The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to spend as much as $1.35 billion in taxpayer money over the next 30 years on a program to shoot up to 450,000 barred owls across California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. The agency says the shooting is meant to help a different, threatened bird — the northern spotted owl — by removing a competitor species from the same forests.

But look closer and the story doesn't add up. At the same time this shooting plan is moving forward, federal regulators are also working to strip away habitat protections under the Endangered Species Act, including a proposal to redefine "harm" to owls and other wildlife in a way that would weaken existing safeguards. On top of that, officials are pushing to increase logging on public lands by 60% and open up roadbuilding across 58 million acres of protected national forest — the very old-growth trees these owls depend on to survive.

If the real goal were protecting spotted owls, weakening their habitat protections and accelerating logging in their forests makes no sense. More than 450 organizations have already joined together to oppose this plan, and it's being challenged in court. But billion-dollar decisions like this one shouldn't be made quietly in Washington — they deserve public scrutiny.

Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Congress: don't spend over a billion taxpayer dollars shooting one owl species while simultaneously bulldozing the forests both owl species need to survive. Sign the petition to stop the barred owl kill plan and demand the government protect old-growth forests instead of destroying them.