Saving The Spotted Owl

A captive breeding centre in British Columbia—the only one of its kind in the world— is fighting to keep them from going extinct.

- Sarah Cox

The spotted owlet lay in his incubator, refusing bits of rat muscle offered on tweezers. His skin had the texture of a plucked chicken, and 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 straight at the Northern Spotted Owl Breeding Program, a wooded 10-hectare facility in Langley, B.C., largely funded by the provincial government. As the breeding centre’s multi-tasking coordinator and spotted owl specialist, she was on call while the owlet hatched over 85 hours. Now she lay on the floor, exhausted. The one-day-old owlet crumpled in his plastic tray, crying, its distressed peeps ringing throughout the room.

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

The breeding centre had hatched just eight other spotted owls in 10 years.

Raising spotted owls at the world’s only breeding centre for the species is part science and part educated guesswork. A dearth of information about spotted owls in captivity means biologists can’t google what to do if a bird falls ill. 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 surprised scientists by sharing an aviary for four years before they mated. “We’ve had to learn everything,” says McCulligh.