-invade a site, so
opening habitat to spotted
owls takes time, Bown said.
Establishing a longer trend
line is necessary to isolate the
impacts of weather and prey
availability on spotted owl
survival from the effects of
barred owl removal, she said.
The study aims to see if
spotted owls not only survive
but reproduce, Bown said.
The agency is also study-
ing the “recruitment” of new
spotted owl generations to
sites where barred owls have
been removed, she said.
“That’s the one that takes the
longest.”
If the research confirms
that killing barred owls mean-
ingfully helps spotted owls,
the agency will move on to
form a long-term strategy for
managing the more aggressive
species, Bown said.
It’s not currently known
how this management plan
will look, but the current study
will provide a scientific foun-
dation for preserving spotted
owls, she said.
“If we don’t try, the species
will go extinct,” Bown said.
Oregon lawmakers, lobbyists get sexual harassment training
ference of State Legislatures
as an example of a strong
one, along with those of Ala-
bama, Hawaii, Colorado and
Maryland. A legislative sub-
committee in Alaska is look-
ing at Oregon as a model as it
considers how to rewrite that
state’s guidelines.
“Oregon has a lot of ele-
ments that we consider
a strong policy should
have,” said Jonathan Grif-
fin, a policy analyst with the
National Conference of State
Legislatures.
The Oregon Legislature is
considering making it even
stronger.
Oregon’s policy describes
an informal reporting pro-
cess, and a formal one. Retal-
iation for making complaints
is prohibited.
“An appointing author-
ity or supervisor shall take
appropriate action to prevent,
promptly correct and report
harassment about which
the appointing authority or
supervisor knew or, with the
exercise of reasonable care,
should have known,” the pol-
icy says.
An independent third
party will review the policies
and may suggest changes,
said Aaron Fiedler, communi-
cations director for the House
Majority Office. That review
is awaiting the outcome of
By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press
SALEM — The intense
national focus on sexual mis-
conduct came to Oregon’s
capital this week, when law-
makers were given a training
session on harassment and
how to report it.
For the first time, the train-
ing was also offered to exec-
utive branch employees, lob-
byists and others who work in
the Capitol, said state Senate
President Peter Courtney, a
Democrat. Previously, it was
required for legislators and
legislative employees.
To accommodate the larger
crowd, the training was con-
ducted on Tuesday inside the
main ballroom of the Salem
Convention Center. The train-
ing was provided by lawyers
for the Legislature and its
director of human resources.
Sen. Arnie Roblan, a Dem-
ocrat from Coos Bay, said
through a spokeswoman that
“these trainings are critical,
especially for new members
and/or staff.”
Oregon is one of at least
27 states in the U.S. that
requires lawmakers from
both chambers in legislatures
to undergo sexual harassment
training. Oregon’s policy on
sexual harassment is high-
lighted by the National Con-
‘As I said in my opening
remarks … practice and
repetition help athletes
perform at a higher
level on game day.’
Peter Courtney
state Senate president
an investigation of Sen. Jeff
Kruse, a Republican from the
logging town of Roseburg,
who has been accused by two
female senators of hugging
too closely, and of other inap-
propriate touching.
“We anticipate we will
learn a lot from what happens
with that process,” Fiedler
said.
Kruse, the only Oregon
lawmaker to be accused, has
denied inappropriate conduct.
Courtney removed the sen-
ator from the committees he
sits on due to the accusations.
Courtney said it’s import-
ant for the training to be held
regularly. In Oregon, it is
annual.
“As I said in my opening
remarks … practice and rep-
etition help athletes perform
at a higher level on game day.
The best teams don’t take
days off,” Courtney said in
an email. “In the same way,
we provide this training every
year. It helps members of the
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believe the sessions are too
repetitive.
“I’ve talked to others who
complained that we get the
same thing year after year and
they never change the Power-
Point slides. So I wasn’t alone
in that assessment,” said Rep.
Jeff Barker, a Democrat from
Aloha, a community near
Portland.
The PowerPoint presen-
tation addresses identifying
workplace harassment and
discrimination, how to report
incidents, and the illegality of
retaliating against someone
who complains.
Courtney said he wants
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Capitol community treat each
other and the public with
respect.”
Rep. Julie Parrish, a
Republican representing a
district near Portland, said the
session this year had a big-
ger focus on how to report
harassment.
“I think most of what they
provide is common sense,”
Parrish said.
Tuesday’s session also dis-
cussed how to avoid harass-
ment situations and pro-
vided several examples of
types of behavior that should
be avoided, said Sen. Ginny
Burdick, a Democrat from
Portland.
Some lawmakers, though,
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