Competitive Interactions and Resource Partitioning Between Northern Spotted Owls and Barred Owls in Western Oregon

Résumé du livre

"The federally threatened northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is the focus of intensive conservation efforts that have led to much forested land being reserved as habitat for the owl and associated wildlife species through the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Recently, however, a relatively new threat to spotted owls has emerged in the form of an invasive competitor: the congeneric barred owl (S. varia). As barred owls have rapidly expanded their populations into the entire range of the northern spotted owl, mounting evidence indicates that they are displacing, hybridizing with, and even killing spotted owls. The range expansion by barred owls into western North America has made an already complex conservation issue even more contentious, and a lack of information on the ecological relationships between the 2 species has hampered recovery efforts for northern spotted owls. We investigated spatial relationships, habitat use, diets, survival, and reproduction of sympatric spotted owls and barred owls in western Oregon, USA, during 2007-2009"--page 1.