Multitudes of barred owls are scheduled to DIE partly because of anthropocentric notions of DEI, promulgated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which favor spotted owls.

There is no natural equity amongst the owls. Some, like barred owls, simply dominate others, like maladjusted spotted owls. Though they began migrating from the northeast in the early 1900s, and arrived in the Pacific Northwest at least as early as the 1970s, barred owls have been tagged as invasive as they outcompete weaker, endemic species.

Another interpretation is that they are just successful, something Biden’s army of burrowed bureaucrats, including those in FWS, can’t tolerate. Instead, to counter the dynamics of the natural world, they intend to lethally enforce what amounts to ornithological-targeted DEI mandates to ensure the constantly failing spotted owls achieve survival equity.

It’s not enough that we’ve bent over backwards to offer the spotted owls equality of opportunity. Nope, they must have equal outcomes. To that end, FWS plans to unleash 'hunters' in California, Oregon, and Washington to kill about half a million magnificent barred owls who dared to migrate west, and had the nerve to infringe upon the protected spotted owl.

The absurd plan is for hunters to instigate barred owl commotion by mimicking their territorial calls. Once they’ve been lured, they’ll either shoot on sight, or, if firearm use is inadvisable, they’ll capture and euthanize them.

Yikes, what could go wrong during nocturnal hours in misty forests? Mistaken identity (they look similar), misaligned gunsights, disrupting forest ecosystems, trigger-happy shooters for whom nothing is inadvisable, or misfiring firearms. In short, just about everything could go wrong, so lookout all you forest-dwellers, including critters that might encounter poisonous casings.

Not only is execution of the impractical plan fraught with flaws, but it is inherently diabolical. Owls upon whom nature has conferred superior abilities will be exterminated to ensure survival of the weakest. That’s devolution -- evolution gone backwards.

It’s foolhardy for busybody FWS staffers to quarrel with nature’s imperatives, even as nature’s inhabitants adjusts to human interactions, including forest mismanagement. They tried to cull majestic barred owls before in order that spotted ones may thrive in a DEI habitat. But their record is spotty, to say the least, partly because of the underlying mechanism of natural selection, and the absolute onus on adaptability. It would be wise to acknowledge that the natural world is not equitable in that regard.

Rather than impose some warped notion of DEI that favors underperforming owls, how about enforcing some tree equity through better forest management? Maybe that would satisfy barred owls, who are instinctually non-migratory, after all. But for those who chose to head west, are they necessarily invasive, deserving of a belly-full of gunshot lead? No!

It’s their prerogative to adapt to salubrious environments. Now they’re at home -- native, if you will, for several decades -- in states including Washington, Oregon, and parts of northern California. What’s invasive are the landscaping practices whence they came. What’s invasive, toward the rhythms of nature, are the FWS bureaucrats’ attitudes towards successful species.

Some barred owls wander in search of prey, but they don’t need no stinking FWS passports to travel to exciting new destinations in the west. Starting in the early 1900s, it’s their ornithological version of Manifest Destiny. Indeed, one of nature’s wonders are the migratory patterns of birds, but looking at it through the Fed’s DEI prism, they’re willfully invading new territory to pillage and plunder.

Nevertheless, when necessary to counteract human interventions, including haphazard deforestation, nature will inevitably have its way. So, too, will barred owls have their way with spotted owls. Indeed, through interbreeding, some essence of spotted owls -- who were so disruptive of our timber industry -- lives on in a hybridized incarnation creatively called “sparred owls.”

Nature doesn’t generally abide by anthropomorphic constructs that unnaturally promote those less capable, at the expense of those more qualified. Unfit species sometimes become extinct. Still, in a way, sparred owls represent a form of natural DEI: a new, minority species that affirms nature’s élan vital -- at least for now.

In fact, sparred owls are quite fertile, and will even mate back with barred owls. No hard feelings then.

Image: PxHere