Newsletter: Does it make sense to kill one owl to save another?

Good morning. I’m Mariel Garza, deputy editorial page editor, and it is Wednesday, April 3. Welcome to our inaugural Wednesday Opinion newsletter. Don’t worry: The Saturday newsletter featuring Paul Thornton isn’t going anywhere. You’ll now get our roundup of editorials, op-eds, columns and letters twice a week.

Today we take on the topic of owls because, well, who doesn’t love owls?

However, it seems as if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may not love all owls equally. The federal agency is proposing to shoot as many as half a million barred owls in Washington, Oregon and California. The reason? The raptor has been expanding its range from its traditional home in the eastern U.S. and competing with the spotted owl for dwindling habitat and resources, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And yes, this interspecies showdown is pretty much our fault from years of wanton logging and fossil-fuel burning.

Dozens of wildlife and animal advocacy organizations object to the plan, calling it reckless and saying it will surely result in cases of mistaken-identity kills.

The Times’ editorial board is not sure this is a great plan either. “Shooting any owl seems like a horrible idea, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should put this fraught plan on hold and look for options,” the board writes, adding that the “current predicament is an ecological horror show of things that went wrong in the past — huge amounts of old-growth trees cut down, the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires and the fact that few scientists, if any, realized that barred owls were moving into this area until it was too late to do something less drastic to stop them.”

Among the questions that the agency ought to ponder is this: What could go wrong when humans try to tinker with Mother Nature?

I can’t help but be reminded of the famous speech in “Jurassic Park” by actor Jeff Goldblum, who responds to an assertion by a scientist that the cloned dinosaurs can’t breed with the line: “Life finds a way.”

John Eastman tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. Of course he should be disbarred. The L.A. Times Editorial Board agreed with a State Bar judge’s ruling on disbarment: “Eastman’s conduct was egregious. As Trump was selling his election fraud fairy tale to the public, and after states’ election officials certified slates of electors, state and federal courts rejected suits to overturn the certifications and state legislatures rejected challenges, Eastman wrote two memos mapping out plans for Pence to ignore all of those actions on Jan. 6, 2021.”

Laken Riley’s killing does reflect a broader danger. But it isn’t ‘immigrant crime.’ “The hand-wringing over the connection between immigration and crime serves to obscure the much more legitimate and pernicious problem of violence against women,” write Charis E. Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine, and Sarah Shannon, an associate professor of sociology and the director of the Criminal Justice Studies Program at the University of Georgia.

The real AI nightmare: What if it serves humans too well? As if there weren’t already enough reasons to fear the rise of artificial intelligence, Brian Kateman, co-founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, outlines another: Because it might do what humans want it to do. “People with extreme biases might genuinely believe that it would be in the overall interest of humanity to kill anyone they deemed deviant. ‘Human-aligned’ AI is essentially just as good, evil, constructive or dangerous as the people designing it.”

Caitlin Clark is having a moment in women’s basketball. She shouldn’t be the only one. Columnist LZ Granderson wonders whether stars such as Clark can hold Americans’ interest in women’s basketball. “Her accomplishments and style of play have sparked a lot of interest in the sport, and unlike the March Madness stars of the past, she’s able to monetize that interest thanks to new rules. However, what’s going to happen to all of this momentum in women’s basketball after this once-in-a-generation player is off the court?”

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Jackie Calmes: Would you buy a $60 Bible from this man?
• LZ Granderson: Keep the Ronna McDaniels off the air. The Sean Spicers and Kellyanne Conways too.
• Jonah Goldberg: Voters wishing for an alternative to Trump and Biden got one. Unfortunately, it’s RFK Jr.

From the Op-Ed desk

• Heat pumps cut costs and pollution. So why isn’t it easier to install one in California?
• A deadly but curable disease is thriving in L.A.’s jails. That’s unacceptable
• Why would anyone want a paleo diet? We’re desperate for half-truths about human origins

From the Editorial Board

• Surprise — conservatives are keeping criminal justice reform alive
• At long last, women finally have a real shot at California’s top job

Letters to the Editor

• What RFK Jr.’s vice presidential pick says about his candidacy
• Killing the mountain lion that killed one man and injured another makes a tragedy worse
• And, finally, one last commentary on theme of the day. Burrowing owls deserve better from California