Nearly 20 types of owls live in North America. ... Like most such tales, the truth is murkier. Controversy aside, the spotted owl is beautiful, and birders sincerely hope it persists.

The killings would reduce North American barred owl numbers by less than 1% annually, officials said. That compares with potential extinction for spotted owls, should the problem go unaddressed.

Northern spotted owls are considered a medium-sized owl, usually about 1.5 feet (0.4 meters) in length with a wingspan up to 4 feet (1.2 meters). Barred owls are slightly larger.

By the mid-2000s, detections of the barred owl, an East Coast native spreading south from Canada, were surpassing the spotted owl throughout much of its territory.

In the spotted owl’s case, this critical habitat consisted of old growth trees in the Northwest; the exact trees that loggers wanted to cut down. Environmentalists were able to use the Endangered ...

Federal job cuts have upended spotted owl surveys in Northern and Southern California. It’s unclear whether wildfire mitigation strategies such as forest thinning can happen if the surveys are ...

To save the spotted owl from possible extinction, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has released a plan to kill nearly 500,000 barred owls by deploying trained shooters into West Coast forests.

To prevent the extinction of the northern spotted owl, is killing barred owls really the only option? Yes. For over 20 years, scientists have studied if there is another way, and struck out.

To save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half ...