Meet the Winners:
2021 BioOne Ambassador

The BioOne Ambassador Award recognizes early-career researchers who excel at communicating the importance and impact of their specialized research to the public. Nominees were asked to provide a 750-word plain-language summary of their research which responded to the question:
“How does your research change the world?”
From owls to ecosystems: using bioacoustics to address broad-scale conservation challenges

From wildfires to invasive species, today’s environmental changes are affecting entire landscapes. Protecting endangered species and necessities like clean drinking water requires us to work at the same broad scale, which is exactly why my research focuses on monitoring animals across the landscape. My work began with one of North America’s most famous endangered species, the spotted owl.
Spotted owls live only in the forests of western North America, and one of the most urgent threats to this endangered species is the closely related barred owl. Human changes to the habitat of the Great Plains have allowed barred owls to expand across the entire continent, and now this aggressive bird is in direct competition with the smaller and more docile spotted owl. California’s Sierra Nevada is the forefront of this invasion, and conservationists need to understand the barred owls’ progress in order to protect spotted owls from extinction.
To meet this need, my team and I deployed recording units across 2,300 square miles of mountains in northern California – making our study three times the size of a conventional owl monitoring project, and one of the largest acoustic monitoring efforts in the western hemisphere. In just two summers, we collected over 500,000 hours of audio data, which I processed with custom owl hoot identification tools. Once I had settings that correctly identified owls and ignored everything else (well, mostly…we still had to validate the results!), I could efficiently determine which sites were occupied by owls. I then used the resulting data to estimate the rate of barred owl population growth.
The results were startling. In just one year, the barred owl population had grown by a factor of 2.6 – in the first year they were recorded at just 8% of our sites but in the next they were recorded at 21% of our sites. Based on the rate of barred owl population growth, protecting the future of the spotted owl in the Sierra Nevada required swift action. And it wasn’t just a question of saving the spotted owl: barred owls feed on a much wider range of prey than spotted owls, meaning that barred owls could destabilize the entire ecosystem.
As a result, a team composed of state and federal agencies, academic groups, and private industry biologists was formed, and they conducted experimental barred owl removals across the Sierra Nevada. The acoustic monitoring program was the backbone of this effort because it allowed the team to locate barred owls and to measure their progress. The effort was successful: the audio data indicated that the barred owl population has been reduced to below the levels we documented in the first year of monitoring and that spotted owls are recovering.
But that isn’t all we can do with the audio data: I am using a novel machine learning algorithm to identify several hundred species of birds. We have also identified coyotes, frogs, and insects, as well as the sounds of machines and the eerie silence they leave in their wake. Just as we’re expanding the species we can study, we’re also expanding survey coverage to include over 7,000 square miles – nearly the entire Sierra Nevada. This means that when managers are making decisions like how to prevent catastrophic wildfires, they’ll have information about entire biological communities, not just a few species. This is important because holistic management leads to better outcomes.
The more we can unlock the latent potential of the sounds of the Sierra Nevada, the better we can conserve its unique biological and cultural history – and plan for its future. If we succeed, it can continue to do things like provide a home to thousands of species and drinking water for most of California. So, if you’ve ever used a computer or watched a movie, you’ve benefited from the Sierra Nevada ecosystem.
This work is possible in part because of the spotted owl’s popularity and legal protections, which ensure continued support to develop novel approaches to ecological monitoring. Already, our work on this project has been cited by researchers in China, India, England, Spain, Panama, and the U.S., which means that spotted owl conservation is helping not just the spotted owl and not just the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, but species around the world. Environmental change is rapid and vast, but thanks in part to the spotted owl, we’re developing the tools we’ll need to understand that change – and adapt to it.
This summary is in reference to:
Early detection of rapid Barred Owl population growth within the range of the California Spotted Owl advises the Precautionary Principle
The Condor, 122(1): 1-10. 2020.
Connor M. Wood, R. J. Gutiérrez, John J. Keane, M. Zachariah Peery

Dr. Connor M. Wood
What drew you to the research topic you explored in your submission?
I’ve long been interested in conservation biology, and this project was a chance to contribute directly to the conservation of an iconic endangered species – the spotted owl. Flexible and generalizable research methods like bioacoustics are particularly appealing in conservation because they help us get the most out of limited resources. This was very much a team effort, and I feel very fortunate to be involved!
How do you see your work contributing to public policy, citizen science, and/or science education more broadly?
I think this project illustrates how conservation efforts can be successful even in the face of very big challenges – if we have the information, determination, and resources to act quickly. It also shows how bioacoustics enables scientists and managers to develop ecological datasets that were previously unimaginable — and thus improve public policy.
ContactInformation
Dr. Connor M. Wood
cmw289@cornell.edu
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American Ornithological Society
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