Return to Sender by Sara Wright

you whistled
my name
four notes
chilled
prickly skin
needling
truth
we are
forever
bound
you
bird
woman
owl
tree
wounding
wounding
wounding
we weep
grief
grief
grief
too deep
half a
million
dead
gunned down
by Explosive Will
I make
no apology
Return
atrocity
to those
whose
behaviors
will one
day
destroy
them
too.
What we do to nature we do to ourselves.

Context for Poem:

Yesterday I wrote an essay about the barred owl killings beginning with a personal story about my relationship with barred owls. I have known about this Federal Fish and Wildlife Organization’s proposal since 2023.

The rationalization for these killings hinges on the belief that it’s critical to save the rare spotted owl in the west and to accomplish this deed barred owls must die. Barred owls are moving west into the spotted owl’s territory and are now considered an invasive species because the two interbreed and some barred owls do kill the spotted owl. No one cares that this migration is a survival strategy for barred owls who need mature forests to live and breed in, forests that have disappeared in the east except for fragments. 

I really thought that conservation agencies could and would stop this atrocity. I was wrong.

Finalized in August 2024, the Barred Owl Management Strategy is the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s long-term plan to protect native spotted owls in Washington, Oregon and California by killing half a million ‘invasive’ barred owls.

 Worse, this plan has been sanctioned by the Nature Conservancy and The Federal Migratory Bird Act that supposedly protects all migratory birds. Other conservation agencies like the American Bird Conservancy also support this egregious decision. Cornell’s Ornithology Department states that the bird is invasive and leaves the matter open. No comment.

The actual killings began in 2025.

After completing yesterday’s essay and sending it off to be published, I thought I would experience some relief.  Trembling and nauseous, I deliberately went for a walk to calm my shattered nerves – I have dreaded writing about this issue since January 1st. I have a pair of barred owls who are living in my little forest who have been singing to me all winter, reminding me of their plight. Trees, Owls, Women, and most men – we are all part of the same fabric. The horrors are mounting.

 Intermittent neighboring machine gun fire accompanied me on my walk. No possibility of peace or embodiment until I was almost home. Then, under the guns one solitary voice: I hear one musical trill from the barred owls in my forest who are presently very very quiet because they have mated and are incubating eggs. To have an owl call during nesting creates tremendous risk for the pair and their future family.  The owl’s response demonstrated to me for the millionth time that we are all part of the same fabric.  

Last night I still couldn’t sleep even though I thought I had written myself through the worst of my grief/anger yesterday. And so once again, this morning my feelings spill onto the page, this time manifesting as rage.

 Return to sender, the oppressors, the killers.

 And I do.

Normally, I move through intolerable grief and then can let it go but this time I feel as if I am still being poisoned by unseen forces making it necessary to set a firm boundary and intention to return that venom to those who inflict it upon the innocent. And they are legion.

Here is more information for those women and men who love barred owls and abhor the atrocities we are experiencing:

July 24, 2024

PBS News

“To save the imperiled spotted owl from potential extinction, U.S. wildlife officials are embracing a contentious plan to deploy trained shooters into dense West Coast forests to kill almost a half-million barred owls that are crowding out their smaller cousins.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday was expected to release its final plan to prop up declining spotted owl populations in Oregon, Washington state and California. The Associated Press obtained details in advance.

The plan calls for killing up to 470,000 barred owls over three decades after the birds from the eastern U.S. encroached into the territory of two West Coast owls: northern spotted owls and California spotted owls. The smaller spotted owls have been unable to compete for food and habitat with the invaders.

Past efforts to save spotted owls focused on protecting the forests where they live. But the proliferation of barred owls in recent years is undermining that earlier work, officials said.

“We’re at a crossroads. We have the science that indicates what we need to do to conserve the spotted owls, and that requires that we take action on the barred owls,” said Bridget Moran, a deputy state supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Oregon.

The notion of killing one bird species to save another has divided wildlife advocates and conservationists. Some grudgingly accepted the proposal after a draft version was announced last year; others denounced it as reckless and a diversion from needed forest preservation.

Barred owls already are being killed in spotted owl habitats for research purposes, with about 4,500 removed since 2009, said Robin Bown, barred owl strategy leader for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Those targeted included barred owls in California’s Sierra Nevada region, where the animals have only recently arrived and officials want to stop populations from taking hold.

In other areas where barred owls are more established, officials aim to reduce their numbers but acknowledge shooting owls is unlikely to eliminate them entirely.

The new plan follows decades of conflict between conservationists and timber companies that cut down vast areas of older forests where spotted owls reside.

Early efforts to save the birds culminated in logging bans in the 1990s that roiled the timber industry and its political supporters in Congress.

Yet spotted owl populations continued to decline after barred owls first started showing up on the West Coast several decades ago.

Opponents say the mass killing of barred owls would cause severe disruption to forest ecosystems and could lead to other species — including spotted owls — being mistakenly shot. They’ve also challenged the notion that barred owls don’t belong on the West Coast, characterizing their expanding range as a natural ecological phenomenon.

“The practical elements of the plan are unworkable, and its adverse collateral effects would ripple throughout these forest habitats,” critics of the plan wrote in a letter earlier this year to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland that was signed by representatives of dozens of animal welfare groups.

Researchers say barred owls moved westward by one of two routes: across the Great Plains, where trees planted by settlers gave them a foothold in new areas; or via Canada’s boreal forests, which have become more hospitable as temperatures rise because of climate change.”

Supporters of killing barred owls to save spotted owls include the American Bird Conservancy and other conservation groups.

“Our organizations stand in full support of barred owl removal as a necessary measure, together with increased habitat protections for all remaining mature and old-growth forests,” the groups said in comments on a draft proposal to remove barred owls that was released last year.

Northern spotted owls are federally protected as a threatened species. Federal officials determined in 2020 that their continued decline merited an upgrade to the more critical designation of “endangered.” But the Fish and Wildlife Service refused to do so at the time, saying other species took priority.

California spotted owls were proposed for federal protections last year. A decision is pending.

Under former President Donald Trump, government officials stripped habitat protections for spotted owls at the behest of the timber industry. Those were reinstated under President Joe Biden after the Interior Department said political appointees under Trump relied on faulty science to justify their weakening of protections.