‘Hoot, Don’t Shoot’: Multi-State Billboard Campaign Launched to Halt Federal Plan to Kill 450,000 Barred Owls

Campaign spanning California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington urges public to reject plan that authorizes lethal removal of hundreds of thousands of native owls

SEATTLE, WA, UNITED STATES, September 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Center for a Humane Economy today launched its “Hoot, Don’t Shoot” campaign, a public-awareness effort featuring 17 billboards across Oregon, Washington, California, and Idaho demanding the federal government halt its unworkable and inhumane scheme to kill 450,000 barred owls over 30 years. The beginning stages of the plan are timed to coincide with three other federal agency policies targeting Northern spotted owls.

The Center for a Humane Economy’s HootDontShoot.org site provides a portal for the public to demand the shutdown of an unprecedented plan to slaughter forest owls long protected under federal law.

“The timber industry cooked up a plan to kill barred owls as a way to distract attention from its plans, coordinated with federal land management agencies, to kill threatened Northern spotted owls by destroying their habitats,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Humane Economy. “It was a clever and cunning bait-and-switch. The industry and the federal government falsely described North American barred owls as ‘invasive’ and then falsely claimed they are helping spotted owls by killing look-alike barred owls at the very same time that they are invading Pacific Coast forests with bulldozers and chain saws to level old-growth forests.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is already spending millions of taxpayer dollars to field shooting teams on our public lands and Indian reservations but choosing not to disclose the running body count despite repeated Freedom of Information Act requests for that information.

The Interior and Agriculture departments have launched a four-pronged plan to kill barred owls and Northern spotted owls – putting the lie to the rhetoric of the Fish and Wildlife Service that it is killing barred owls to help improve nesting success for spotted owls:

The Service has received a blanket special-purpose permit under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to kill barred owls in massive numbers. Barred owl killing will be used as a “mitigation” tool to allow the USFWS to grant “incidental take” permits to cut down trees that serve as nesting sites for spotted owls.

To add to that spotted owl “taking, the Fish and Wildlife Service finalized in July a rule rescinding the regulatory definition of “harm” under the Endangered Species Act. That definition has long prevented degradation of habitats essential to threatened or endangered wild animals, including the Northern spotted owl. The loss of habitat protections for spotted owls is set to take effect on September 14th.

The Agriculture Department has proposed a new rule to nullify the 25-year-old, Clinton-era Roadless Rule. Its repeal, still awaiting public comment, would allow road building on 58 million acres of protected national forests. New roads on these public lands will allow access to sensitive landscapes by poachers, bear baiters, other trophy hunters, and barred owl shooters. It will also allow timber companies to use bulldozers and heavy machinery to knock down and cut down trees and then transport them from the destruction sites to lumber mills.

Interior and Agriculture department leaders collaborated with GOP leaders in Congress to insert a provision in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill to ramp up public-lands timber harvest goals by 60 percent over the next three years, allowing 5 billion board feet of timber to be removed from national forests and Bureau of Land Management lands centered in Oregon and also in California and Washington.

The “Hoot, Don’t Shoot” billboards are appearing across four Western states to raise public awareness of this multi-pronged assault on owls.

For supplemental materials from today’s press conference, please visit Hoot Don’t Shoot Press Conference Materials.

ABOUT
The Center for a Humane Economy is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) whose mission is to help animals by helping forge a more humane economic order. The first organization of its kind in the animal protection movement, the Center encourages businesses to honor their social responsibilities in a culture where consumers, investors, and other key stakeholders abhor cruelty and the degradation of the environment and embrace innovation as a means of eliminating both. The Center believes helping animals helps us all. X: @TheHumaneCenter

Reagan Cooney
Otter PR
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