Keeping track of nesting sites has been going on in this forest for decades, and McCafferty is excited to share this possibly active site with Eric Forsman, a U.S. Forest Service researcher emeritus, who helped pioneer the study of spotted owls, and Damon Lesmeister, Forsman’s successor, who leads the spotted owl work out of the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station based on the campus of Oregon State University. We didn’t know pretty much anything. Due to their habitat being destroyed, hunting, and other problems such as viruses they have a population that is very low. This is likely due to their nocturnal activity and high screeching call. They too suffer due to the destruction of their natural habitat. We park at the end of one and biological science technician Alaina Thomas gets out to start her nightly routine. If anything, it seemed curious to see who had come visit. Lesmeister can tell immediately that it is a mated pair, directly communicating with each other. “It would be very unlikely for something that lives here that makes noise not to make a noise in that time,” says Leila Duchac, a graduate student researcher at Oregon State University as she straps a recorder to a tree with a bungee cord. We’re in the Siuslaw National Forest, southwest of Corvallis. “They just appear out of nowhere,” Lesmeister says. The loggers would have to wait for the sheriff to be called, the chains to be cut and cars to be towed. But he was surprised when suddenly the owl swooped to a nearby tree limb as if summoned. I wonder if crews still go out at night and hoot. Even with efforts in place, the future is uncertain for various species of endangered owls. If Lesmeister hired one of his graduate students to listen to the recordings in real-time, for eight hours a day, five days a week, they wouldn’t be able to get through them all in a lifetime. It was the first time I heard the call of a northern spotted owl. They were also the most ecologically valuable, conservationists countered. We crawl under fallen logs. After fires ravaged the forests south of Casino last year, much of the barking owl's habitat was lost and for a bird already on the endangered list, this isn't good news. Most carried logs the size I’d grown up seeing: thick Doug firs, each around 100 years old, the second-growth cut following the original logging of the late 1800s. Wildlife biologists Eric Forsman, left, and Damon Lesmeister represent two generations of spotted owl researchers. A pre-recorded hoot comes out. The fact that there are various farming methods that require moving around crops is part of this. It’s the single descending note of a barred owl. Lesmeister's team can collect more data from the forest than ever before. Chris McCafferty, crew leader of spotted owl researchers in the Oregon Coast Range, found a nesting pair of spotted owls in this tree last season. Nature Conservation Council's ecologist Peter Knock said the owls like the hollows in trees and many of these were destroyed in the fires. “Barn owls have adapted to be grassland hunters worldwide,” says James Cowan, director of the Canadian Raptor Conservancy and a founder of the owl recovery project. As a result of this they are struggling to be able to survive out there in the wild. The Northern Spotted Owl is also on the endangered species list. Perhaps it is the file compression or the hiss of the digital noise on the recording, but it sounds oddly a lot like a crackling wax cylinder recording from the 19th century — as if what we are hearing is not the sound of an animal alive today, but an echo from the distant past. Back at the lab, research assistant Zach Ruff has to confirm which ones are indeed spotted owls. Forsman stared in amazement, and the owl stared back with large dark eyes. “How many spotted owl confirmations do you have at this site?” asks Lesmeister, as he pulls a stool up next to Ruff. Many farmers use the land where these owls seek food too. Now, these landings are mostly overgrown by brush. Ruff pulls up another file. Barred owls from the east have moved in and taken over spotted owl habitat in the western forests of Oregon, and are now pushing spotted owls closer and closer to extinction. “I wanted to learn more. Or if he found it ironic to wear as a Forest Service owl counter. It is the call they use, Lesmeister explains, to say, “I am here.”. “It’s pretty discouraging,” she says. In the national forests of the Northwest, the two critical questions became: where, exactly, are the spotted owls, and how many are there? It isn’t too late though to help these owl species to have a future. OPB’s critical reporting is made possible by the power of member support. At the same time efforts need to be made to ensure that more species don’t show up on that list. It's been 30 years this June since the spotted owl was listed under the Endangered Species Act and made the cover of Time magazine. He wore black smoke-jumper boots, forest-green wool whipcord pants and a T-shirt that showed a cartoon of a spotted owl and a little spotted owl standing in front of a statue of a logger. 1973 also saw the passage of the Endangered Species Act. They looked to environmental laws. Locations that had once been consistent nesting sites are empty, and it takes crews longer to locate active sites. Three decades after my high school summer in Mount Hood National Forest, I once again find myself bouncing in a Forest Service vehicle down a narrow two-track road in search of spotted owls, but this time as a documentary producer for OPB. The neural network has guessed some spotted owl hoots correctly, but another track is a beep-beep-beep mechanical sound. In many ways, Barn Owls have been associated with death and misfortune. As the road rises and twists deeper into the forest, spur roads split off and dead-end at former logging landings where heavy equipment once skidded cut trees and loaded logs onto trucks. The next spring, U.S. District Judge William Dwyer issued an injunction, halting new timber sales on 24 million acres on 17 national forests in Oregon, Washington and Northern California, until a definitive plan could be made. =]<333 OR if you know where to find an article about that... That would help me too! “I don’t think I was very diplomatic,” he says with a chuckle. I was a high school student, working my summer break in exchange for room and board, trying to gain a little professional experience and hoping for an adventure. Different types of pesticides used to control populations of grasshoppers are also known to be killing lots of the Burrowing Owls. This is her fifth season calling for spotted owls. For the past 50 years, spotted owl researchers used calling to locate owls, and would then hike to find, snare and band them, to identify individual birds — a “hands-on” technique common in wildlife biology, Lesmeister explains.