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From kymkemp.com

The industry lawsuit attempts to reinstate a critical habitat rollback issued in the final weeks of the first Trump administration that removed nearly 3.5 million acres from the 9.6 million acres that were protected for spotted owls in 2012.

“The forests these precious owls depend on also provide all of us with benefits like clean water, recreation, jobs and climate resiliency,” said Chelsea Stewart-Fusek, an endangered species attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Given Trump’s relentless assaults on our most cherished wildlife and public lands, it’s no surprise that corporate timber interests are resurrecting their attacks on northern spotted owls and the places they live in the name of short-term profit.”

The northern spotted owl first gained critical habitat protection in 1992, and those were adjusted in 2012 under the Obama administration. That rule was challenged in court by the timber industry, resulting in a settlement and a January 2021 designation excluding 3.5 million acres from critical habitat protection, nearly all on public lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.

Just 10 months later, the Biden administration rescinded the final designation and instead finalized a proposed rule that excluded 204,294 acres instead of 3.5 million acres. That Biden administration rule is being challenged by the timber industry’s current lawsuit, which is seeking to reinstate the expanded Trump administration revision.

“This latest attempt by the timber industry to remove protections for northern spotted owls is a cynical move that perpetuates not only the biodiversity and extinction crises, but also the pendulum swing regarding management of the owl’s habitat,” said Susan Jane Brown, attorney with Silvix Resources that represents some of the intervenors. “Rather than accept that the best available science requires the protection of millions of acres of spotted owl habitat to prevent the extinction and foster the recovery of the owl, industry’s lawsuit seeks to unnecessarily stoke controversy.”

“This is a tired story: the timber industry attempting to game the legal system in order to expand logging on our public lands,” said Tom Wheeler, executive director of the Environmental Protection Information Center. “Unfortunately for them, they have to come through us first. We have stood up for the northern spotted owls and science for decades and we aren’t backing down.”

“The lawyers for Big Timber are cherry-picking a courthouse across the country to attack old-growth spotted owl habitat in our neck of the woods,” said George Sexton, conservation director for Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center. “So we’re intervening to stand up for science and our forests.”

“With northern spotted owl population numbers in precipitous decline, the timber industry seeks to remove protections from a full third — 3.5 million acres — of the species’ critical habitat,” said David Woodsmall, attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. “This is a choice by the industry to drive the northern spotted owl to extinction for private profit, antithetical to the American values of conservation embodied in our laws. Western Environmental Law Center has fought for northern spotted owl recovery for decades, and we will use the power of the law to thwart any action that threatens the survival of this iconic species.”

“The logging industry wants to frame this lawsuit as just about the northern spotted owl, but what’s really at stake are our oldest, most resilient forests, forests that also provide cold, clean rivers for salmon, drinking water for communities and cherished places for countless people,” said John Persell, staff attorney for Oregon Wild. “Trump administration officials have made it clear they view these lands as little more than a source of profit. It’s up to all of us to stand up — for owls, salmon, clean water and carbon-storing forests — and say no.”

“Drastically reducing spotted owl habitat protections is not only antithetical to the best science we have for allowing the imperiled species to recover, but puts at risk all the other benefits that protecting these public lands provide to Oregonians, the very people that these lands are supposed to be managed for,” says Nick Cady with Cascadia Wildlands. “Aggressive logging increases wildfire risk, threatens drinking water sources, recreation opportunities, and much more all for the benefit of corporate timber barons.”

“With less than 3,000 spotted owls left and a population that is declining precipitously, this challenge is a slap in the face to conservation and the survival of this species. Any reduction in acreage of critical habitat could be this species’ death knell,” said Joe Liebezeit, statewide conservation director for Bird Alliance of Oregon.

“Everything needs a home to survive,” said Dave Werntz, science and conservation director at Conservation Northwest. “The northern spotted owl is no exception.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service protected the northern spotted owl, a bird found only in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act in 1990. In 2020, because of continued loss of the old forests they need to live and competition with the invasive barred owl, the Service found northern spotted owls should now be classified as endangered but has yet to provide stronger protections for the species.

From Patty Pickett

One cranky parent.

Two cutie babies!

One proud parent.

From Tamarack Wildlife Center

Spirited Eastern Screech Owl in Care

They say good things come in small packages, but in this case, this small package is full of spunkiness! This beautiful female red-phase Eastern Screech Owl was admitted from Erie back in March. Her road to recovery began when she was found entangled in fishing line. The entanglement caused feather damage and soft tissue injuries.

Treatment has included wound care, antibiotics, proper nutrition, and other supportive care. While the TWC team knows we are working to help her make her way home again, she's harder to convince! Being held for treatment is the worst part of her pretty easy day. The office staff who work above the exam room always know when this bird is receiving care as her annoyed screech can be heard a floor away! Once returned to her enclosure, she quickly relaxes again.

We expect her to make a full recovery and be ready for release soon, but we aren't sure if the world is ready for such a feisty little owl to return to the skies!

Did you know? Eastern Screech Owls only weigh between 4.5 and 8.5 ounces. That's less than most cell phones!

From Philippe De-Bruyne

Grand duc d'Amérique juvénile dans un magnifique décor sous la pluie.

Juvenile GHO in a beautiful setting in the rain.

Canada

From Gretchen Lally

Burrowing Owl mother and her two kids. One tries to get mom's attention by pulling her feather while the other suddenly sees me 😂

Teton Raptor Center Conservation Director Bryan Bedrosian holds the wing of a female barred owl he helped trap and tag in May 2025 near Jackson. (Courtesy Bryan Bedrosian)

From wyofile.com

Jackson researchers had been attempting to trap the male barred owl for more than a week, but the wary raptor was proving elusive. First, the owl swooped in for the bait mouse but glanced off the trap. The next time, he performed evasive flight maneuvers and escaped.

Then on Thursday, they set up a different trap in the Teton County forest habitat, this time with dho-gazza nets — fine mist nets designed to envelop raptors that unknowingly fly into them.

“And then, literally out of nowhere, the female came in and got caught,” said Bryan Bedrosian, conservation director at the Teton Raptor Center.

His team affixed the female with a GPS tracker. And like that, the bird became the first-known barred owl tagged in Wyoming. To Bedrosian’s knowledge, it’s also the first barred owl tagged in the Rocky Mountains.

The tagging comes two years after the pair became the first documented nesting barred owls in Wyoming, news that ruffled some scientific feathers. Though they are eastern birds, barred owls have expanded their range westward through the boreal forests of Canada and down into the Pacific Northwest, where they have outcompeted the imperiled northern spotted owls and created significant management conflicts.

A female barred owl was trapped and tagged with a transmitter in May 2025 as part of a project to understand the behavior and any conflicts with other Wyoming raptors. (Courtesy Bryan Bedrosian)

Wyoming raptor experts and others are wary about the impact the adaptable and aggressive barred owls could have on native species like great gray owls.

Those concerns prompted the Teton Raptor Center to initiate the tracking project. Bedrosian and his team aim to tag the female’s wily mate, along with any chicks that hatch from a nest the pair is currently tending. The goal is to gather data on the birds’ movement and behavior to see if and how it’s impacting other raptors.

“I’m not suggesting we do anything right now, but with any invasive species, it’s always easiest to do action at the beginning rather than being reactionary later,” Bedrosian said. Information gathering is step one. Potential competition

Barred owls are similar in size to great horned owls, but lack the distinctive “horns.” They are similar in profile to great gray owls, but are smaller and have black eyes in contrast to the great grays’ yellow ones.

In Washington, Oregon and California, their negative impacts on federally protected northern spotted owls have prompted wildlife authorities to classify them as invasive. Barred owls, which are territorial and eat a variety of prey, have edged out the more shy and specialized spotted owls.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has wrestled with the issue for years, even resorting to killing barred owls to help prevent further damage to the declining spotted owls. Those conflicts stirred up concern after the nesting pair was documented in Wyoming by nature photographer Tom Stanton.

A pair of barred owls preen and scratch each other in Teton County. Photographer Thomas Stanton discovered and documented their nest in spring 2023 — the first instance of breeding barred owls in Wyoming. (Thomas Stanton)

But Wyoming, unlike the PNW, has limited data.

The relationship between barred and spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest is “one of the most extensively studied cases of competitive exclusion in the history of wildlife ecology,” said Wyoming Fish and Game Nongame Bird Biologist Zach Wallace.

Meanwhile, Wallace said, “next to nothing is known about potential competition between barred owls and great gray owls.”

The Wyoming project, he said, is a good step toward filling in that information gap. That’s why his agency helped support the application for a grant that’s helping to fund it.

The National Park Service is also in the loop on the project and monitoring the situation, Bedrosian said. Data gathering

Barred owl sightings are not unheard of in Wyoming — the 2023 report is just the first documentation of a nesting pair. What scientists are trying to understand now is what the nesting birds do year round, and if others are present in the state and pose competition to other owls.

Teton Raptor Center is approaching the questions with a multi-pronged strategy. One prong involves analyzing years of historic acoustic data in the region.

The center also received grants from the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Jackson Hole Community Foundation and the Jackson Conservation District to help monitor the birds with GPS transmitters, satellite trackers and acoustic recorders.

Tom Stanton first glimpsed evidence that barred owls had successfully bred in Wyoming on June 28, 2023, when two fluffy chicks poked their heads from the tree cavity. Their mother watched from the cavity. (Thomas Stanton)

The team this spring placed recorders in roughly 200 spots in the Grand Teton National Park vicinity — those recorders yielded proof that at least one other individual, likely a bachelor male, has been in the region.

The final piece is the tracking. The hope is to tag each member of the nesting family, Bedrosian said. The owls produced three chicks in 2023, but their nest failed in 2024. They are nesting again currently, though it’s unknown how many eggs they have.

But if they get trackers on all of the owls, ecologists can better understand their territory, where they spend the winter months, where their offspring go and if there is competition with other species.

“One of the biggest concerns is the potential impact on other species that aren’t used to this generalist, very aggressive predator,” Bedrosian said.

“Where this bird has been located is a historic great gray owl territory that is now vacant,” he continued. “And so did the barred owls push out the great gray? We don’t know. But if you take evidence from the Pacific Northwest with the spotted owls, it doesn’t look good.”

There is also a prior article about the original discovery of nesting Barred Owls in the areas in 2023 here if you need more!

From Michelle Sidman Reinemann

I am Owlet.

Hear me stare.

(Cropped after using an 800mm lens. Still trying to work on creating bokeh with fixed F11)

From Chris Labbe

Hungry and soggy burrowing owls...gotta eat even if it is pouring-no Uber Eats for these owls!

From Sanjeev Phadtare

From Scottish Owl Centre

Our newly arrived Philippine Scops Owl, Otus megalotis, displayed his mega-lotis or 'large-ears' this afternoon. They are of course just feathers as the real ears are on the side of the head behind the eye, like ours.

From Lisa M Jones

Great Horned Owl

Alberta, Canada

One of the perks of photographing abandoned structures is the possibility of finding creatures taking shelter within their walls. The Great Horned Owl commonly dwells in derelict buildings, and of course, I am always happy to discover one! It sure beats encountering pigeons who scare the doo-doo out of me when they unexpectedly fly out of windows.

From Izzy Edwards

Western Screech Owl on the prowl with a graffiti backdrop.