Snowy Owls in Decline
Mistaken about these birds for decades, might we now make amends?
THE WORLD has far fewer Snowy Owls than wildlife biologists once believed, and breeding populations of these charismatic raptors have been declining at a disturbing rate.
So says a new assessment of the Snowy Owl (Bubo scandicus) conducted by an international group of researchers. But before we panic or jump to conclusions, there is some good news in this study — even opportunity for us to make more sense of the world.
Breaking news like this isn’t terrain I routinely cover at Chasing Nature, but the publication has received scant media attention. Besides, the Snowy Owl is an icon of culture and nature. So in addition to explaining the state of the Snowy Owl for you, I’ll offer some perspective about our place on a warming planet from between the lines of this study, titled “Status assessment and conservation priorities for a circumpolar raptor: the Snowy Owl Bubo scandicus,” published last month in Bird Conservation International.
Owls and Overestimates
Even as it is one of the most recognizable birds on the planet, the Snowy Owl remains somewhat a mystery. Because its breeding range is a circumpolar zone around the North Pole, this owl is notoriously hard for biologists to study and count. Making it even tougher is that Snowy Owls are largely nomadic: they have little fidelity to their breeding sites from year to year and irregularly move great distances in winter (including toward many of us living in temperate zones). This means that standard methods ornithologists use to estimate population sizes and trends don’t work as well for Snowy Owls.
As a result, it’s now clear that despite their best intensions, biologists have in the past overestimated the number of Snowy Owls inhabiting Planet Earth — as high as 290,000 owls in one study. The new review concludes that the most plausible estimate is a worldwide Snowy Owl population of between 14,000 and 28,000 breeding adults. That is not many owls at all.
Also concerning is that the Snowy Owl population appears to be in decline. The rate of that decline has also been historically overestimated. The new assessment finds that breeding populations of Snowy Owls in the Arctic have decreased by more than 30 percent over the past 24 to 32 years.
And this is where you and I intersect with the Snowy Owl. As you no doubt know, as we humans go about our routines every day, we can threaten owls living in some of the most remote places on Earth.
Owls and Us
Among the most proximate threats to an owl that lives in the Arctic is heat. But first let’s be clear: At least in North America, the Snowy Owl population has been in a slow decline since our most recent glacial maximum 20,000 years ago (Gousy-Leblanc et al. 2023). As the Arctic warmed and the glaciers retreated, Snowy Owls vanished as well.
A crucial question is to what extent Snowy Owls are declining even more so as we ourselves warm the Arctic — what might explain the recent 30 percent population drop? The review paper offers credible ideas. Milder winters on the breeding grounds can depress or collapse populations of the Snowy Owl’s principal food — lemmings and other rodents. The warmth can also foster greater abundance of black flies, which attack Snowy Owl nestlings. And receding Arctic ice can make it tougher for Snowy Owls to locate and prey upon waterfowl. (Yep, these owls also hunt ducks off the water’s surface.)
And then there’s the more poignant harm — injury or death by automobile, aircraft, power line, disease, emaciation, and to some extent toxic chemicals or heavy metals. Although most wild owls die alone and unseen, automobile collisions are among the most common causes that biologists can count in studies of Snowy Owl mortality. Consider an owl, hatched and raised in vast and terrain nowhere near humans, then flying a great distance south in winter only to be killed by a passing car (burning fossil fuels).
Which brings me to us, road warriors, who need not actually strike a Snowy Owl with our vehicles in order to kill it. We have other machinery for that — the elevation of consumption over the commons and community, or the election of leaders beholden to Big Drill and Big Burn over the genuine promise of new energy from the sun and wind.
I do not know how it will turn out for the Snowy Owls. Nor do I know how it will turn out for us, whether we can change our ways, whether we can improve the lives of people everywhere while being more respectful to Snowy Owls and wildlife and wild places in general. After all, for most people, the Snowy Owl, like the Polar Bear, is an abstraction. Too many of us will never actually see one. So it might seem that apart from our warming of their Arctic habitats, we ourselves have little in common with Snowy Owls. But that would be wrong.
Have a look at this crude map I’ve created of the Snowy Owl’s breeding range — on scattered sites across the lands within (north of) my orange outline. This is a view of Earth we rarely see in maps of nations and territories and wildlife distribution. Although the Arctic is currently locked in more winter ice than we’re seeing here, it is always hard to miss that enormous icy island — the territory of Greenland. (It’s been in the news lately.)
Snowy Owls have a lot at stake in the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is melting at a rate that, if not slowed, will alter the fate of the Earth. The owls would be among the first casualties. We aren’t far behind.
If the melting continues apace, the fires and flooding and human suffering already upon us will seem quaint by comparison. More melting can trigger tipping points in ocean currents and climate whose impacts would be apocalyptic. You and I won’t be around to see the worst of it — but we’ll see plenty unless we can change course.
What I like about this new review paper is its caution, even its revisionist history. New science has given us a more accurate estimate of the Snowy Owl population and its downward trend — good science producing new knowledge. The findings justify a previous official listing of the owl as “Vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
So, at the end of the day, we humans do indeed have something in common with Snowy Owls living far away. Together on a warming planet, we are powerful and wonderful. And we are vulnerable.
References
Led by Rebecca McCabe of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the Snowy Owl review features the work of 39 co-authors from five countries. You can read it here.
Gousy-Leblanc M., Therrien J.F., Broquet T., Rioux D., Curt-Grand-Gaudin N., Tissot N. et al. 2023. Long-term population decline of a genetically homogenous
continental-wide top Arctic predator. Ibis 165, 1251–1266.
Credits for my map include Google Earth for the base map and the McCabe paper for Snowy Owl breeding distribution (with actual nests generally close to shoreline).
For more on climate tipping points and collapse, consult this post from by , a deep thinker and caring human being on a changing planet.
Finally
The launch of my modest Chasing Nature Podcast (a modcast) is still on track for later this month. We’ll begin with a discussion of the fate of the Monarch butterfly. Although the podcast will be infrequent at first, I’ll also be producing episodes exclusively for paying subscribers.
Thanks again, everyone. I hope to see you on the other side of Inauguration Day.
Fortunately, the snowy owl has a mugshot that will inspire people to defend it, unlike other endangered species. Those eyes alone should melt some frozen hearts and inspire action.
Yes. I took feel that humanity is too far down the line of capitalism and economic gain over all else, to do enough to slow this progression, and with world leaders and billionaires intent on ignoring the science, the common person who actually cares is unheard. However, those of us who do care must carry on talking and sharing all we can, in the hope that enough people pick up the gauntlet of change and run with it. It's a long road, but we can't give up, and like you, I'm always hopeful and try and seek out the people who are making positive changes and are sharing the better news (as you are). We've got to keep going, even when it's difficult. Nature is relying on us.