Last week I submitted the following Op-Ed to The Oregonian (Portland, OR main newspaper) about the ethics process behind the Barred Owl removal experiments in the Pacific Northwest. Who knows whether it will every see the light of day, so I thought to post it here.

Last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) released its final environmental impact statement for an experiment removing barred owls for the benefit of northern spotted owls in the Pacific northwest. Northern spotted owls are increasingly endangered due to habitat lost, competition with barred owl, and climate change. The decision envisions killing barred owls in four test zone Washington, Oregon and California to see if this aid northern spotted owls. The decision will spark protest and support on many fronts, but that is not what I address today.

This final EIS is a pathbreaking document in environmental policy and wildlife management. It was the first time a federal agency integrated a formal ethics review into its environmental analysis. I was the ethics consultant that helped design and lead the ethics review, and it was my subsequent ethics brief (PDF) that formed the basis for the ethics component of the final EIS.

The USFWS chose an ethics review for two reasons.

First, they recognized that they could not comprehend the public’s concerns or comments about barred owl removal without taking into account the moral sensibilities that underly all those concerns. Whether one cares about owls, biodiversity, local communities — or all three — our care is driven by ethical concerns about doing right by people, animals and/or nature.

Second, they understood that science alone is an insufficient guide to environmental policy. Science can help us understand the causal dynamics of the natural world and the human interaction with that world. It can give us choices and options for what we choose to do when it comes to policy and management.

But science cannot make the value-based decisions about what we ought to do. This is especially true when our actions towards one species will harm another, something that is the case when killing barred owls for the benefit of northern spotted owls. In such circumstances, we need ethics to complement science and help us make those value-laden decisions of policy and management.

With these reasons in mind, the USFWS formed the Barred Owl Stakeholder Group (BOSG). Using a combination of ethics training, interviews, focus groups, field trips and roundtable dialogue, the BOSG explored the ethical dimensions of the issue so that the USFWS could better understand the moral concerns held by citizens, scientists, agency personnel, and policy decision-makers. The BOSG was remarkably collaborative and productive, especially considering its wide range of diverse backgrounds and outlooks. With the BOSG’s insights in mind, the USFWS was also able to design a better experiment that met the tests of sound ethical and scientific reasoning.

In all these respects, the USFWS is to be commended for exercising visionary leadership in pursuing its mission to manage and protect the wildlife and biodiversity of the nation. The ethics review of barred owl removal illustrates how understanding the public’s moral concerns and integrating ethics with science improves public policy.

Image: Barred Owl, wikimedia.