America's Only Captive Breeding Pair of Northern Spotted Owls Ready to HatchNew Chicks at the High Desert Museum The chicks are expected to help boost numbers of this controversial threatened species.
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Bend, Ore. - The High Desert Museum's pair of Northern spotted
owls, Polka and Dot, the only Northern spotted owls in America
to have bred in captivity, have once again produced two eggs.
Their chicks will likely play an important role in helping to
boost the numbers of this controversial threatened species.
Visitors can see Dot nesting on the eggs as Polka guards her
from a perch a few feet above the nest. A video monitor aimed
into the nest allows visitors to get a bird's-eye view of this
fascinating and important development.
The eggs could hatch as early as Sunday, and the chicks may be
released into the wild or go to the Mountain View Conservation
and Breeding Centre near Fort Langley, British Columbia, where
they would be bred. That the owls produced chicks at the Museum
in 2003, 2004, and 2005 is a testament to the quality of their
habitat and care at the Museum. Owls will not breed in
captivity unless they are healthy, happy, and secure in their
surroundings. The new clutch of eggs also is noteworthy because
of the pair's advanced age. They are each about 24 years old,
and have not laid eggs for the last two years. Spotted owls
have been known to live as long as 31 years in captivity, when
they are well fed and cared for, and protected from predators.
They typically do not live beyond 20 years in the wild.
At the Donald M. Kerr Birds of Prey Center at the Museum, the
pair has been behaving as spotted owls typically do when
nesting. Dot has been constantly sitting on the eggs, changing
position occasionally. Polka has been guarding her, and
bringing her food -- mice and chicks. Dot is nesting in a
replica of a broken tree, called a snag, with a nesting area
built into it containing bark mulch. The white eggs closely
resemble ordinary chicken eggs."We put other materials into the
habitat for her to pick at, but she seems to like bark mulch,
and she laid her eggs, just as in the past," said Museum
Wildlife Curator Nolan Harvey.
In the past, Museum visitors were able to see Polka and Dot's
chicks for two weeks, before the U.S. Forest Service relocated
the chicks to wild "foster" nests in southwestern Oregon.Eric
Forsman, research wildlife biologist for the forest service's
Pacific Northwest Research station in Corvallis, said that it
may be better to send the new chicks to the breeding center in
British Columbia, where they would be cared for in captivity,
and their chicks would be released in the wild.If the chicks go
to British Columbia, they may stay at the Museum with their
parents throughout the summer, he said. Sending them to the
Mountain View Conservation and Breeding Centre would reduce the
incidences of spotted owls being captured in the wild in
British Columbia for captive breeding programs, Forsman
said."In British Columbia, the (Northern spotted) owls are
virtually gone," he said. "There is just a handful of them
left."
In Oregon and California, the Northern spotted owl population
has been declining more than 3 percent annually from 1990 to
2005, despite forest service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management
efforts to protect their habitat - old forests, Forsman
said.The continued range expansion of the barred owl, which
competes with the spotted owl, forest fires, and logging on
non-federal lands are some of the factors contributing to the
population decline, he said.Efforts to protect the Northern
spotted owl habitats culminated with the Northwest Forest Plan
in 1994, he said. The plan's mission is to adopt coordinated
management direction for the lands administered by the forest
service and the BLM.
"Ultimately, spotted owls are just a symbol of a much larger
issue," Forsman said. "They are kind of the poster child for
old forests and the conflict over how to manage federal
forests. Spotted owls are such a charismatic species that
people can relate to, and the laws to protect them have made
spotted owls one of the most high-profile species in forest
management on the West Coast."
For details visit www.highdesertmuseum.org.
or call (541) 382-4754.
