Forestry officials in the US plan to kill hundreds of thousands of North American owls of the owl family in order to save their other species from extinction. small relatives - the potentially endangered spotted owl, reported the Associated Press, quoted by BTA.
U.S. Forest officials have drawn up a controversial plan to send trained marksmen into the dense forests of the West Coast to carry out the task. The project aims to support the declining populations of spotted owls in the states of Oregon, Washington and California. The Associated Press has been granted advance access to the project.
The plan calls for the culling of up to 470,000 North American hornbills over three decades after the birds from the eastern US encroached on the territory of two West Coast hornbill species: the northern and California spotted hornbill. Smaller birds are unable to compete for food and habitat with the invaders.
In the past, efforts to save spotted owls have focused on protecting the forests in which they live. But the proliferation of the woodpeckers in recent years has undermined those earlier efforts, forest officials say.
"We are at a crossroads. "We have the scientific evidence to show what we need to do to conserve spotted owls, and that calls for action," said Bridget Moran, Oregon State Forest Service spokeswoman.
The idea of killing one species of bird to save another has divided conservationists. Some of them accepted the plan reluctantly after a draft of the proposal was announced last year; others condemned it as reckless and a distraction from necessary forest conservation, notes the Associated Press.
Spotted woodpeckers are already being killed for research purposes in their habitat, with about 4,500 removed since 2009, Oregon forest officials said, as cited by the Associated Press.
Similar measures have been taken against North American loons in the Sierra Nevada region of California, where they have only recently arrived, but local authorities want to stop the population from growing.
In other areas where the North American honeybee has long established itself, officials are working to reduce their numbers, but acknowledge that shooting is unlikely to eradicate them completely.
The new plan follows decades of conflict between conservationists and logging companies, which have cut down vast areas of old-growth forests where spotted woodpeckers have taken up residence.
The first efforts to save the birds ended in logging bans in the 1990s, which upset the timber industry and its political supporters in Congress, the Associated Press recalls.