Every once in a while in our on-going, seemingly inexorable march to eliminate large swatches of nature’s bounty: the inland glaciers of Montana, Chile, China, Europe, the rainforest, the ice of the Arctic and Antarctic and a multitude of species, a story comes to the fore to stop us for a short moment.
For me it was the story of the owls that a friend posted on Facebook. A NPR report about “killing one owl species to save another.”
I’ve got a thing about owls. From the time as a boy I rescued an injured baby owl from Van Cortland Park in the Bronx and my Mom took care until it healed enough to fly.
Anyway it seems the Northern Spotted Owl is in big trouble in Washington, Oregon, even California. Thanks to logging, the suburbanization of their habitat, and now the Barred Owls who like many Americans have moved west from the industrial east where there are fewer and fewer jobs, apparently even for owls.
Click here to read Mickey Friedman’s entire musing on Owl Wars.