Kill the Owls, Don’t Kill the Owls… or Apply “Limited Experimental Removal”
Which means: kill them. It’s amazing how many words and phrases in English translate to kill. We euthanize animals, or ‘put them to sleep.’ Mobsters ‘rub out,’ ‘hit,’ ‘take out’ and ‘take care of’ “problems.”
We starve the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the EPA, the BLM and private organizations of funding through congressional stupidity and sequester (sorry, that’s also congredumb) so that human interference destroys native species’ habitats. Then come up with essentially last-ditch, people-intensive ways of ‘saving’ the impacted species.
Owls are top avian predators as well. Give them back their mice, rats, frogs, toads, lizards, snakes and slow birds and we won’t have to shoot them: they’ll be competing for a larger food base.
We can accomplish that fairly cheaply: kill all feral cats and make owners either keep theirs indoors, or pay hefty ‘hunter’ fees. Cats are top-level predators of a wide variety of animals, with few natural predators. They spread taxoplasmosis gondii for better protection, and to hunt more effectively. Their feces causes birth defects.
Please don’t hurt me: I’ve owned some wonderful cats. I’ll probably own one in the future (hopefully a Maine Coon as shown on right). Heck, I would pay a large fee to allow my (neutered) cat outdoors. But their impact on the local biome is horrendous, far larger (and more painful) than a few ‘specialists’ performing limited experimental removal with Hevi-shot™ pest control devices set to full-choke.