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A controversial plan to kill one owl species to save another cleared a major hurdle.

The full Senate on Wednesday struck down a GOP effort to prevent the cull of up to 450,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest over three decades, ending a saga that created strange political bedfellows.

It’s a major win for environmentalists and federal wildlife officials who want to protect northern spotted owls that have been crowded out by their larger, more aggressive cousins. In recent weeks they got an unlikely ally in loggers who said scuttling the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plan could hinder timber sales.

But it’s a blow to an equally unusual alliance that includes right-wing politicians and animal rights advocates who argue the cull is too expensive and inhumane. The Trump administration leaned on Republican lawmakers to get out of the way, scrambling partisan lines.

Sen. John Kennedy, a conservative from Louisiana, sought to nix the owl-killing plan via the Congressional Review Act, which can be used to overturn recent rules by federal agencies.

Kennedy said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose portfolio includes timber production, recently called him and told him to abandon the resolution. This month logging advocates said that stopping the cull would jeopardize timber production goals set by the Trump administration.

But Kennedy was not persuaded.

“The secretary needed to call somebody who cared what he thought, because I think he’s wrong,” Kennedy said on the Senate floor. “I think he and the other members of the administrative state at the Department of the Interior decided to play God.”

Flanked by pictures of owls and bumbling cartoon hunter Elmer Fudd, Kennedy praised barred owls for their “soulful eyes” and “incredibly soft” feathers. But he acknowledged they’re better hunters than spotted owls. Barred owls, which moved over from eastern North America, are outcompeting spotted owls for food and shelter in their native territory.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy spearheaded a resolution to overturn the Biden-era plan to cull barred owls, even after he said the Trump administration told him to back down.

(Senate Banking Committee)

Ultimately the resolution failed 72 to 25, with three lawmakers not voting. Nearly all those who voted in favor of the resolution were Republican, but even more Republicans voted against it. The Fish and Wildlife Service approved the barred owl cull last year under the Biden Administration.

“I feel a lot of relief because this was one of the most major threats to the long-term, continued existence of the northern spotted owl in many years,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center. “We’ve passed this hurdle, which isn’t to say there aren’t other hurdles or road bumps up ahead, but this feels good.”

Wheeler described the failed effort as a “nuclear threat” — if the resolution had passed, the Fish and Wildlife Service would have been blocked from pursuing any similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Now Wheeler said he and his allies will continue to push for the owl cull to be carried out, and for federal funding to support it.

Animal welfare advocates like Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy, are dismayed.

“What this means is that not only are barred owls at extreme risk of large-scale shooting, but spotted owls and old-growth forests are at risk from chainsaws,” Pacelle said of the failed resolution.

Pacelle’s camp vowed to continue the fight. A lawsuit challenging the hunt they filed against the federal government last fall is moving forward. And they’ll try to ensure money doesn’t flow to the program.

In May, federal officials canceled three related grants in California totaling more than $1.1 million, including one study that would have included lethally removing barred owls from more than 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

However, there are other projects to kill barred owls in the Golden State, according to Peter Tira, a spokesperson for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

One $4.3-million grant issued by the state agency will support barred owl removal in the northwestern part of the state, along with other research. Another grant issued by NASA to a university involves killing barred owls in California as well as creating a tool to prioritize areas where the raptors need to be managed.

It’s not clear how or if the government shutdown, now stretching into its 31st day, is affecting the projects, Tira said in an email.

An unusual alliance of Republican lawmakers and animal rights advocates, together with others, is creating storm clouds for a plan to protect one threatened owl by killing a more common one.

Last August, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a plan to shoot roughly 450,000 barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington over three decades. The barred owls have been out-competing imperiled northern spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest, as well as California spotted owls, pushing them out of their territory.

Supporters of the approach — including conservation groups and prominent scientists — believe the cull is necessary to avert disastrous consequences for the spotted owls.

But the coalition argues the effort is too expensive, unworkable and inhumane. They’re urging the Trump administration to cancel it and lawmakers could pursue a reversal through special congressional action.

Last month, The Times has found, federal officials canceled three owl-related grants to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife totaling roughly $1.1 million, including one study that would remove barred owls from over 192,000 acres in Mendocino and Sonoma counties.

A female barred owl sits on a branch in the wooded hills, Dec. 13, 2017, outside Philomath, Ore.

(Don Ryan / Associated Press)

Two were nixed before federal funding was allocated and never got off the ground, Peter Tira, a spokesperson for the state wildlife agency, said. Another, a collaboration with University of Maryland biologists to better understand barred owl dispersal patterns in western forests, was nearly complete when terminated.

“Under President Donald J. Trump’s leadership, we are eliminating wasteful programs, cutting unnecessary costs and ensuring every dollar serves a clear purpose,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement when asked whether the grants had been terminated.

Another lever would be for Congress to overturn the owl-kill plan altogether using the Congressional Review Act.

The Government Accountability Office concluded in a late-May decision that the plan is subject to that act, sometimes used by new presidential administrations to reverse rules issued by federal agencies in the final months of prior administrations. Both chambers of Congress would need to pass a joint resolution to undo it.

In the months leading up to the GAO determination, bipartisan groups of U.S. House members wrote two letters to the secretary of the Interior laying out reasons why the owl-cull plan should not move forward. In total, 19 Republicans and 18 Democrats signed the letters, including seven lawmakers from California — David Valadao (R-Hanford), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), Gil Cisneros (D-Covina), Josh Harder (D-Tracy), Linda T. Sánchez (D-Whittier), Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and Adam Gray (D-Merced).

Rep. Troy E. Nehls (R-Texas), an ardent Trump supporter, signed the initial letter, and is “currently exploring other options to end this unnecessary plan, which prioritizes one species of owls over another, and wastes Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars,” communications director Emily Matthews said.

Kamlager-Dove said also said earlier this year that she objected to killing one species to preserve another. “And as an animal lover, I cannot support the widespread slaughter of these beautiful creatures,” she said.

If a resolution is introduced, passed and signed by President Trump, the plan will be over. The Fish and Wildlife Service would not be allowed to bring forward a similar rule, unless explicitly authorized by Congress.

Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center, which supports reducing the barred owl population, called the specter of the Congressional Review Act “very scary.”

It’s “an intrusion by Congress into areas where we’re relying on high agency expertise and scientific understanding,” he said. “It’s vibes versus science.”

A California spotted owl is shown inside the Tahoe National Forest in California on July 12, 2004.

(Debra Reid / Associated Press)

Wheeler said he believed it was more likely the program would be deprioritized amid budget cuts than eliminated through the Act.

“If we don’t move forward with barred owl removal, it will mean the extinction of the northern spotted owl, and it will likely mean the extinction of the California spotted owl as well,” he said.

Science is on its side, he said. A long-term field experiment showed that where barred owls were killed, the population of spotted owls stabilized.

For animal welfare activist Wayne Pacelle, who has galvanized opposition to the owl-cull plan, it’s a hopeful turn of events.

“Even if they had full funding for this, we don’t think it could possibly succeed,” said Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy. The land area where the barred owls need to be controlled is just too vast, he said. And barred owls from elsewhere, he said, will simply fly in and replace those that are felled.

As few as 3,000 northern spotted owls are left on federal lands. The brown raptors with white spots are listed as threatened under both the California and federal Endangered Species Act.

California spotted owls are also in decline, and federal wildlife officials have proposed endangered species protections for two populations.

The two sides of the fierce debate agree that barred and spotted owls compete for nesting sites and food — such as woodrats and northern flying squirrels.

Barred owls and spotted owls are similar in appearance and can even interbreed. But barred owls are more aggressive and slightly larger, in addition to being more generalist when it comes to what they’ll eat and where they’ll live, allowing them to muscle out their fellow raptors.

Federal wildlife officials and some conservationists consider barred owls invasive.

As Europeans settled the Great Plains, they suppressed fire and planted trees, allowing barred owls to expand westward from their origin in eastern North America, biologists believe.

“I would call this an invasion, and I would call these non-native species,” Wheeler said.

On the flip side, some see the owl arrival along the West Coast as natural range expansion.

There are also conflicting views of the cost of exterminating so many owls.

Opponents estimate it will cost about $1.35 billion, extrapolated from a $4.5-million contract awarded to a Northern California Native American tribe last year to hunt about 1,500 barred owls over four years.

A 2024 research paper, however, concluded that barred owl removal in the range of the northern spotted owl would cost from $4.5 million to $12 million per year in its initial stages, and would likely decrease over time. At $12 million a year, the 30-year plan would run $360 million.

Pacelle’s Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy have also sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in U.S. District Court in Washington state over the plan. Friends of Animals, another animal welfare group, filed suit in Oregon.

Wheeler’s Environmental Protection Information Center has intervened in the suits in defense of the plan, and those cases continue to advance.