Northern spotted owls are listed as threatened under the state and federal Endangered Species Act because of their low population. Earlier this month, an owl was discovered at Mt. Tabor Park in Portland.
OPB’s Paul Marshall spoke with Quinn Read, the director of conservation at Portland Audubon, about the owl’s rare sighting.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Paul Marshall: Can you explain why this northern spotted owl sighting in Oregon is really rare?
Quinn Read: Northern spotted owls are a threatened species so they are inherently rare, but it’s even more rare to see them outside of their old-growth forest range, particularly in the city. For one to be spotted in Mt. Tabor is quite unusual.
Marshall: Once the bird was found, there was a chance to examine it. What did the findings tell us? Did we learn anything?
Read: This poor bird was discovered injured, by folks visiting Mt. Tabor Park. They reported it directly to Portland Parks & Recreation, which then called us. So we had a member of our education team who immediately recognized that this was a northern spotted owl and a very rare find and went to retrieve the bird from the park.
She found the owl and the poor thing was soaked from rain. Their eyes were closed and it was lying on the trail. She brought it back immediately to our care center. Our rehabilitators did a full exam. They confirmed he was wet, he did have some blood on his feet and beak and his feathers.
He couldn’t stand or keep himself upright. So he was not in good shape. Our care center provided stabilizing care but unfortunately, despite their best efforts, this owl did not make it through the night.
So what’s happened now is that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken the body for further analysis and is hoping to find the cause of death.
This photo provided by Portland Audubon shows the northern spotted owl discovered at Mt. Tabor Park in Portland, Ore., on Nov. 6, 2023.
Quinn Read/Portland Audubon Society
Marshall: There’s a possibility that this bird went off in the wrong direction. Can we talk about the likelihood of how that could even happen?
Read: Northern spotted owls are dependent on these old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. So it’s very rare for them to be found in the city, of all places. They’re just seldom seen outside of their range. They’re considered resident birds. They tend to stay pretty close to home. So, that piece of it in itself is pretty unusual. Some of the guesses — and I do have to emphasize that these are just guesses — that this was a juvenile bird who maybe just dispersed in the wrong direction.
We may not ever know exactly how this bird ended up at Mt. Tabor, but that seems like one of the most plausible explanations given the time of year.
Marshall: We’ve talked about the old-growth forest and how the spotted owls really rely on the old-growth forest for survival. How is their habitat in Oregon?
Read: It was the listing of the northern spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act that helped lead to the first really significant protections of old-growth under the Northwest Forest Plan in 1994. So what’s happening now is that the U.S. Forest Service is looking at updating or amending the Northwest Forest Plan.
Unfortunately, this is a species whose population has continued to decline pretty steadily at a fairly alarming rate, really over the last two decades. This is very much a species of concern, one that remains imperiled throughout the Pacific Northwest.