By Alden Smith, VINS Executive Director
When I make my rounds each day at VINS, I always check on Hyde Park and Richmond, our two Barred Owls on exhibit. Despite their nocturnal habits, they appear remarkably alert: penetrating, dark eyes set within a beautiful, dished face. They appear perfectly healthy, with no visible sign of the car collision they both endured over a decade ago. Because those acts of violence made them unreleasable, they spend their days educating the public in exchange for food, shelter, and health care. Sometimes they sound off late in the day—an announcement that there is some wildness left in them.
It was my little league coach, Paul, who taught me to recognize the call of the Barred Owl. Much more than a coach, he helped anchor me in my teenage years after my mom’s death. His translation—Who looks for you? Who looks for you all?—always seemed more fitting than the more commonly known phrase, Who cooks for you? I seem to encounter Barred Owls all the time in the wild, especially at dawn or dusk, and they always make me think of my mother.
I don’t know why this happens, but the association is unmistakable. When I hear the call—Who looks for you?—the image that comes to mind is my mother in perfect health, before her five-year struggle with cancer began. I’m not woo-woo enough to think that my mother assumes the shape of an owl to come looking for me; I simply accept the connection as a gift. I hear the call, feel a pulse of joy, and move on. I know the owl is not my mother, but my heart welcomes the feeling.
This tension between head and heart governs our relationship with birds at VINS. So far in 2024, we’ve taken in 532 sick or injured birds, including 151 patients still with us today. We cannot help but grow attached to these animals. Likewise, we’ve trained many injured birds—such as Hartland, another Barred Owl—to participate in education programs with the public, endearing them further to our hearts. But loving individual birds is not always the same thing as protecting biodiversity, which is central to our mission. The current controversy out west regarding Spotted Owls and Barred Owls reveals how complicated and painful some decisions about conservation can be.
The current plan in Washington, Oregon, and California is to destroy, by shotgun, nearly half a million Barred Owls over the next few decades. I’m sure I’m not alone in my revulsion and horror. At VINS we know the power of human attraction to owls—nearly 2,300 people attended our VINS Owl Festival in April 2024. Killing owls feels all wrong, whatever the reason. Sadness and even outrage may be warranted during the 30-day comment period on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Final Environmental Impact Statement. Nonetheless, the culling will likely begin in the spring of 2025.
Why is this happening? Owl lovers may need to take some breaths before wading into the research backing this plan. Especially here in the East, which is home to a growing, native population of Barred Owls, it may be hard for us to see them as invasive and destructive. During the last half century, climate change has assisted Barred Owls in moving north and west, such that they are now displacing the Spotted Owls from their native habitat. The population of Spotted Owls has declined by 75% over the past two decades—a trend most pronounced in areas where they overlap with Barred Owls. Both California Spotted Owls and Northern Spotted Owls could disappear forever without lethal intervention.
In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes, “A thing is right when it tends to protect the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” I turn to Leopold when I feel the need to escape my own heart-centered bias—to “think like a mountain,” as he puts it. Yes, it turns my stomach to think of Barred Owls being shot, but I also see the cost of not taking action. To think clearly, I need to consider not just the individual animal being shot, but the population of animals being protected. The estimated 3.5 million Barred Owls will decrease slightly under the plan, giving the remaining several thousand Northern Spotted Owls a chance to exist at all.
It’s good to love a bird. It’s good to grieve its passing, as we did when our cherished Bald Eagle, Elmwood, died at VINS in April. And for the most part there’s no harm in anthropomorphizing a Barred Owl as I do when I see one and think of my mother. At the same time, we need to embrace how complicated conservation can be. Loving individual birds and protecting biodiversity do not always coexist comfortably. The heart-centered approach is crucial—our avian rehabilitators at VINS could never do their excellent work without it. Without research to inform our work, though, we cut ourselves off from helpful pathways toward biotic health. Navigating this tension lives at the heart of our daily work.
I am pulling for the Spotted Owl. I will also go on loving Barred Owls as fiercely as I loved my mother. We are fortunate they are native and plentiful here in our eastern forests. Let’s be grateful to hear their call, even if they are not calling to us.
So full of feeling and lots I did not know. Thank you.
Thanks for this. It is a harsh reality to come to terms with, thanks for sharing!
The government knows how to catch and release. One thing to take into consideration. Cull, fine but send half of that number to the upper Midwest.
Great read, very kind, and very informational. I still struggle with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s being protectors or predators. I wish there was another way!