(leaves rustling)
- [Narrator] Eric Forsman and Damon Lesmeister
are hiking deep into Siuslaw National Forest
to check on a nest site.
They are two generations of wildlife biologists,
who have been leading the research of a bird
that has been slowly vanishing
from Oregon's old growth forests for the past 50 years.
The most controversial bird in US environmental history.
The northern spotted owl.
(whistling)
- She's right up there.
Do you see her?
They just appear oftentimes just out of nowhere.
And then it's just, wow, they're here.
- [Eric] When they look at you, their eyes are just,
I mean, they look almost coal black.
I mean they're actually kind of a real dark brown
when you get close, but they look at any distance
beyond a few feet, they look black.
- And it takes you about one minute to really, you know,
have a lot of passion for these birds.
- [Narrator] The northern spotted owl once lived
quietly and anonymously in north west forests like this one.
In the 1970s, Eric Forsman pioneered their study
and learned that the spotted owl survived deep
in the old growth forests.
The same forests being logged (tree creaking)
to fuel the region's timber economy. (tree crashing)
In the 1980s it became clear that the last patches
of old growth forests on public lands were shrinking.
Timber interests pushed to keep cutting,
but a growing environmental movement rallied to block them.
The spotted owl became the controversial symbol
at the center of a political and economic conflict.
- [Crowd] No more clear cuts, no more clear cuts!
- To list the owl would be poor science
and it certainly would mean economic disaster.
We feel it would mean betrayal by our own government.
(howling)
(chainsaw buzzing)
(vehicle engine roaring)
- Is timber not put here for man's use?
You are a hypocrite, buddy!
- No, no, we want--
- There's gonna be so many people that are outraged.
This is all-out war.
- Somebody could be murdered in this whole event.
- You know, when people refer to it as the Spotted Owl Wars,
and it was in some ways a war.
It was a, you know, very strong feelings on all sides
and something that was not easily solved.
- They're gonna shut mills like this
in Oregon and Washington down.
(machinery whirring)
- [Narrator] In 1990, the spotted owl was listed
as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
It appeared in "Life" magazine and even the cover of "Time".
And the issue became so embroiled,
that the President, Vice President,
and cabinet came to Oregon
for an unprecedented timber summit.
(chainsaw buzzing)
In 1994, The Northwest Forest Plan significantly limited
logging of old growth in National Forests.
(tree creaking) (tree crashing)
With the protection of the old growth habitat
that the spotted owls needed to survive, (whistling)
biologists like Eric hoped to see
the owl's population stabilize, and even recover.
But it didn't turn out that way.
Arriving to Oregon from the East coast came a new threat,
another owl, called the barred owl,
invaded the spotted owls' home range.
Biologists aren't sure why they showed up,
but the impact of their presence became clear.
Barred Owls are larger
and more aggressive than spotted owls.
They claim their nest sites, compete for food, harass,
and will even kill spotted owls.
- [Eric] When we first started doing spotted owl research
50 years ago now, there were no barred owls
in these forests, and now they're virtually everywhere.
The crews spend a lot more time doing night calls.
because they can't find the birds anymore, they're gone.
You know, so it's just become much more difficult
to do work on spotted owls.
- [Narrator] This is the fifth season that Alaina Thomas
has called for spotted owls.
Because owls are active at night
and because they're territorial,
biologists have learned that if they hoot,
the owls will hook back.
- So this is the caller that we use for surveys.
(hooting)
I wasn't here when the owls were all over at every site,
you know, so I don't know the experience of that,
but I definitely had a lot more pairs
in some of my sites than I do now.
So I've seen kind of a decline.
(hooting)
It's pretty discouraging.
I mean it's, it gets harder and harder
to do all of these sites.
I mean you kind of know that the populations
are decreasing a lot.
So it's kind of just kind of daunting to go out
and day after day and not hear anything.
- [Narrator] Techniques that served the first generation
of spotted owl researchers like night calling,
are harder and harder to use as the populations decline.
- [Damon] We have our hexagon ID.
- [Narrator] So Damon, the next generation
of spotted owl scientist, has had to find other methods.
He's exploring a new field called "bioacoustics".
Damon and his graduate student Leila,
bring digital audio recorders into the forest.
- This SD card is 497.
- We're just recording constantly
for four hour blocks at dawn and dusk.
- And this is location five.
At any given station,
we've got about 350 hours of recordings.
So it would be very unlikely
in those 350 hours for something
that lives here, that makes noise, to not make a noise.
(hooting)
- [Narrator] The recorders collect so many hours of sound
that it would take an individual a hundred years
to listen to all of them in real time.
(bird chirping)
So the recordings come here,
the supercomputer at Oregon State University,
where the data can be crunched at lightning speed.
The computer analyzes the sounds
and suggests what might be a spotted owl.
But Zach Ruff has to confirm which ones
are actually spotted owls.
- How many spotted owl confirmations
do you have at this site?
- Like a dozen.
- [Narrator] They are not just simply
labeling spotted owl calls,
but actually using the very latest
artificial intelligence technology.
They train what they call the "neural network"
to process the millions of forest noises
and interpret which are actually the calls of spotted owls.
Somewhat ironically, the computer mistakes
the sound of logging for spotted owls.
- Yeah, you can see it's very mechanical sounding,
but that's a yarder from logging equipment
and this is a perfect example of something
that obviously is not a spotted owl.
The next time it encounters this
it won't get it wrong the next time.
- [Narrator] Damon's work is creating new baseline data.
Years from now, other biologists could scan the recordings
to identify other species
and get a better understanding
of the old growth forest biodiversity over time.
- And so really we've come to an age where
you think of it as sort of next generation natural history.
(hooting)
- [Narrator] Although the potential
for bioacoustic research is encouraging,
the hard reality is that the spotted owl
is continuing to decline on a slow but steady course
towards extinction.
By bringing the sounds of the forest into his lab,
Damon has a front row seat to observe the change.
- It's entirely possible that the last documented
spotted owls may come through recordings.
For a forest to be fully functioning well as an ecosystem,
spotted owls are a critical component of that, you know.
They're part of the forest
and the forest is less without them.
(birds singing)