In January, Joe Foy was scrolling through a B.C. government mapping platform, looking at habitat for the endangered spotted owl, when he noticed something different. “Lo and behold — four cutblocks,” he said. 

The pending logging cutblocks were near the Fraser Canyon in southwest B.C., in a “mystery valley” largely unknown to Foy, the protected areas campaigner for the non-profit group Wilderness Committee. “I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach,” he recalled. “It was a bit of a despairing moment.”

Foy later bushwhacked into the heart of the valley with camping gear, a drone and a GoPro camera. He found a beautiful, intact old-growth Douglas fir and red cedar forest — a rarity in the heavily logged Fraser Canyon region. 

The valley, called Teapot, contains habitat suitable for the northern spotted owl, a species in critical danger of becoming extinct in Canada following decades of industrial logging in its mature forest habitat. 

Earlier this year, only one spotted owl remained in Canada’s wild. About 30 spotted owls, including owls captured from the wild, live in aviaries at an experimental breeding centre in Langley that is funded by the B.C. government.

Further sleuthing by the Wilderness Committee revealed 448 additional logging cutblocks — overlapping fully or partially with spotted owl habitat — were recently approved by the B.C. government or are pending approval.

Some cutblocks, including two in the Teapot Valley, overlap with areas the B.C. government has identified as a priority for old-growth logging deferrals. The deferrals are areas set aside from logging on a temporary basis, pending potential protective measures in the future.

At least five cutblocks sit close to areas the provincial government has prioritized for the release of captive-bred spotted owls — an event promised for more than a decade and realized for the first time in August when three owls born at the breeding centre were set free in the Fraser Canyon region, with tracking devices to monitor their whereabouts.  

Foy called the discovery of the logging plans “part of the continuing shock and horror at the clashing of all these different government policies.” 

“I don’t accept it,” he told The Narwhal. “This is wrong.”

Ottawa asked to step in to protect spotted owls

With logging maps in hand, the Wilderness Committee turned to the environmental law charity Ecojustice for help. On Oct. 25, Ecojustice, acting on behalf of Wilderness Committee, petitioned federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Canada Steven Guilbeault, demanding an emergency order be issued under Canada’s Species at Risk Act to save spotted owls.

The Act allows the federal government to step in if it believes there is an imminent threat to the survival and recovery of an endangered species. An emergency order gives Ottawa the power to make decisions that normally fall to provincial governments — such as whether to allow logging in Teapot Valley, identified as spotted owl habitat on B.C. government maps.

Ecojustice lawyer Andhra Azevedo said Guilbeault must take immediate action to protect spotted owl habitat and allow the species a chance at recovery. “What we’ve seen since 2006 is just this continued decline of spotted owl populations — down to what was one, and now has luckily at least become four. But still an incredibly low number,” she said in an interview.

“B.C.’s promises have just not held up. They haven’t protected enough habitat for owls, and they’re continuing to not protect habitat for owls.”

The B.C. government says it has set aside enough territory to support a self-sustaining population of 125 spotted owl breeding pairs in the future. Wilderness Committee disagrees, pointing to the owl’s demise as proof that the territory is far from sufficient. 

Northern spotted owls are a medium-sized raptor with chocolate-brown eyes and namesake white spots. They evolved with the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest and northern California and can’t exist in the wild without large trees. 

The owls nest in “stovepipes” quilted with fir needles, where wind has knocked off the crown of an old tree, or in cavities formed by broken branches. Old trees provide shelter and camouflage when the owl is not in the nest. Spotted owls prey largely on flying squirrels and bushy-tailed woodrats — other denizens of old-growth forests — although they will also eat birds, mice, voles, frogs and spiders. 

The owls are known as an indicator species: if spotted owl populations are healthy, the ecosystem is too, and can support a diversity of wildlife. And if they’re not, it indicates that other species are likely in decline as well.

Biologists estimate that 1,000 spotted owls nested in B.C. over a century ago, not including juveniles and chicks. By the early 1990s, following industrial logging and settlement, only about 100 spotted owls remained in the province, the only place in the country where they are found. 

As numbers continued to drop, the owl was listed as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, setting off a long chain of events that highlights both the promise and the failure of the Act. 

“The B.C. government is guilty of approving logging in spotted owl habitat,” Foy said. “But Canada has also been guilty of foot-dragging and hand-wringing while this species is being logged to death.” 

Species listed under the Species at Risk Act are the subject of a recovery plan that includes mapping and action to protect critical habitat — the habitat necessary for the survival or recovery of a species. But that didn’t happen for the spotted owl, despite a 2007 deadline. Fifteen years later, the process remains stalled. 

“The difficulty with our species at risk protections is that often it happens in consultation between the federal and provincial governments,” Azevedo said. “And so, when the provincial government doesn’t want to take action, because it gets in the way of logging, they can slow down the process a lot. And that’s what we understand is happening right now — and has been happening for the last 15 or so years.”

Wilderness Committee: ‘we say it’s an emergency’

B.C. lacks stand-alone legislation to protect biodiversity or species at risk of extinction. In 2017, the B.C. NDP campaigned on a promise to enact endangered species legislation but reneged on its pledge once elected to office. That leaves Ecojustice with only one option — to use provisions in the Species at Risk Act to protect the spotted owl and its habitat. 

This is not the first time Ecojustice has demanded a federal emergency order to protect spotted owls. A petition was submitted in 2006 by Ecojustice’s predecessor, on behalf of the Wilderness Committee.

Following reassurances from the B.C. government that it was taking steps to protect the owls and their habitat — including setting up a captive breeding program and identifying critical habitat — the request for an emergency order was not granted.

“B.C. made a series of promises that essentially were to protect more habitat and to raise captive bred spotted owls,” Foy said. “That headed off the emergency order. … Now it’s 2022. B.C. never did set aside the critical habitat needed to make spotted owls recover and to make themselves sustaining. And so, we’re back. Oh, and there’s one wild spotted owl left and three have just been released from the captive program. But we’re back. And we say it’s an emergency.” 

In 2020, provincial government biologists found a breeding pair of spotted owls in a provincial wildlife management area, bisected by a logging road, in Spuzzum Valley. Over two years, the owl pair hatched three chicks, which were captured by government biologists and taken to the breeding centre. 

Plans for new old-growth logging beside the Spuzzum Wildlife Management Area, coupled with the discovery of Canada’s last breeding pair of spotted owls, prompted a second petition to the federal government two years ago. Submitted by Ecojustice, on behalf of the Wilderness Committee, the petition again asked the federal government for an emergency order to protect spotted owls and their habitat. 

In response, early last year, B.C. and Ottawa struck a deal to defer logging in Spuzzum Valley and the nearby Utzlius Valley as the first step in a bilateral nature agreement aimed at strengthening conservation efforts in B.C. 

For B.C.’s NDP government, whose environmental policies are under scrutiny following a controversial and divisive party leadership acclamation, the timing of the latest petition to Guilbeault could not be worse. 

The petition was filed just four days after the government announced the release of the three captive bred owls in collaboration with Spuzzum First Nation, calling it a “monumental step forward” for the conservation of endangered species in B.C. 

“We are doing everything we can to help spotted owls recover in B.C., including running the world’s only spotted owl breeding and release program for this critically endangered species,” Minister of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship Josie Osborne said in a news release that included a link to a video about the release.

“During my visit to the Langley breeding facility in July, I was incredibly impressed by the deep commitment of everyone involved in helping these rare and beautiful birds achieve a self-sustaining population,” the minister said.

The provincial government described the release as a “carefully planned, collaborative, government-to-government process that incorporated Indigenous Knowledge and guidance from Spuzzum Nation Chief James Hobart.” What wasn’t mentioned in the news release is that Spuzzum First Nation is calling for a moratorium on old-growth logging in its territory to protect spotted owls and old-growth cedar trees. 

The three owls were moved from the breeding centre to aviaries in a forest in the Fraser Canyon region and fed for several days to help them adapt to their new environment. “Eventually, the doors were opened so the owls could leave the cages and hunt on their own,” the news release said. “The development of feeding skills was a precondition of the release, with the owls needing to demonstrate their ability to capture live prey and maintain a stable body weight.”

Hobart said he is proud of his nation’s stewardship role in the return of owls to the wild and looks forward to the sound of spotted owls “calling in their own woods and realizing they have found their way home.” The owls are powerful beings, recognized as “messengers to our spirit world and of our physical world,” Hobart said in a statement. “They are species that are indicative of the health of an environment.”

In an emailed statement, the B.C. Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship said it is aware of the Ecojustice petition, reiterating that the government is doing everything possible to help spotted owls recover. 

The province understands the importance of protecting critical spotted owl habitat from activities that could disrupt the birds’ recovery, the ministry said, adding that decisions are based on the best available science and Indigenous Knowledge to support the birds’ recovery to a self-sustaining population in B.C. 

Trudeau speaks about need to halt biodiversity loss 

The timing of the emergency order petition also risks embarrassing the federal government globally, as Canada is hosting the 15th United Nations Biodiversity Conference in Montreal in December. The conference, known as COP15, will bring together thousands of delegates from around the world to hash out a new agreement to reverse global biodiversity loss. 

“I think what this petition highlights — and what the long history of spotted owls highlights — is the promise of the Species at Risk Act and the fact that it was supposed to be part of Canada implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is what this conference is about,” Azevedo said. 

The conference comes as scientists around the world warn we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s four-billion-year history. As many as half of all species on the planet may be headed toward extinction in the next 30 years, largely due to habitat destruction.

At a September lead-up event to COP15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about the shared global fight to halt biodiversity loss before it goes any further. 

“No one here needs to be reminded that once a species is lost, it’s lost forever,” Trudeau said. “Once we’ve done too much harm for too long to old-growth forests or oceans, they may be beyond repair. I don’t say this to make us lose hope. I say this to remind us of what’s at stake. And to remind us that we must all do our part, right now, to make a difference.”

Azevedo said the level of urgency required to address the biodiversity crisis is not reflected in either federal or provincial responses to the spotted owl’s impending Canadian extinction. In the United States, following a prolonged legal battle, the government designated almost four million hectares of critical habitat for the northern spotted owl. Today, although the survival of the species is far from secure, about 2,000 spotted owl pairs nest in Washington, Oregon and northern California. 

“I think Canada has a fair bit to answer for its response to species at risk, and to really demonstrate that there is a need for newer biodiversity legislation in Canada that protects ecosystems and biodiversity as a whole — and hopefully get ahead of situations before we get to the point where we’re talking about the number of owls that we can count on one hand.”

Ecojustice has demanded the federal government respond to the petition by Nov. 24.

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B.C. and Ottawa have struck a deal to defer logging in two Fraser Canyon watersheds that provide habitat for the last three spotted owls left in Canada’s wild — the first step in a bilateral nature agreement announced by the two governments on Thursday.

The nature agreement, aimed at strengthening conservation efforts in B.C., features pilot projects that will deploy “new approaches to protecting species at risk and enhancing biodiversity,” starting with immediate action to support efforts to recover the spotted owl, a chocolate brown raptor with distinctive white flecks. 

That action includes logging deferrals for at least one year in the old-growth Spuzzum and Utzlius watersheds near Hope, in the territory of Spô’zêm First Nation, which last year asked the province to cease all logging activities in its territory to give the highly endangered owls a chance at survival.

“Spô’zêm First Nation stands proud as we have further shown that, with the right intentions, collaboration and productive dialogue great things are achievable,” Spô’zêm Nation Chief James Hobart said in a statement.

“This monumental step forward in assertion of our nation’s own title and rights could only have been achieved with government representatives who smashed through the status quo, tore down walls of mistrust, rolled up their sleeves and in the end were true to their word….” 

Chief Hobart said the logging deferrals also reflect the provincial government’s commitment to 2019 legislation to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The nature agreement will be developed over the next year, with the federal government providing an initial $2 million in matched funds for various, and as yet unnamed, conservation actions in B.C. 

The two governments “will explore new ways to protect and restore habitat and strengthen ecosystem resilience to climate change,” according to a news release that also promised a long overdue updated Canadian recovery strategy for the northern spotted owl, a species found only in B.C., Washington, Oregon and northern California.

“This is something to celebrate,” Wilderness Committee protected areas campaigner Joe Foy told The Narwhal. “These are all really good, hopeful signs.” 

The announcement follows a petition to federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson from the environmental law charity Ecojustice, acting on behalf of Wilderness Committee. 

Ecojustice demanded that Wilkinson issue an emergency order under Canada’s Species at Risk Act to halt impending logging in the Spuzzum Valley, where three logging cutblocks had been auctioned off by the provincial government agency BC Timber Sales. Another five cutblocks were slated for impending auction. 

One cutblock was logged prior to the petition, and BC Timber Sales built roads into two more cutblocks to facilitate harvesting. 

Joe Foy from the Wilderness Committee stands beside felled old-growth trees in the Spuzzum Valley, where B.C. government biologists discovered Canada’s last breeding pair of spotted owls in 2019. Wilderness Committee only found out about the owls in 2020. Photo: Wilderness Committee

Under the Species at Risk Act, Wilkinson can ask the federal cabinet to issue an emergency order on the grounds that spotted owls face imminent threats to their survival and recovery. An emergency order would allow Ottawa to make decisions to protect spotted owls and their habitat that are normally within the jurisdiction of the B.C. government, such as whether or not to allow logging in the Spuzzum Valley.

“I’m super relieved that we have a reprieve in the Spuzzum Valley and Utzlius Valley,” Foy said. “But we’re absolutely not out of the woods yet.” 

Following decades of industrial logging in the spotted owl’s old-growth habitat, the raptor was presumed extinct in Canada’s wild until government biologists found a breeding pair with chicks in the Spuzzum Valley in 2019. Wilderness Committee only learned of the discovery last year, after Foy travelled to the valley to document the impact of logging. 

Read more: Canada’s last breeding pair of endangered spotted owls found in valley slated for imminent logging

Recovery measures for the spotted owl, which nests only in old-growth forests, preying on flying squirrels and packrats, will include a strategy for the reintroduction of captive spotted owls to the wild, according to the news release. 

For more than 10 years, the B.C. government has funded a breeding centre for the owls in the Lower Mainland city of Langley, where eggs are hatched in incubators in a laboratory while a soundtrack of forest sounds plays in the background. 

Dante, a spotted owl chick hatched in a laboratory incubator at a B.C. government-funded spotted owl breeding centre. Dante is three to five days old in the photo. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Centre

Two chicks hatched by the wild spotted owl pair were captured by government biologists and taken to the breeding centre, where 25 owls are housed in outdoor aviaries. Government biologists also planned to capture the third wild chick to raise it at the centre, which seeks to augment genetic diversity in the captive owl population. No captive birds have been reintroduced to the wild, despite repeated assurances from the B.C. government that it intends to release them.

Read more: Keepers of the spotted owl

According to a joint federal and provincial news release, the three spotted owls known to remain in the wild are nesting within wildlife habitat areas the B.C. government has designated for the species.

The news release also said there are more than 281,000 hectares of legally protected spotted owl habitat in the province of British Columbia, enough to support a population of 125 breeding pairs. 

“They are making the argument that enough habitat has already been protected,” Foy said. “Wilderness Committee and Ecojustice say that obviously it hasn’t. It’s why species in southwestern B.C. that rely on old-growth forests are in such rough shape. Too much has been cut.”

 “We need to stop cutting old-growth forests. Period. And then look at how we can repair the mess that’s been made.”

Logging in spotted owl habitat in the Spuzzum Valley in 2019. Photo: Joe Foy / Wilderness Committee

The B.C. government allows logging in 108,000 hectares designated as wildlife habitat areas for the spotted owl, as long as those areas are managed to ensure two-thirds of the land base retains suitable habitat.

It also permits timber harvesting in 75 per cent of the 51,000 hectares it has designated as “managed future habitat areas” for the owl, even though it could take hundreds of years for suitable habitat to re-grow. 

It’s not clear how many hectares of current or future habitat areas for the spotted owl are included in the Spuzzum and Utzlius watershed logging deferrals.

Ecojustice lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith said the nature agreement is “a step in the right direction” to ensure the spotted owl has a chance of survival and recovery.  

But he said much more must be done to address the urgent threat to B.C.’s endangered species and the continuing loss of their habitats, noting that other species face extinction in the absence of provincial endangered species legislation. 

B.C., with more biodiversity than any other province, has more than 1,300 species at risk of extinction. Unlike six other provinces, B.C. does not have legislation to protect endangered species.

The BC NDP promised to enact endangered species legislation during the 2017 provincial election campaign — a pledge upheld in Premier John Horgan’s first mandate letter for Environment Minister George Heyman. But, once elected, the party reneged on its commitment. Heyman’s new mandate letter does not mention endangered species legislation. 

The B.C. government’s about-face on legislation comes as scientists around the world warn we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s four-billion-year history. As many as half of all species may be headed toward extinction in the next 30 years, with habitat destruction a leading cause of their demise.

The spotted owl has since 2003 been listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act, a designation that requires Ottawa to take action to recover the population. 

A 2006 federal recovery strategy for the spotted owl committed to producing an action plan within a year to identify the raptor’s critical habitat and activities likely to destroy it. 

But B.C., which is responsible for developing the habitat action plan, hasn’t produced one. 

Foy said the next year will involve hard work and will be fraught with dangers for the spotted owl in B.C. 

“We’re down to three adults of this species,” he said. “Other species that live in the old-growth forest of southwestern B.C.  haven’t had nearly the research that spotted owls have had. There are a number of species that are in dire, dire shape because of logging of old-growth forests. What happens next is really important.”

“The devil will be in the details.”

Oregon, a northern spotted owl, in his aviary at the Langley captive breeding facility. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Wilkinson said the nature agreement will build on collaborative measures already in place, including the Pathway to Canada Target 1 — a collaborative federal, provincial, territorial, Indigenous and local government forum which seeks to protect and conserve more of Canada’s nature — and the 2018 Pan-Canadian Approach to Transforming Species at Risk Conservation in Canada, which focuses on joint efforts to conserve multiple species and ecosystems rather than focusing on one species at a time. 

“Now is the time for concrete action to protect natural ecosystems and halt biodiversity loss,” Wilkinson said in the statement. “We are working towards protecting 25 per cent of Canada’s lands and oceans by 2025 and supporting Indigenous leadership in conservation to get there.” 

The nature agreement announcement follows a fall election campaign promise by the BC NDP to implement all 14 recommendations made by a strategic old-growth review panel, which called for a paradigm shift in the way the province manages old-growth and said all recommendations should be implemented within three years. 

Among other findings, the panel said old forests are not a renewable resource and should be managed for ecosystem health. 

Foresters Al Gorley and Garry Merkel, who headed the panel, recommended the B.C. government immediately defer development in old forests “where ecosystems are at very high and near-term risk of irreversible biodiversity loss.”

Read more: British Columbia’s looming extinction crisis

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Environmental law charity Ecojustice is petitioning the federal government to step in and halt logging in B.C.’s Spuzzum Valley, where a spotted owl pair with chicks has been found after the species was presumed extinct in Canada. 

Ecojustice, which submitted the petition on Wednesday calling for an emergency order to be issued under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, said it only recently learned of the existence of the breeding pair, discovered in 2019 by B.C. government biologists. 

The northern spotted owl pair hatched one chick last year, and two chicks this year, according to Ecojustice, which is acting on behalf of the Vancouver-based conservation group Wilderness Committee.

Two chicks — one each year — were removed from the nest and taken to a government-funded breeding facility for endangered spotted owls in Langley, Wilderness Committee protected areas campaigner Joe Foy told The Narwhal. Government biologists planned to remove the third chick by this fall, Foy said.

“It’s extremely alarming to see rare old-growth forests being logged in Spuzzum Valley, home to the last remaining breeding pair of spotted owls in Canada,” he said. 

“As we speak, there’s a block of old growth forest that has been felled. There’s a crew in the block and they are yarding the trees out and loading them onto logging trucks.” 

Two more Spuzzum Valley cut blocks, auctioned off by the government agency BC Timber Sales, are slated for logging in the near future, said Foy, who has been documenting road-building and clear-cutting in endangered spotted owl habitat in the Fraser Canyon, including in the Spuzzum Valley.

Joe Foy from the Wilderness Committee stands near recently felled trees in the Spuzzum Valley. Photo: Wilderness Committee

Spuzzum First Nation Chief James Hobart said the provincial government should have told the nation about the breeding pair when the active nest was first discovered. 

“It’s either a really gross oversight or it’s intentional,” he said in an interview. 

“The powers that be knew about it … And now something really needs to be done. Not only to stop the logging immediately and completely [but] there has to be some accountability for the government to be taking chicks out of a wilderness nest.” 

“This information should have come out a long time ago. They’ve been aware of it and they’ve allowed the logging to go on.” 

Ecojustice is demanding that federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson take immediate steps towards implementing emergency order protections for spotted owls and their habitat. 

Under the Species at Risk Act, Wilkinson can ask cabinet to issue the emergency order on the grounds that the species faces imminent threats to its survival and recovery. That would allow Ottawa to make decisions normally within the jurisdiction of the B.C. government, including whether or not to allow logging in the Spuzzum Valley.

“Decades of provincial mismanagement have left spotted owls without legal protection and decimated the old-growth forests where they once lived,” Ecojustice lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith said. 

“Without federal emergency action, there is a high likelihood that this species will disappear from the wild in the near future.” 

Spotted owls hatched in B.C. laboratory but not released into wild

Spotted owls have all but vanished from B.C., the only place they were found in Canada. Biologists estimate there were once 1,000 spotted owls in southwestern B.C.’s old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar.

Today, following the destruction and fragmentation of much of their habitat, only three spotted owls are known to exist in the province’s wild. Until the breeding pair was discovered in the Spuzzum Valley, the three were thought to be individuals with no offspring. 

“The northern spotted owl is back from the dead in Canada — where once there was a flat line there is now a shimmer of hope,” Foy said. “What Canada does next in the way of protecting habitat may just tip the balance in favour of life.”

In the mid-2000s, following a push from the federal government to take action to protect spotted owls, the B.C. government funded the establishment of an experimental breeding program in Langley, which The Narwhal visited in 2018. 

There, spotted owl eggs are incubated in a laboratory called Artificial Inc. and hatch while a playlist of spotted owl calls and forest bird song rolls in the background. The hatchlings are fed morsels of rat muscles offered on tweezers and, once deemed healthy, they are placed in a nest with their parents or foster parents.

Jasmine McCulligh holds a roboticized spotted owl egg at the Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program facility in Langley, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Three chicks were born this year in the lab, while a record five chicks hatched last year. The centre houses 25 adult owls, including seven breeding pairs, in outdoor aviaries. 

The B.C. government has repeatedly said captive-bred spotted owls will be re-introduced to the wild. But not a single captive-bred owl has been released since the breeding program began more than a decade ago.

Pepper-Smith said the Spuzzum Valley spotted owl pair represents the only proven option for maintaining the wild population, given there is no evidence that owls raised at the breeding facility can be successfully introduced to the wild.

“This is the last known breeding pair — and I think it’s hard to over emphasize how important it is that they continue to survive and breed,” Pepper-Smith said in an interview.

“This emergency order would get the federal government involved to say: ‘Enough is enough. You need to prohibit any further logging within this watershed, to help ensure this pair continues to live.’ ”

Ecojustice has given the federal government until the end of November to respond.

A baby spotted owl, born at the Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Program in the spring of 2020. A presser from the program announced, “Chick J was born after 32 days of artificial incubation, 80 hours of hatching, followed by nearly two weeks of hand-rearing before being returned to its parents … on May 3.” Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Recovery Program

‘We will do whatever we can to protect them’

Chief Hobart said his nation will hold a ceremony to welcome home the spotted owls, which are sacred and appear in myths passed down from one generation to another. “They were the owls that were spoken of,” he said. “It’s really a struggle for us to know that this is happening out there.”

“To know that one of our owls that is part of our heritage, part of our stories, is still amongst us, it’s really going to be a very exciting time.” 

He said the nation will defend the owls, “taking it on the ground if we have to.” 

“Now that we know they’re there, we will do whatever we can to protect them.” 

In June, The Narwhal reported that the B.C. forests ministry issued more than 300 logging approvals — totalling almost 2,000 hectares — in the spotted owl’s range between October 2018 and May 2020.

Foy said the Spuzzum Valley cutblocks were approved before October 2018. 

He said there is a designated wildlife habitat area in the lower portion of the Spuzzum Valley, some of it old-growth, that has been set aside for spotted owls. But “spotted owl habitat doesn’t work like islands,” Foy pointed out.

“Spotted owl habitat, in times past, allowed owls to fledge and move over the landscape. BC Timber Sales is literally cutting down any possibility of that, of any connecting forest. They are literally pulling apart the landscape in a way that makes it very difficult for owls to survive without human intervention.”

Read more: Feds asked to step in to save endangered spotted owls from Canadian extinction

Emergency order should protect remaining habitat: Ecojustice

The spotted owl was listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) in 2003, requiring Ottawa to take action to recover populations.

A 2006 federal recovery strategy for the spotted owl committed to producing an action plan within a year to identify the raptor’s critical habitat and activities likely to destroy it. 

But B.C., which is responsible for developing the habitat action plan, still hasn’t produced it. 

“Since that time, successive B.C. governments have talked the talk but have refused to walk the walk,” Pepper-Smith said. 

In 2006, with fewer than two dozen spotted owls remaining in the wild, Environment Canada officials recommended to then-federal Environment Minister Rona Ambrose that a SARA emergency order be issued. 

In response, the B.C. government committed to protecting all occupied spotted owl sites, to enhance the population, and to institute broader habitat identification and protection. 

Pepper-Smith said the commitments satisfied Ambrose that there was no longer an imminent threat to the species’ survival and recovery. 

But many of B.C.’s commitments have not been fulfilled, Pepper-Smith said. 

“Owls in cages in the captive breeding program is not ‘survival’ or ‘recovery’ as contemplated by SARA,” Ecojustice said in the letter to Wilkinson that accompanied the petition.  

An emergency order should, at a minimum, protect the habitat required to ensure the survival of the last remaining breeding pair of spotted owls in Canada, the letter said. 

Chief Hobart said instead of approving logging in spotted owl habitat the B.C. government should honour the owls on the provincial stage and show it is “sticking up for these endangered species: ‘We’re taking it seriously, we’re stopping all logging. We’re notifying people of the boundaries’ … all of those things that matter to the ecosystem of these owls.” 

In May 2019, Ecojustice sent a letter on behalf of Wilderness Committee to then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, demanding that her ministry publish the long-awaited action plan to identify spotted owl critical habitat — a plan by then 12 years overdue.

In response, McKenna committed to prioritize completion of “an updated, SARA-compliant recovery document for the spotted owl in the shortest feasible timeframe.”

Ongoing logging in the Spuzzum Valley. According to Joe Foy of the Wilderness Committee, B.C. is permitting logging that fragments old-growth forest critical to spotted owl habitat. “They are literally pulling apart the landscape in a way that makes it very difficult for owls to survive without human intervention,” Foy told The Narwhal. Photo: Wilderness Committee

‘About more than the fate of two singular birds

Pepper-Smith said the document has stalled, ostensibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to consult with First Nations. A draft updated recovery strategy is now set to be completed in the summer of 2021.

But that could be too late for the breeding spotted owl pair, according to Ecojustice and Wilderness Committee.

“It’s just inevitable that this particular breeding pair goes the way that the rest of the population has gone, and is either directly or indirectly impacted from continued logging activity, and eventually dies,” Pepper-Smith said. “And then we’re left with no more owls in the wild.” 

The B.C. government is not responding to media questions during the election period, unless they pertain to public health and safety information or statutory requirements.

” … as the province with the largest number of different species, B.C. has much to lose.”

Unlike six other provinces, B.C. does not have stand-alone legislation to protect spotted owls and other endangered species. The NDP government promised to enact such legislation during the 2017 election campaign — a pledge upheld in Premier John Horgan’s mandate letter for Environment Minister George Heyman.

But the party later reneged on its commitment. 

Endangered species legislation is not mentioned in the 2020 NDP election platform, released on Oct. 6. Instead, the party vaguely says if re-elected it will “work with neighbouring jurisdictions to cooperatively develop and invest in new strategies aimed at better protecting our shared wildlife and habitat corridors.”

The about-face on endangered species legislation comes as scientists around the world warn we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction event in the planet’s four-billion-year history. Scientists estimate as many as half of all species may be headed toward extinction in the next 30 years, largely due to habitat destruction.

“This letter is about more than the fate of two singular birds,” Pepper-Smith said. “Globally, plants and animals are disappearing at an alarming rate — and as the province with the largest number of different species, B.C. has much to lose.”

“When provinces fail, the law requires the federal government to step up. Inaction — especially in a biodiversity crisis — is not an option. If they neglect to do so, we stand to suffer an incalculable loss.”

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With only a handful of spotted owls left in B.C.’s wild, a national conservation group is demanding that federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna step in and produce a long-overdue habitat action plan to help save the iconic species from Canadian extinction.

In a letter sent to McKenna on Wednesday, the environmental law charity Ecojustice, acting for the Wilderness Committee, called on the minister to take action following decades of “mismanagement” by the B.C. government, which has prioritized logging in the owl’s habitat over legally required protections, according to an expert report.

“We’re saying ‘enough is enough,’” Ecojustice lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith told The Narwhal. “This is about ensuring another step towards adequate protection for the owl.”

The demand letter comes as biologists at an experimental Lower Mainland breeding facility for the northern spotted owl tend three newly hatched chicks, in the hopes of adding to a captive population they hope will one day be robust enough to allow for the release of individuals into the wild. The successes and challenges faced by the breeding centre, the only one of its kind in the world, were documented last year in a feature published by The Narwhal.

The letter to McKenna follows the release of an ominous UN report on biodiversity that found nearly one million plant and animal species around the world face extinction due to human activity.

The report — compiled over three years by 145 expert authors from more than 50 countries — concluded that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history, with grave impacts for people everywhere.

Spotted owls are now functionally extinct in Canada’s wild, where an estimated 1,000 of the raptors once lived in southwestern B.C.’s old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar. For 12 years, the B.C. government has steadfastly avoided identification of the owl’s critical habitat, required by the recovery strategy. Photo: Jared Hobbs

“The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever,” said Sir Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that put together the report.

“We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

Among other notable findings, the report concluded that the current rate of extinction is double to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. That rate is accelerating, with many at-risk species facing extinction within decades.

Scientists say we are in the midst of the planet’s Sixth Great Extinction. Close to 700 vertebrate species have already been driven to extinction by human actions since the 16th century, according to the UN report, released on Monday.

The primary threat to the spotted owl is the loss and fragmentation of its habitat —  mainly comprised of old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar — in southwestern B.C., the only place it is found in Canada.

Commercial logging, regulated and approved by the B.C. government, is the principal cause of habitat destruction and fragmentation for the raptor, which feeds on flying squirrels. Spotted owl populations in the province have plummeted from an estimated 500 pairs historically to only a few individuals in the wild at last count.

“The unfortunate reality is their old-growth habitat has overlapped with the epicentre of human settlement and old-growth harvesting throughout B.C.,” said Pepper-Smith. “As the forests have gone so have the owls.”

The spotted owl has been listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) since 2003, requiring Ottawa to take action.  

A 2006 federal recovery strategy for the spotted owl committed to producing an action plan within a year that would fully identify the raptor’s critical habitat and activities likely to cause destruction to it.

But documents made public through a subsequent court case reveal that the B.C. government told the federal government it would produce that habitat action plan, Pepper-Smith said.

“And here we are 12 years later. We know now that was never completed. There was no critical habitat identified for the owl. And, in fact, the B.C. government has maintained much the same approach as they did in the 1990s and throughout the 2000s — piecemeal, inadequate protection throughout the spotted owl’s range.”

Pepper-Smith said the demand letter had not been sent earlier because both organizations have been working on other pressing issues.  

“The unfortunate reality is that we both, as non-governmental organizations, have limited resources.”

In an emailed statement, the federal environment ministry pointed out that the spotted owl is a provincially managed species and said the B.C. government committed in 2006 to developing and implementing a spotted owl recovery plan.

“The government of Canada will work with the government of B.C. to determine the next steps in the protection and recovery of the spotted owl based on the best available information,” the ministry said.

B.C. has the greatest number of species at risk of extinction in all of Canada, yet is one of the few provinces without a stand-alone law to protect endangered species.

The provincial government promised to introduce a law to protect B.C.’s 1,807 species at-risk, and instructions to enact endangered species legislation were included in Premier John Horgan’s

2017 mandate letter to B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman.

But following a recent backlash about draft agreements to protect B.C.’s imperilled southern mountain caribou herds — based in part on fears that habitat protection will lead to job losses, particularly in the forest industry — the government is backpedalling on its pledge, leaving scientists gravely concerned.

In response to the Ecojustice letter, the B.C. government said it has allocated $400,000 in annual funding over the past five years “to help this important species recover.”

The funds have supported the captive breeding program, field research and inventories, and new technologies for monitoring and conducting habitat assessments, according to an emailed statement from the ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations.

The ministry said 303,850 hectares of forests are protected within provincial and regional parks, Greater Vancouver watersheds and wildlife habitat areas. About 66 per cent of that land consists of old and mature forests, which the government described as “preferred by the spotted owl.”

Charlotte Dawe, conservation and policy campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, stands in the Karen Creek clearcut. The Karen Creek watershed is located just east of Hope, B.C., and just off the Coquihalla Highway, within a Wildlife Habitat Area designated by the B.C. government to preserve spotted owl forest habitat. Photo: Wilderness Committee

The expert report, written by B.C.’s leading spotted owl biologist, Jared Hobbs, found that spotted owl recovery in B.C. is still technically and biologically feasible. It noted, however, that the province “will face several significant logistical, societal and economic challenges.”

Hobbs, a scientific advisor for the B.C.’s spotted owl recovery team from 2002 to 2006, found that recovery actions need to be implemented more “conservatively” with regard to timber harvest in spotted owl habitat and with “strict adherence to scientific principle.”

They also need to be implemented “without delay for improved habitat protection” if the province is committed to successfully recovering spotted owls in B.C., his report said.  

Joe Foy, co-executive director of the Wilderness Committee, pointed out that the U.S. has allocated four million hectares for spotted owl protection.

Canadian protection efforts have been “dismal” by comparison, Foy said, noting that only 218,350 total hectares of suitable habitat has been protected and the B.C. government continues to allow logging in old-growth forests suitable for spotted owls.

“This despicable state of affairs must stop now,” Foy said.

The UN report found that human actions have significantly altered three-quarters of the land-based environment and about two-thirds of the marine environment, with grim consequences for all life on earth.

Nature managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities is under increasing pressure but declining less rapidly than elsewhere, the report discovered.

The authors found that the global response to the biodiversity crisis is insufficient and that “transformative changes” are needed to restore and protect nature. However, they said it is not too late to make a difference if opposition from vested interests can be overcome for the greater public good.

The Wilderness Committee requested that McKenna let it know by June 30 of steps taken to produce a habitat action plan and that the plan be developed by the end of this year.

“Obviously we’d like her to see the urgency of this matter and react quicker than that,” Pepper-Smith said. “But we understand that there are other species out there who require action.”

He said it would be “completely unacceptable” for McKenna’s ministry to defer to the B.C. government once again.

“The evidence is in the forests with how few owls remain out there.”

Update Thursday, May 9 2019 at 4:08pm pst: This article was updated to include comment from Environment and Climate Change Canada that was not submitted before publication time.

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The spotted owlet lay in his incubator, refusing bits of rat muscle offered on tweezers. If he survived he would soon grow enough fluff to put a poodle to shame. But right now his skin had the texture of a plucked chicken and a few errant white feathers stuck up at odd angles, making him one of the most pathetic-looking creatures biologist Jasmine McCulligh had ever seen.

McCulligh had worked non-stop for four days in a row at the B.C. government-funded Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program in Langley. She was on call while the owlet hatched over 85 hours in a lab called Artificial Inc., as a playlist of spotted owl calls and forest bird song rolled in the background. Now she lay on the laboratory floor, exhausted. The one-day old owlet crumpled in his plastic tray, crying.

McCulligh knew the breeding centre could not afford to lose this newborn. At that point in time, in April 2017, there were only six spotted owls left in B.C.’s wild, even though scientists had been sounding the alarm for decades about widespread destruction of the species’ ancient rainforest habitat.

Ten years into operation, the breeding centre had hatched just eight other spotted owls —  and one was blind, couldn’t fly and laid eggs in her water dish. “It was the most stressful thing of my entire life,” McCulligh remembered. “It was at the point where I just didn’t know what to do anymore.”

Jasmine McCulligh, biologist with the Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Centre, holds an artificial egg used to gather data in the nests of breeding pairs. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

A spotted owl hatching known as D-17. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program

D-17 at 12 days old. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program

Raising endangered spotted owls at the world’s only breeding centre for the species is part science and part educated guesswork, and takes deep pockets as well as conviction. It’s not as though biologists can google the correct antibiotic dose for an ailing chick or flip through a textbook to learn how to improve egg fertility. And then there’s the unanswered question of why spotted owls in captivity take so long to have sex. One male and female at the centre shared an aviary for four years before they mated.

“We’ve had to learn everything,” said McCulligh, the breeding centre’s multi-tasking coordinator and spotted owl specialist. “It’s been a huge, steep learning curve trying to figure out the best possible way to take care of the species here. We’ve learned that the spotted owl is so unique and special that it has specific requirements.”

Spotted owls rose from obscurity to distinction in the 1980s and 1990s and became a symbol of the destruction of ancient rainforests in the Pacific Northwest. In the U.S., debate and lawsuits raged over logging in the owl’s habitat and mill towns famously sold t-shirts and bumper stickers with the slogan, “Save a Logger, Eat an Owl.”

Logging was halted in old-growth Pacific Northwest forests in the early 1990s after the owl was listed under the broad-reaching U.S. Endangered Species Act. But the species has continued to decline in the U.S., in large part because so much of its habitat was already destroyed and because the barred owl, an invading bigger cousin, is moving into spotted owl territories.

In Canada, a legally mandated federal recovery strategy released in 2006 has been an abysmal failure. Spotted owls are now functionally extinct in Canada’s wild, where an estimated 1,000 of the raptors once lived in southwestern B.C.’s old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar. For 12 years, the B.C. government has steadfastly avoided identification of the owl’s critical habitat, required by the recovery strategy. This year, a full-time B.C. government spotted owl biologist detected only three spotted owl individuals in the Canadian wild, all in the Fraser Canyon. He found no breeding pairs.

A Northern Spotted Owl, strix occidentalis caurina, in southern B.C. Photo: Jared Hobbs

Map of logging in spotted owl habitat. B.C. has approved clear-cut logging in areas it set aside for spotted owl recovery at the same time as committing nearly $1.5 million to the experimental captive breeding program since 2014. Map: Wilderness Committee

The decimation of B.C.’s spotted owl population has scientists on both sides of the border asking tough questions about how we manage the 600 species legally protected under Canada’s Species at Risk Act. From feeding and medicating an ailing orca whale near Victoria to sedating pregnant caribou and flying them in helicopters to a breeding pen high in the Misinchinka mountains in northeast B.C., substantial amounts of money are being spent on increasingly complex efforts to recover endangered species while governments quietly sanction destruction of their habitat. The B.C. government, for instance, has approved clear-cut logging in areas it set aside for spotted owl recovery, while sinking almost $1.5 million into the experimental captive breeding program since 2014.

“The species is now circling the drain,” said U.S. conservation scientist Dominick DellaSala, who has worked on spotted owls as part his global work in rainforests. “We’ve got to get to the point where we’re not in the critical care unit of a hospital where the patient, in this case the owl, is on life support.”  

As a postdoctoral student, DellaSala hiked through old-growth rainforests in the Pacific northwest, hooting in the hopes of getting a call back from a spotted owl, assessing the species’ habitat needs and prey base “so we could do something about the owl before it got to the situation we’re in today.”

“We’ve put them in the ICU of captive breeding,” DellaSala told The Narwhal. “And when we have put a species in that situation, just like putting a person in ICU, you run the risk that it isn’t going to work. You’re down to the last few individuals and you can’t really make a mistake because [if you do] that’s it, it’s gone.”

Pulling out every stop to save the ailing hatchling, McCulligh called in a veterinarian, who diagnosed an infection and prescribed antibiotics. But nobody knew the correct dose for a spotted owlet that weighed half as much as a tennis ball and could fit in a teacup with room to spare, so they gave him diluted antibiotics drops. “You can’t do an intramuscular injection on something that doesn’t have muscle,” McCulligh said. “We’d give him a little drop and he hated it. You could tell he’d got it in his system.”

The owl survived with around the clock intensive care. Once he could swallow muscle, he was hand-fed pieces of rat organ meat and later, when he could regurgitate a pellet, rodent bones and fur. Today, the 18 month-old owl lives in a spacious aviary at the breeding centre, which houses 20 other spotted owls, including three from the U.S. and eight individuals brought in from the wild by B.C. government biologists to boost the breeding stock, as well as one owl hit by a car.

McCulligh describes the intensive incubation process for spotted owls. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Temperature controlled incubator where owl eggs are incubated for 32 days. Breeding centre staff began artificially incubating eggs after some were broken and consumed by captive females. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The ugly duckling has become a beautiful raptor, with chocolate brown eyes, a heart-shaped facial disc and dark feathers bejeweled with creamy white spots. A retinue of biologists and technicians monitor his health and progress. Each late afternoon — at dusk during breeding season — two grain-fed euthanized mice or one euthanized juvenile rat are delivered to his feeding platform.

The owl was named Dante, which means enduring. “He’s a little champ now,” McCulligh said. “I get goosebumps thinking of it. One of my proudest moments was to see this chick get better.”

I first met McCulligh at a fundraiser for the spotted owl breeding centre. It was one of a number of fundraisers — including document shredding and Adopt-an-Owl and Adopt-an-Egg programs — that she and other recovery centre staff and volunteers organize each year to supplement government funding for the centre. (The centre’s 2018 budget is $362,000, with $270,000 in direct funding from the B.C. government.)

I’d been trying to reach the B.C. government manager in charge of the breeding program to get permission for a breeding centre visit and ask about the status of spotted owls after the B.C. government announced its 2006 plan to protect them from Canadian extinction.

Journalist Sarah Cox interviews McCulligh outside an aviary at the spotted owl breeding facility. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

A rat bred for food at the spotted owl breeding facility. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

McCulligh said on the phone that she’d be happy to offer a tour but couldn’t speak to journalists without permission from the B.C. Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations. That ministry, it turned out, was both in charge of spotted owl recovery efforts and responsible for issuing permits to log in spotted owl habitat.

Trolling through the breeding centre’s Facebook page I had spotted an ad for the centre’s annual pub night “Meet the Team” fundraiser at the Townhall Public House in Coquitlam, a former mill town. A $25 ticket procured me a pub grub dinner, a glass of wine and, I hoped, a sighting of the program’s government manager.

In the wood-walled pub, built to service millworkers, was a screen with rotating black and white photographs of old-time loggers standing on planks felling old-growth trees the girth of a bus. The photographs had almost certainly been taken in former spotted owl habitat stretching from the Lower Mainland to north of Lillooet, where the species often raised its young in dead tree cavities or “stovepipes” where wind had snapped off treetops. The old-growth canopy afforded protection from predators like the Great Horned Owl and harboured plenty of flying squirrels and packrats, mainstays of the spotted owl diet.

The government manager was nowhere to be seen, but a raffle offered nine tempting prize packs displayed on thick wooden bar tables. One prize was a tour of the spotted owl breeding facility. I bought 10 numbered raffle tickets and stuffed the jar.

The next morning, an e-mail from McCulligh informed me I had won the tour package. I could have the tour anytime I wanted, she said, but she still wouldn’t be able to grant me an interview without permission from the ministry.

Three weeks later, permission finally secured, I waited for McCulligh outside locked gates at a bucolic property nestled in rolling green hills.

A pastoral scene near the captive breeding facility in Langley, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

McCulligh, a hazel-eyed, fast-talking millennial, grew up in Ontario dreaming of raising endangered species to release into the wild. But it was the iconic large mammals she envisioned, not avians. She was largely unfamiliar with spotted owls until 2012, when a friend sent her a posting for an unpaid internship at the breeding centre just as she completed a degree in wildlife biology at the University of Guelph. She loved working with spotted owls so much she stayed.

“Those birds are unreal to see in person,” she said. “It’s really special. I feel so lucky to work with them…And then on a grand scheme level I’ve learned in this job that it’s not about the species. It’s about the ecosystem and conservation in general. You can save one species and save so many other species because it [the spotted owl] is an umbrella species and an ecosystem indicator. It’s not just about the spotted owl. It’s about the entire Pacific northwest ecosystem — the coastal region at least.”

We parked beside a handful of trailers brought in by the B.C. government as part of its initial $450,000 investment in infrastructure for the breeding enterprise. Outside, an intern scrubbed plastic cages for future owl food — 350 to 400 mice and rats housed in a trailer that sounded like a pet store on steroids, humming with scuffling and squeaks. A dozen teeny mice, born only hours earlier, were so translucent we could see milk in their bellies.

McCulligh and her colleague at their trailer office. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Translucent baby mice at just a few hours old. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Rat feed for the spotted owls. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The owls reside in treed aviaries, each separated by latticework and guarded by electric fences to ward off weasels and raccoons. Mindful not to disturb them, the only breeding owl aviary we stopped at was the one belonging to Oregon, the unflappable male rescued as a chick in his namesake state.

Oregon roosted high on a snag, occasionally preening his mottled chest feathers, staring straight past us. Every so often, he emitted a gentle, cooing hoot.

He shared his aviary with his prospective mate, captive-born Skalula, camouflaged among the branches.

“They’re not bonded yet,” said McCulligh. “They hang out and I think they’re really close to being bonded.” Bonding indicates a pair has copulated and produced eggs, she explained.

Cox and McCulligh search for spotted owls, Oregon and Skalula, in their quiet aviary. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Oregon, a northern spotted owl, in his aviary at the breeding facility. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

The centre’s original plan was to release spotted owls into the wild starting this year. But those plans are now on hold, in part because the centre’s four bonded pairs are very slow to reproduce. There’s only a 25 per cent chance that an occasional egg will be fertile and an even smaller chance the spider-like embryo inside will have a heartbeat eight days after conception.

Spotted owls usually mate for life, but courtship — at least in captivity — can stretch over years and females are choosy about their mates. Shania, the first chick born in the program in 2008, to parents Einstein and Shakkai, spurned the first two males that staff placed in her adjoining aviary, connected by a tunnel.

Only after two years of sharing space with her third suitor, a young dominant male named Scud, did Shania finally accept his advances. At first the owls sat beside each other on a branch, like shy teenagers at a school dance, and preened each other’s feathers. Later, Scud brought Shania euthanized mice and rats from his feeding tray to demonstrate his provisionary skills. When Shania finally accepted his prey delivery staff knew they were on track. They grew even more excited when they saw Shania pulling belly feathers in preparation for incubating an egg. The bonded pair is now the centre’s most productive, producing fertilized eggs that hatched in 2016 and 2017.

Outside of breeding season staff sometimes put live rodents in flower box-like “mouse arenas” to give the owls a chance to hone their hunting instincts.

Cameras in nest boxes monitor copulation — five times one night for one pair during breeding season, and none at all for four-year old Jay and one-and-a-half year-old Bella, whom McCulligh described as the cutest spotted owl pair you’ll ever see. “They’re always hanging out together and will follow each other around. They’re very, very attached to each other but they never copulate. They didn’t lay eggs. Nothing.”

A juvenile spotted owl takes up temporary residence on its dispersal, Cayoosh Creek near Lillooet, B.C. Photo: Jared Hobbs

An adult female Northern Spotted Owl found in a nesting stand near Hope, B.C. Photo: Jared Hobbs

In an effort to boost sperm counts, selenium-rich sardines are included in the diet of rodents bred at the centre. Biologists have even pruned feathers from the captive females’ vents — the only “out door” on the bird — in an effort to allow “greater opportunity for fertilization,” according to Ian Blackburn, the B.C. government manager in charge of the spotted owl breeding centre.

“The program has had its challenges,” Blackburn said in a phone interview when I finally caught up with him. “Our assumption of when we thought owls would start to breed was that by age three they would be fully functioning breeding birds. And this was proven to be wrong in the captive sense, or at least at the captive breeding centre.”

Some captive female spotted owls at the centre don’t breed until they are eight or nine, while one male didn’t copulate and produce a fertile egg until he was 10, said Blackburn, a wildlife biologist who coordinated the spotted owl breeding centre until five years ago. “We’re kind of perplexed.”

At first biologists took a hands-off approach to egg laying and hatching, believing, said Blackburn, that the “owls knew how to do it better than we do.” But in 2011, after discussion with zoos, they decided to artificially incubate the eggs. “Eggs were being broken or disappearing altogether because the female ate it,” Blackburn explained. “That’s your precious commodity, that egg. That was the turning point.”

Despite the slow progress, McCulligh and Blackburn remain optimistic about the breeding program, pointing out that the centre has met its first goal of increasing the population from four owls to 21. Most of the breeding owls are young and chicks born next year could be released after their first winter, Blackburn said, noting, “we’re still waiting for that bumper crop to show up.”

Hopes were buoyed this April when a ninth chick, Bridget, hatched at the breeding centre. Unlike chickens, when spotted owls are born “they can’t stand up,” McCulligh said. “Their eyes are closed. Their ears are closed. They kind of just wobble and roll around a lot.”

A spotted owl and youngster at the breeding facility. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program

Bridget, on her return trip at 10 days old. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program

Clad in sterile gowns, masks and gloves, McCulligh and other centre staff wiped the hatchling’s waste and monitored her constantly to make sure her spindly legs didn’t splay. They weighed her four times a day and examined the chick thoroughly every 24 hours to ensure good health.

When the owlet was 10 days old, she was removed from the Artificial Inc. lab and given to foster parents in the hopes of encouraging her biological parents to lay another egg. Just as the biological parents had been none the wiser when staff replaced Bridget’s egg with a sensor egg made in a laboratory (store-bought chicken eggs are sometimes used as a substitute), foster parents Scud and Shania didn’t seem at all perturbed to find an unexpected hatchling in their nest box. The new parents immediately shredded rat meat for their charge, nuzzling her with affection.

Dante at three to five days old. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Centre

Dante at about 10 days old being fed raw, euthanized rat meat. Photo: Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Centre

“We got one chick,” McCulligh said. “That’s exciting. In five years we have doubled the population. I don’t think you can let discouragement be a word here. It’s a slow build.”

The question of whether the centre’s slow build will ever translate into a viable spotted owl population in B.C.’s wild concerns wildlife biologist Jared Hobbs. Hobbs was a scientific advisor for the B.C.’s spotted owl recovery team from 2002 to 2006. He stepped down when the provincial government decided to focus on captive breeding as a primary plank in its spotted owl recovery strategy while continuing to allow logging in spotted owl habitat, pointing out that B.C.’s recovery strategy was not completely aligned with scientific recommendations outlined in a spotted owl recovery plan.

“In B.C. it’s still completely legal to log a spotted owl nest as long as the owl is not in the nest.”

“I’ve been watching ever since, keeping my finger on the pulse but it’s disheartening,” said Hobbs, also a professional photographer and author of the book Spotted Owls: Shadows in an Old-Growth Forest.

Hobbs said the founder population for captive breeding was notably small and there were challenges with husbandry — for instance, the owls could not learn to forage on their principle wild diet of flying squirrels and packrats. And a new set of hurdles will have to be jumped if captive-bred owls are released into an ecosystem they have never before encountered, lacking training from their parents, he said.

“Am I optimistic that we’ll see a self-sustaining population of spotted owls in British Columbia in the future? No, I’m sadly pessimistic. But I do think it’s possible. Recovery will require that we change the way we manage spotted owl habitat.”

On its website, the B.C. government claims 363,000 hectares is being “managed” for spotted owl recovery. But about half of that habitat is not currently suitable for the species, according to Hobbs, who also points out that just over half of the habitat managed for spotted owls — 190,000 hectares — was already conserved in provincial parks and protected areas.

And that’s not all, because the B.C. government also allows logging in 108,000 hectares designated as wildlife habitat areas for the spotted owl, as long as those areas are managed to ensure two-thirds of the land base retain suitable habitat.

“Much of the area set aside for spotted owl habitat on Crown land is not currently suitable for spotted owls due to previous timber harvests,” said Hobbs.

The Karen Creek clearcut, in a watershed located just east of Hope, B.C., within a Wildlife Habitat Area designated by the B.C. government to preserve Northern Spotted Owl habitat. Photo: Wilderness Committee

Charlotte Dawe, conservation and policy campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, stands in the Karen Creek clearcut. Photo: Wilderness Committee

Also troubling, the B.C. government allows timber harvesting in 75 per cent of the 51,000 hectares it calls “managed future habitat areas” for the owl, even though it could take hundreds of years for suitable habitat to re-grow. “In B.C. it’s still completely legal to log a spotted owl nest as long as the owl is not in the nest,” Hobbs pointed out.

Recovery efforts are hampered because of a provincial government decision that there be no net loss to timber revenues in any proposed future management areas for spotted owls, said Hobbs, noting, “It’s a challenge to recover spotted owls in B.C. with no net gain to its habitat.”

DellaSala likened the spotted owl to the quintessential canary in a coal mine. The owl is an indicator of a “whole complex ecosystem with all the parts that are in jeopardy,” he said. “This is just one of the parts and it’s telling us we have not done a responsible job of maintaining the old-growth ecosystems upon which the owl and thousands of other species depend.”

When old-growth rainforests are fragmented and clear-cut, “it’s not just the owl, it’s goshawks, it’s murrelets, it’s tree voles, it’s lichen,” said DellaSala, president and chief scientist of Oregon’s Geos Institute. “It’s caribou as you go further inland. It’s salmon. It’s a whole collection of species, it’s the sum of the parts of the ecosystem. And we all depend on that ecosystem for clean air, climate security, clean water and recreation. We’re all in this together and the owl is the symbol of how we overextended ourselves in terms of logging.”

Governments have known for decades that the spotted owl was in trouble, yet they have avoided taking sufficient action to reverse that downward trend. Spotted owls were assessed as endangered in 1986 by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, when only a few hundred remained in the wild.

Ten years later, with the population in steep decline, a listing under the federal Species at Risk Act compelled the B.C. government to develop a spotted owl recovery strategy in 2006. The federal recovery strategy clearly identified the primary obstacles to spotted owl survival and recovery: destruction of old-growth habitat and fragmentation of remaining habitat.

“It’s universally known that the biggest threat to the spotted owl is habitat destruction in old-growth forests.”

Recovery of the species was “ecologically and biologically feasible,” according to the strategy, which set a goal of at least 250 adult owls in the wild.

Only two years later, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada noted a “catastrophic” population decline — to just 19 individuals — as even more habitat was clear-cut and fragmented. Juvenile spotted owls were not surviving dispersal, which sent them across clear-cut landscapes where risk of predation was far higher than in the relatively closed canopy of old-growth forests.

“All adults are old and near the end of their breeding age and there is no recruitment of young owls into the population,” the committee reported. “If current trends are not reversed, extirpation will likely occur within the next decade.”

One of the first priorities of the Canadian Spotted Owl Recovery Team was to establish — within a year of its formation in 2006 — the total amount and distribution of recovery habitat. The definition of critical habitat was deemed to be “urgent.”

But 12 years later, critical habitat has still not been identified.

Environmental lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith called the delay “absolutely shocking, especially considering it’s universally known that the biggest threat to the spotted owl is habitat destruction in old-growth forests.”

“So long as we see this essentially unfettered destruction of old-growth habitat we’re going to see species like the spotted owl make their way towards extirpation if not extinction,” said Pepper-Smith, a lawyer with Ecojustice, which in 2004 launched a legal case seeking an emergency order to protect spotted owls under the federal Species At Risk Act. The case was dropped when the recovery plan was announced.

“We need a re-assessment of the way we prioritize timber supply of old-growth forests and the relation to protecting these species that have relied on this habitat for millenia,” Pepper-Smith told The Narwhal.

And now there is another wrinkle in the prospects for northern spotted owl recovery. Bigger, more aggressive barred owls are competing with the spotted owl for habitat, after migrating west of their historic range.

Barred owls can thrive in fragmented habitats and don’t depend on old-growth rainforests like their spotted owl cousin. “Barred owls aren’t choosy,” noted Blackburn. “With spotted owls excluded from these fragmented landscapes barred owls have just moved right in.”

“If there’s a breeding pair of spotted owls they can defend the territory. But if one mate disappears that individual bird has a hard time defending the territory. There’s just no other spotted owl around to come and pair up with it and defend it. Eventually they get pushed out.”

Just as the B.C. government shoots wolves from helicopters to try to save endangered caribou, the B.C. government and U.S. state governments also shoot barred owls to give spotted owls a chance. Over the past decade, the B.C. government has removed 189 barred owls from spotted owl habitat; 138 were captured and relocated and 51 were shot at active or recently occupied spotted owl sites, according to Blackburn.

Jasmine McCulligh. “In five years we have doubled the population. I don’t think you can let discouragement be a word here. It’s a slow build,” she told The Narwhal. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

At the same time, the provincial government also keeps two breeding pairs of barred owls at the spotted owl centre and hatches their eggs in incubators. Barred owls are proving to be prolific breeders in captivity compared to spotted owls, and most of their eggs are fertile. Over the past several years, the centre has released 10 captive-born barred owls with GPS backpacks to track their flight and progress — to practice for the eventual release of spotted owls, Blackburn said. One artificially incubated barred owl named Forrest accompanies breeding centre staff on school visits.

Barred owl captive breeding offers an opportunity to experiment with techniques such as mending cracks in eggs with glue, which could prove useful for spotted owl breeding, according to Blackburn. The centre has also placed barred owl babies with spotted owls to assess parenting skills. “We put in some barred owls for them to practice on and they all did great, awesome parenting,” he said. “It was quite interesting to see how immediate it was. Their mate would come and bring food immediately to the barred owl baby.”

Hobbs said the spotted owl needs governments to set the stage to allow it to recover.

“We need to give them the habitat they need to persist so they can co-evolve with barred owls and learn how to out-compete this owl or co-exist with it. And if we can do all that then we may have spotted owls in the future.”

DellaSala credits the spotted owl with teaching him an important lesson in life as he spent time climbing nest trees, examining what they ate, and learning about old-growth rainforests: that humans are part of ecosystems and depend on them.

“They’re one of a kind, they’re remarkable. It just saddens me when we don’t appreciate life.”

This report was produced with financial assistance from the Unchartered Journalism Fund.

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