Exactly how I feel.
I was part of a BLM spotted owl survey.
My advise, check the numbers reported with a find tooth comb.
Audit the survey .
I sort of question the premise. It looks like what could be termed a “Western” Barred Owl to me. Maybe they don’t interbreed with Barred Owls, but is it a distinct species? I thought I read Barred Owls are doing fine.
The whole thing is just nuts in a lot of ways. We can set aside huge tracts of land for conservation, we can log for timber when done responsibly, mining, outdoor recreation, the West is a big place.
People live there. It’s not a Museum.
I spent much of the summer of 1979 surveying spotted owls on the Deschutes NF in central Oregon. We reported our findings accurately, but I wouldn’t guarantee that we found every owl.
And that business of spotted owls needing large tracts of undisturbed old-growth forest is nonsense. Several pairs were nesting in areas that had seen quite a bit of logging; in fact, one pair had been reported by a logging crew and were still occupying the same nest at the edge of a clearcut.