The spotted owl issue is a hoax. One nested in a traffic circle in Everett and had to be removed to a more appropriate area.They are just putting men with rifles all over the state after Ferguson eliminated the residency requirement for voting.
I agree, it’s a hoax, designed to cripple the timber industry.
I was hired in 1979 by the Forest Service for a spotted owl survey of the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon. By the time we were done, I knew that the whole fable of spotted owls needing vast tracts of undisturbed old-growth forest was nonsense. I’ve seen them in cut-over areas and in fairly young second-growth. In fact, the first nest I saw was in a Ponderosa snag in the middle of a clear cut; the birds had been reported to the USFS by the loggers who cut that sale.
Species compete. It’s what they do. If the barred owls are better at owling than spotted owls, so be it.