Hunting an owl to save an ecosystem

Post Reports

The Washington Post

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🗓️ 26 December 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Biologist Daniel Hofstadter and a tiny band of researchers have been carrying out the most expansive barred owl removal effort to date. It’s a project that has killed more than 1,000 owls in Northern California since 2019 across nearly 10 million acres. The biologists believe that their work protecting spotted owls — a species that launched a conservation movement more than three decades ago — will ultimately help safeguard the ecosystem in one of the last old growth forests in the West.

Host Martine Powers speaks with national climate reporter Joshua Partlow about the motivation behind the barred owl removal, the brief history of spotted owls in the area, and the ornithologist who carries out the shootings.

Today’s show was produced by Bishop Sand. It was edited by Monica Campbell and mixed by Justin Garrish.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, so Josh Partlow, you're a national climate reporter for The Post.
0:06.8	And as I understand it, you have something that you want to share with me.
0:11.1	Yes, I wanted to share with you some owl calls.
0:16.2	Owl calls?
0:17.5	Yes.
0:18.0	Just like, hoot-hoot?
0:19.7	Yeah, that's right.
0:20.5	There's a specific owl call.
0:22.0	It goes, ho-hoo, ho-hoo.
0:25.6	Ooh, I like that one.
0:27.9	Can you do it one more time?
0:29.9	All right, okay, here we go.
0:31.6	Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo.
0:33.6	Okay, I got it.
0:34.9	Hoo-hoo-hoo.
0:38.0	And here's the actual call from Cornell University's library.
0:44.4	And the owl behind that call is called the bard owl.
0:48.7	And this owl, the barred owl, it's been spreading up and down the West Coast, and the people I met are dedicating
0:55.2	their lives to stopping this specific owl. And how are they doing this? Well, we went into the forests
1:01.8	of Northern California in the redwoods, right along the coast, some of the tallest trees
1:06.8	in the world. And I was there at night with this researcher,
1:11.3	Danny Hofstadter.
	...

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