It takes fake eggs, sterile incubators, some trickery and years of trial and error to breed Canada’s almost extinct northern spotted owl in captivity. “We’ve learned a lot,” said spotted owl specialist Jasmine McCulligh, the centre’s program co-ordinator. No northern spotted owls have been released since the breeding program’s inception in 2007. If all goes well, the centre plans to set up a camera and live stream the owl chick and its parents in the next several weeks. Northern spotted owls once thrived throughout old-growth forests ranging from B.C.’s southern Interior to California.

Source: National Post April 28, 2019 21:22 UTC