A barred owl fledgling soars through the Muir Woods in Mill Valley. The invasive species’ spread to the Bay Area is at an early stage.

In the dead of night, hunters armed with 12-gauge shotguns hit the woods of Northern California in search of barred owls. Pre-recorded bird calls lure the large predators from the treetops. As shots ring out, owls plummet from the sky.

From 2013 to 2019, 2,485 barred owls were killed like this on the West Coast. This wasn’t poaching. The hunters had the blessing of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which greenlit efforts to eradicate the invasive owls.

Now, the federal government plans to expand this effort, aiming to slaughter 470,000 barred owls in California, Oregon and Washington. The project’s primary goal is to protect spotted owls, a native species whose numbers have plummeted 75% over the past two decades. Their decline is partly due to logging in old-growth forests, but the arrival of barred owls over the past few decades hasn’t helped.

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Barred owls are native to eastern North America, but in the early 1900s, they began to move west. Unlike wild boars or American bullfrogs, which were introduced by humans, barred owls have made their way across the country on their own.

One theory is that as European settlers planted trees in the Great Plains, the owls were able to migrate west. By the 1970s they reached the Pacific Northwest. Over the past few decades, their population has boomed. They’re bigger, more aggressive and can eat a wider variety of food than their spotted relatives.

Killing these invaders seems to work; a study showed that spotted owl populations rebounded........

© San Francisco Chronicle