The Nature of Things

(Cross-posted from Backyard Birder .) Northern Spotted Owl  photographed at the Oregon Zoo. Photo courtesy of Slate.com. If you are a part of the agency charged with protecting endangered species, what do you do if one of those species is threatened by another species in Nature? If the threatening species is a non-native, invasive species, the answer is clear. Stop the invasive one by any means necessary, including lethal measures. But what if the threatening species is native with, arguably, just as much right to be here as the threatened species?  That is the dilemma  currently facing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in its decades long battle to try to save the Northern Spotted Owl from extinction.  The Northern Spotted Owl first came to the nation's attention in the 1990s when it became clear that if something wasn't done to stop the logging of the old growth forests of the Northwest that were its natural habitat, the bird would be extirpated. After studying th...