Free Republic

Reeling from reverberating calls for him to drop out of the race for reelection after his pathetic performance in last week's televised debate with former President Donald Trump, the Biden Administration has announced new initiatives aimed at boosting his support among voters. At the top of the list is a plan to prosecute "price-gouging grocers." Secretary of Commerce Gina Marie Raimondo explained that "the evidence is overwhelming that the price increases we are seeing for food is the intentional work of the people running the supermarkets, corner stores, and bodegas. In every case, the prices of the meats, produce, and...

To save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, US wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan: hire trained sharp-shooters to assassinate its rivals. The US Fish and Wildlife Service strategy released Wednesday is meant to prop up declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. Trained shooters will be deployed to the dense forests of the West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their endangered cousins. Documents released by the agency show up to about 450,000 barred owls would be shot over three decades — a solution designed to level...

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-million barred owls that are crowding out their cousins. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service strategy released Wednesday is meant to prop up declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

The survival of one owl species hinges on the demise of another. That’s what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service argues in its proposal to allow the agency to shoot hundreds of thousands of barred owls over the next 30 years in West Coast forests. The service says the barred owl, which is not native to the region, is crowding out the spotted owl, a close genetic relative. Without action against the barred owls, service biologists say the spotted owl could disappear from parts of Washington and Oregon within a few years and eventually go extinct. The proposal is the...

Trailing-edge noise is the dominant source of sound from aeronautical and turbine engines like those in airplanes, drones, and wind turbines. Suppressing this noise pollution is a major environmental goal for some urban areas. In Physics of Fluids, researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University used the characteristics of owl wings to inform airfoil design and significantly reduce the trailing-edge noise. "Nocturnal owls produce about 18 decibels less noise than other birds at similar flight speeds due to their unique wing configuration," said author Xiaomin Liu. "Moreover, when the owl catches prey, the shape of the wings is also constantly changing, so...

John Kerry attends Thompson's blowing-up.

One Georgia family got more than they bargained for when they took home a Christmas tree and found a real-life owl hiding in its branches. Last week, Billy and Katie McBride Newman’s young daughter India started crying when one of their holiday trees ornaments “scared” her, Fox 4 reports. Coincidentally, the Newnan family’s fir was filled with about a dozen owl ornaments, as Katie is a fan of the bird. Shockingly, however, the woman’s 10-year-old was not spooked by one of the decorations, but instead a real-life owl.

You’ve probably seen this viral video circulating on Twitter. The camera pans up through a hole in the ceiling to reveal ... creatures of some kind. Are they aliens? Ghosts? No. They're owls. Really, really creepy owls. If you’re not entirely convinced that the hissing trio are indeed birds, you’re not alone. (I showed the video to one friend, who replied: “That cannot possibly be real.” Others have displayed similar skepticism online.) When the video first hit the internet in 2017, multiple sources reported that construction workers stumbled across the scraggly birds, known as eastern barn owls, at a site...

Killing one species to save another sounds like a drastic solution, but that’s exactly what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is doing in California to protect the Spotted Owl from a predator that happens to be its distant cousin, the Barred Owl. On the Hoopa Indian Reservation near the Oregon border, it’s owl country, but not the kind Mark Higley wants to see. The tribe’s resident biologist is tracking an invasive species from the east called the barred owl. “Up to the ridge line we have been getting barred owl responses,” he said. At first the birds were a...

An experiment to see if killing invasive barred owls will help the threatened northern spotted owl reverse its decline toward extinction is underway in the forests of Northern California. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday that specially trained biologists have shot 26 barred owls in a study area on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation northeast of Arcata, Calif. The service is spending $3.5 million over six years to remove 3,600 barred owls from sites in Oregon, Washington and California. It is not unusual to kill one species to help a threatened or endangered one. Cormorants and sea lions...

To save the imperiled spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a controversial plan to shoot barred owls, rival birds that have shoved their smaller cousins aside. The plan is the latest federal attempt to protect the northern spotted owl, the passive, 1-pound bird that sparked an epic battle over logging in the Pacific Northwest two decades ago. The government set aside millions of acres of forest to protect the owl, but the bird's population continues to decline - a 40 percent slide in 25 years.

It's not the usual thing you'd expect to find in a kitchen - but these orphaned baby owls seemed right at home as they nestled in two cups. The feathered pair were clearly having a hoot after moving into the home of their wildlife park keeper, Jimmy Robinson. The six-week-old burrowing owlets, nicknamed Linford and Christie, were hatched in an incubator, and are now being hand-reared by Jimmy - who works at Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire - and are given 24-hour care.

Residents in the foothills of the US city of Albuquerque have claimed that giant owls have moved into the area and are snacking on their small cats and dogs.

Communities all over the country feel that their hands are tied with one-size-fits-all DC Brand Red Tape. The rules and regulations prevent them from doing what is best for their specific circumstances. The situation has escalated to the point where elected officials are now taking charge to do what is local and logical. What took place this weekend in the rural New Mexico town of Cloudcroft could become the model for all who want to cut the red tape. Hundreds of people were at what is being called the “Otero County Tree Party” in support of realigning the federal government...

A popular superstition holding that owls are bad luck caused Arab farmers to refuse for quite some time to put up nesting boxes for the birds, even though they are widely used by Jewish farmers as a form of biological pest control. But this attitude has begun to change of late, thanks to the efforts of an ornithologist from the Lower Galilee village of Iksal. Samah Darawshe, of the Israel Ornithology Center, has managed to persuade Arab farmers in the Lower Galilee to put up dozens of nesting boxes over the last year, and dozens more are slated to go...

Nothing's worked. Not the clamp on federal timber sales that hammered Oregon's mill towns. Not the lawsuits or the listing as an endangered species. The belated work to retain and restore its favored old-growth habitat will take decades to unfold. Twenty plus years of trying to save the northern spotted owl and it's still slipping away. Come summer, federal wildlife officials expect to finish a draft environmental impact statement that most likely recommends taking to the woods with shotguns. Over the next year, in three or more study areas from Washington to northern California, they might kill 1,200 to 1,500...

Check out this crazy owl. It has got to be the friendliest owl I have ever seen. He really does act like a cat the way he enjoys being petted.

The popularity of Harry Potter, and dabbling in the dark arts, are responsible for the demise of wild owls in India, according to the country’s environment minister. “Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls,” said Jairam Ramesh. His warnings came as a new report on the illegal trade of the endangered birds was released by Traffic, an organization working to protect them. The report also says that the practice of sacrificing owls and using their body parts in ceremonial rituals on auspicious occasions is also...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. – Scientists want to determine if killing the aggressive barred owl that has invaded old growth forests of the Northwest would help the protected spotted owl. Federal biologists are doing a formal study to decide whether to do the experiment, and laying out the terms if they go ahead. The study will be available for public comment and is expected to be completed by fall 2010. "This is to be done experimentally so we can nail down whether, in fact, removing barred owls could improve spotted owl demographics, and also to look into the feasibility of doing...

Check out this video . . .