Sen. John Kennedy is clashing with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum over a plan to kill hundreds of thousands of barred owls to save the Pacific Northwest’s iconic northern spotted owl.
The Louisiana Republican vowed to forge ahead with a fast-track resolution that would overturn the Biden-era owl plan even after, he said, Burgum called him Monday night to urge him not to.
“They can’t stop me,” the senator said. “He wants to kill the barred owl — he loves it like the devil loves sin. And I told him to have at it and go out there and explain to the American people why he wants to turn the federal government loose and kill 470,000 baby owl chicks.”
Kennedy declared he would force a vote as early as next week on his Congressional Review Act resolution to strike down the 2024 Fish and Wildlife Service plan spanning California, Oregon and Washington.
The spotted owl is native to the Northwest and critically endangered. The barred owl is larger, more aggressive and not native to the region where it is now outcompeting the spotted owl for prey and habitat
Kennedy didn’t say what, exactly, Burgum objected to, though opposition to his effort has been mounting from loggers, Western senators and some green groups.
Kennedy’s effort has scrambled traditional partisan lines. Some top Republicans said Tuesday they would oppose his resolution, while some Democrats said they might support it.
Amid all this, Kennedy insisted it was wrong to choose which owl lives and which dies.
“I don’t think the federal government ought to be telling God, nature — whatever you believe in — this one can exist, this one can’t,” he said. “The barred owl is not the first species that has ever moved its territory and it won’t be the last but if the secretary of the Interior wants to do it, that’s his business. This is America. He’s entitled to his opinion, but I’m entitled to mine.”
Interior did not return a request for comment.
The Congressional Review Act allows the House and Senate to overturn recent executive agency actions with only a simple majority. Because the Biden administration never submitted to Congress its 2024 record of decision as a rule, it still remains subject to the CRA.
Asked about the possibility of a veto threat from the White House, Kennedy said, “That’s their prerogative.”
The White House did not respond to a question about a possible veto.
One top Republican, Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, said she’d likely vote against Kennedy’s effort.
“My understanding is that the Trump administration supports the Biden rule,” Capito said. “So I think that’s where I’m going to probably fall on this.”
Plan to kill 450,000 owls
Specifically, that plan would overturn the Fish and Wildlife Service’s “Barred Owl Management Strategy,” which anticipates a maximum of about 450,000 barred owls, or about 15,000 per year, could be killed over 30 years under the plan. The agency says this equates to annual killing of less than half of 1 percent of the current North American barred owl population.
Fish and Wildlife Service Oregon State Supervisor Kessina Lee said in a statement when the plan was released, “As wildlife professionals, we approached this issue carefully and did not come to this decision lightly.”
Some senators, however, agree with Kennedy that killing one owl to save another is wrong. Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who represents one of the states impacted by the rule, counts herself among them.
“I’m kind of in agreement with him,” Cantwell said of Kennedy. “I don’t know that this is well-thought-out policy. I think it’s like, a lot [of owls], so we had questions for sure about it.”
Cantwell stopped short of supporting Kennedy’s CRA, however, saying she needed to review exactly what it said.
But timber industry groups and loggers have urged lawmakers to oppose the CRA resolution, arguing that the owl plan is legally tied to the resource management scheme for the region and that scrapping the owl plan would reopen years of Endangered Species Act consultations that predate the Biden era.
Timber sale worries
Striking the Biden plan would jeopardize the Trump administration’s stated timber goals, said Travis Joseph, CEO of the American Forest Resource Council.
In an interview, he acknowledged the CRA raises “legit questions” about the implementation of the owl removal program but stressed the CRA is not the best way to address those.
“We can understand these are really difficult questions when you are talking about species management and lethal removal of one owl to protect another owl,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really supports that. The question is the trade-off and what the law requires. … They are required to take actions to try to save the spotted owl. What we’re saying is that has practical implications.”
Reopening resource management plans “would create unacceptable risks and delays to current and future timber sales, legal vulnerability for the agency, uncertainty for the local milling infrastructure and private sector workforce, and serious financial consequences to rural counties that rely on timber receipts to support essential services like law enforcement and mental health.”
Kennedy could not say what Burgum’s rationale was for supporting the plan. But Kennedy was adamant he would be barreling ahead.
“I like owls. I love owls. I like owls better than people,” Kennedy said. “Those owls never did anything to the federal government. They just want to eat and live peacefully like everyone else.”
