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Hey, I'm Flor Lichten, and you're listening to Science Friday.

On the show today, a new kind of shocking proposal to save spotted owls.

These are the cute, charismatic birds that live in old-growth forests in the West and are threatened by habitat loss and logging.

People have been arguing about these birds for over 30 years.

They're a conservation poster child. So the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

has proposed a new strategy to save them, and it's kind of startling. The barred owl management

strategy proposes killing 450,000 barred owls over the next 30 years. Across 24 million acres,

yes, you heard that right, saving spotted owls by killing as many animals. over the next 30 years. Across 24 million acres, which includes 14 million acres, which

yes, you heard that right, saving spotted owls by killing as many as

450,000 barred owls. The proposed strategy is, as you would guess, controversial and has created

some strange nest fellows. Loggers and many conservationists are in favor, while some lawmakers and animal welfare groups are opposed. It's been challenged in court, and its fate is uncertain, but people are talking about it. So we wanted to know what one of the world's top spotted owl experts thinks of this approach.

So we called up applied ecologist Rocky Gutierrez, Professor Emeritus at University of Minnesota.

He's been studying spotted owls for decades.

Hey, Rocky, welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you for having me, Flora.

This is your area of expertise. I mean,

you've studied spotted owls for decades. Do you think this plan is a good idea?

It is the only option that we have if we want to ensure the persistence of the spotted owl.

But it's far more than the spotted owl. What people don't realize

is that the entire ecosystem function and the number of species that this barred owl is

...