Canada is down to its last spotted owl. Experts say poor habitat management and logging in B.C. are to blame, so they’re bringing the government to court.
The spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), named for the white spots that decorate its coat of brown feathers, lives in old-growth forests in B.C. and along the western American coast. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada classified the species as endangered in 1986; Canada’s population fell as low as one female in 2022, down from an estimated 500 pairs pre-European contact according to Jared Hobbs, an ecological consultant, in a 2019 expert report for the Wilderness Committee.
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Photo caption: One of the last Spotted Owls in British Columbia (Photo © Jared Hobbs)