Queensland Powerful Owl Report 2020

Powerful Owl Project in southeast Queensland Progress Report

October 2020

Powerful Owl Project in southeast Queensland

Progress Report

Rob Clemens, Larry Chen, Callan Alexander, Susan Fuller

October 2020

Citation This publication should be cited as follows:

Clemens, R., and Chen, L., Alexander, C., Fuller, S. (2020) Powerful Owl Project in southeast Queensland, Progress Report. Unpublished report. BirdLife Southern Queensland, Brisbane.

Copyright © BirdLife Australia This document is subject to copyright and may only be used for the purposes for which it was commissioned. The use or copying of this document in whole or part without the permission of BirdLife Australia is an infringement of copyright.

Disclaimer Although BirdLife Australia has taken all the necessary steps to ensure that an accurate document has been prepared, the organisation accepts no liability for any damages or loss incurred as a result of reliance placed upon the report and its content.

Cover image: Powerful Owl Ninox Strenua, by Amanda Robertson.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ...... 5 Executive Summary ...... 6 Introduction ...... 9 Objectives ...... 11 Powerful Owl distribution in southeast Queensland ...... 12 Powerful Owl observations ...... 12 Figure 1. Map of Powerful Owl records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution...... 14 Other Nocturnal bird locations in southeast Queensland in BirdData database ...... 14 Engagement...... 16 Number of people involved ...... 17 Volunteer engagement and feedback ...... 20 ...... 20 Rat Poison Campaign ...... 23 Media attention ...... 24 Stakeholder Engagement ...... 25 Acoustic Monitoring ...... 26 QUT Acoustic Monitoring ...... 26 Current Progress: ...... 26 Additional deployments ...... 27 Impact of summer 2019/20 bushfires on forest owl habitat ...... 29 Methods ...... 29 Results ...... 31 Two research papers submitted to Sunbird in 2020 ...... 33 Review of conservation status of three forest owls ...... 35 Powerful Owl Ninox Strenua ...... 37 Overview ...... 37 Infraspecific taxa ...... 37 Range ...... 37 Abundance ...... 37 Ecology...... 38 Monitoring ...... 39 Threats ...... 39 Australian Greater Sooty Owl Tyto tenebricosa tenebricosa ...... 41 Overview ...... 41 Infraspecific taxa ...... 41

Range ...... 41 Abundance ...... 41 Ecology...... 42 Monitoring ...... 42 Threats ...... 42 Southern Masked Owl Tyto novaehollandiae novaehollandiae ...... 44 Overview ...... 44 Infraspecific taxa ...... 44 Range ...... 44 Abundance ...... 44 Ecology...... 45 Monitoring ...... 45 Threats ...... 45 Comparisons of forest plots near Powerful Owl breeding and random locations ...... 47 Methods ...... 47 Results ...... 48 Literature Cited ...... 50 Appendix A. Powerful Owl Project Volunteer Survey Results 2020 ...... 57

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the over 500 volunteers who have signed up to the project, and special thanks to Jasmine Zeleny and Matt Wright. This pair of seasoned owl experts have helped deliver workshops, and have been a huge help in the field, providing a large amount of data on owl distributions.

This year we would like to thank Laura Ferris and Darcy Brady who helped tremendously in the field this year, and worked on the project as student placements from the University of Queensland.

We would like to thank QUT for their partnership and support on the Queensland Government grant.

We would like to thank all those who have helped with the project, and would especially like to thank the following people for their contributions: Alicia Allan, Claire Anderson, Robert Auld, John Baldry, Ed Blackwood, Julie Cahill, Rodney Appleby, Anthony Baker, Tyde Bands, Josh Bowell, Nick Bradsworth, Nick Bricknell, Leah Burns, Brett Coleman, Jennifer Davis, Alexis Dawson, Stephen Debus, Lesley Eagles, Andrew Evans, Leonard Fitzpatrick, Jane Frost, Benjamin Green, Bob Hambling, Danielle Hanmer, Roger Jaensch, Kevin Jensen, Rod Kavanagh, Heather Kay, Bianca Keys, Satoko Kuroda, Russ Lamb, Llynlly Langdon, Kerrie Lock, Michael Mathieson, Warrick McCorkell, Keith McCosh, David McKitrick, Ross Monks, Lyn Monteath, Greg Neill, Tida Nou, Hemal Patel, Bruce Penman, Michelle Phung, Amanda Robertson, Lyn Robinson, Marion Roper, Tim Shields, Geoffrey Smith, Oliver Spohr, Adam Taylor, Judith Vink, Brenden Ward, Dominic Ward, Jonathon Westacott, Michael Willis, John Wilmott, and Christine Zupanc.

The Powerful Owl Project is operating in partnership with Birds Queensland, and is proudly supported by the Queensland Government, including through the Queensland Citizen Science Grants. The project has previously been supported by the Logan City Council, the Sunshine Coast Council’s Environment Levy, The Wettenhall Environment Trust, Redland City Council, Brisbane City Council and the Australian Environment Foundation.

Executive Summary

When this project started in 2018 the number of breeding Powerful Owl pairs was suspected to be around 30 to 50 pairs. Collation of available data, collection of new data and modelling now provides certainty that there are least 70 pairs in the region, and there is strong evidence to indicate there are 186 pairs. If we assume that most records of single owls in remote areas also likely include a pair, and account for some of

the high densities of owls in some areas Photo: Powerful Owl chick; Amanda Robertson (breeding only 1km apart), we are fairly sure there are at least 300 pairs. Then using species distribution modelling to predict into the many areas where there are no data, we get an estimate of 950 pairs in the region. While we need to confirm that Powerful Owls are found in remote and sometimes higher elevation areas as predicted by modelling, in three years we have shown that the Powerful Owl population is six to nearly 20 times higher than suspected initially.

Successful breeding has now been recorded at 46 locations, and 31 breeding hollows have been detected within 25 territories. A review of breeding success indicates that in the Brisbane area and the Sydney area breeding success hovers around one fledged chick produced per breeding attempt. In 2020, that fledging success rate dropped to 0.8 which could become a concern if repeated in future years. Mortality rates remain unassessed aside from a handful of reports of vehicle strike or electrocution, but work in New South Wales indicates mortality rates could be high enough in Australian urban environments to inhibit population viability in those areas.

These growing understandings would not have been possible without the 548 people currently formally signed up to conduct field surveys, and the many others who contribute assistance and data. In 2020 597 sightings were reported during 985 surveys. This marks another big increase in survey effort. In 2018, 200 Powerful Owl sightings were recorded from 444 surveys, and in 2019 347 sightings were recorded in 655 surveys. Throughout Queensland 1,883 sightings have now been collated from 2,223 surveys into Birdata.

Eleven Powerful Owl workshops or presentations were held this year, and workshop content was also uploaded to YouTube. The project mailing list includes 787 people, 857 people are signed up to the Brisbane Powerful owl Facebook group, and over 2000 people have

attended various talks. On-line media has reached tens of thousands of people, and broader media coverage of the project has reached over 1 million people.

Together with QUT, the project has amassed in excess of 10 terabytes of acoustic data. QUT deployed 16 sensors in active territories to measure detection probabilities and to capture enough Powerful Owl vocalizations to train automated recognizers. They are also going to deploy 20 sensors over summer to characterize summer calling, and determine how detection rates change after the breeding season. Another 44 sensors were deployed in areas Powerful Owl are known to occur. Data will be analyzed in the coming year, and a larger deployment is planned for March and April of 2021 with the primary aim of testing and refining species distribution models. We are optimistic that acoustic monitoring will transform our ability to detect cryptic species like the Powerful Owl.

While the project has uncovered a lot of good news about Powerful Owl, with a larger population and reasonable breeding success, the summer bushfires had catastrophic impacts on many of the forests of eastern Australia. We developed some species distribution models and overlayed them with fire mapping to discover over 1/3 of three forest owl’s habitat was impacted by these fires. This prompted a review of the conservation status of these three owls to determine if the evidence was sufficient for IUCN listing. Unfortunately, data on owl populations in most of their remote range were not sufficient to demonstrate thresholds for listing had been clearly met. The review, however, provides an excellent foundation for future investigations.

Analyses revealed that breeding areas had significantly more forest cover, higher rainfall, and were at lower elevations than random areas less than 20km away. Breeding plots had a median of 59% of the plot covered in forest or 187 ha of forest in a 314-ha plot. Random plots had a median of 21% of the plot covered in forest. While breeding was indicated in areas with as little as 50ha of forest, those areas also had low density housing with many trees and / or wide forest corridors to other patches of forest.

We were fortunate in attracting three University of Queensland student placements, Darcy Brady and Laura Ferris who helped considerably in the field this season. Michelle Phung a UQ placement from last year submitted the work she led last year on species distribution modelling to Sunbird. Tyde Bands another UQ student who volunteers on the project also led a paper submitted to sunbird which reviewed site fidelity, breeding success and occupancy from the decade long NSW dataset.

This year 41 people responded to our survey about the project and like last year, the results were highly positive. Encouragingly, the percentage of people who make a record every time they go out to do a survey, regardless of whether they see an owl, grew from 29% to 49%.

Feedback also identified a desire for more field training and group outings, as well as few other places we can look to improve in the coming years.

We are very thankful for the support from the Queensland Government which will allow this project to continue for two more years.

Introduction

The Powerful Owl is listed as vulnerable in Queensland but we lack up to date information on where the owls are found, how big their population is, how that population is trending over time or what factors are related to breeding success. Powerful Owl are reliant on large patches of forest with trees from 100 to 500 years old (Kavanagh 1997, Loyn et al. 2001), and the loss of forest habitat is seen as the primary reason Powerful Owl populations have declined (Webster et al. 1999, NSW Scientific Committee 2008). Unfortunately, Powerful Owl can be especially difficult to detect in Australian forests (Department of Sustainability and Environment 2011, Cooke et al. 2017), so it is likely that loss of forest habitat leads to impacts to Powerful Owl that occur unnoticed. As apex predators, Powerful Owl also likely perform an important function within ecosystems (Estes et al. 2011, Wallach et al. 2015), and due to their large home range it is likely that many species are conserved when Powerful Owl are conserved (Senzaki et al. 2015, Burgas et al. 2016, Senzaki and Yamaura 2016, Yamaura et al. 2018, Rodríguez-Estrella et al. 2019). Unfortunately, the threats to Powerful Owl and other wildlife reliant on forest habitats are increasing (McAlpine et al. 2002) due to on-going growth of the human population in Queensland (Queensland Government Statistician’s Office 2019) and associated on-going forest clearing Photo: Powerful Owl; Amanda Robertson (Simmons et al. 2018).

Despite the many good reasons to conserve Powerful Owl as threats to their survival increase, there is little that can be achieved if the owls cannot be detected (Cooke et al. 2017). Fortunately, it has been shown that engaging large numbers of people in looking for owls can overcome the difficulties in detection. Sydney’s long-running Powerful Owl monitoring program has demonstrated that the distribution and breeding success of these owls can be uncovered with a citizen science program (Bain et al. 2014) . These monitoring efforts have enabled general and site specific management recommendations to be made (Kavanagh and Owls 2002, Bain et al. 2014, Lake Macquarie City Council 2014). Powerful Owls are proving good indicators of the location and condition of some of the best wildlife habitats in urban areas. As apex predators reliant on the presence of abundant prey (Kavanagh 1988, Pavey et al. 1994, Cooke et al. 2006), old trees with hollow for nesting, and often large blocks of mature forest (Bain et al. 2014). A recent study in Victoria successfully modelled the distribution of Powerful Owl and highlighted the need to establish clear vegetation

management strategies throughout the urban matrix, an area increasingly being used by Powerful Owl (Bradsworth et al. 2017). Two-thirds of the habitats in need of protection in Victoria included areas that are outside existing protected areas (Bradsworth et al. 2017). The above rich understanding has yet to be developed in Queensland.

Acoustic monitoring also has the potential to overcome the low detection probabilities in cryptic species like the Powerful Owl. This kind of monitoring is already proving successful for improving our understanding of other species in Australia (Law et al. 2018). If it works this kind of sampling could provide more representative sampling of Powerful Owl in remote areas where citizen scientists are unlikely to travel.

Owl monitoring has been done by Brisbane City Council (Brisbane City Council 2005) and other owl experts in the region, but there is insufficient data to guide management decisions that would ensure this species persists in the long-term in Queensland. Monitoring efforts have occurred at too few sites with too little frequency to determine how owl populations are changing in this region, let alone why any changes may be occurring. There are also gaps in our understanding of where breeding owls are found in the region. Further, in order to develop the best possible management recommendations, we require an understanding of what habitat factors might relate to the presence of breeding owls, and the ability for any pair to successfully produce young. Previous studies also indicate that Powerful Owl populations may be most sensitive to adult mortality (McCarthy et al. 1999). So, a monitoring program is also needed to capture potential sources of adult mortality, or other factors that can impact populations aside from habitat loss (Gagné et al. 2015, Eccleston and Harness 2018, Lohr and Davis 2018). Fortunately, due to the help from many people involved in this project, we are now on a road to deliver these understandings.

The Powerful Owl project is not just important for conservation of this species and associated biodiversity (Bennett et al. 2015, Schlagloth et al. 2018), but it can raise environmental awareness and engage growing numbers of the community in meaningful experiences in the natural world (Bain et al. 2014). Species like Powerful Owl attract wide public attention and citizen science projects attract growing numbers of people to work in the outdoors. The benefits of connecting to nature are increasingly being documented for human health (Keniger et al. 2013, Shanahan et al. 2016), and it is thought that direct experiences with the natural world are more likely to lead people toward taking or supporting conservation actions (Dunn et al. 2006, Zaradic et al. 2009). We feel broad programs which educate the community on ecological and conservation issues are increasingly important as Photo: Powerful Owl chick; Mark Clarke

evidence indicates the general public is becoming increasingly detached from the natural world (Soga and Gaston 2016, Soga et al. 2016). This kind of project serves as a catalyst to generate broader community interest in the surrounding natural areas.

If google scholar searches provide a crude proxy of how much we have learned about a species. It looks like we have a lot to learn about Powerful Owl and other nocturnal species, as a search on Mallard returns 142,000 articles, a search on Powerful Owl returns 1,450 articles, and a search on Marbled Frogmouth returns 162 articles.

In 2017 we undertook a pilot investigation in the Brisbane region to determine project feasibility, and in 2018 and 2019 we have initiated a wider scale Powerful Owl citizen science monitoring project in southern Queensland. In 2020 we have partnered with QUT to explore the utility of acoustic monitoring in helping us refine species distribution models, and understand correlates of breeding success. This report summarises our progress so far.

Objectives

(Our project is currently focused on Powerful Owl, but there is room for this kind of work on most nocturnal birds.)

 Inspire the general public, and educate them about nocturnal birds, and their habitat / conservation requirements.  Train citizen scientists to conduct surveys to find nocturnal birds and track breeding success. Develop/review codes of practice for such surveys (to protect welfare of birds): minimum approach distances, etc. Photo: Powerful Owl chick; Jasmine Zeleny  Survey and monitor the distribution and abundance of nocturnal birds and uncover why birds are present in some areas and absent in others.  Uncover habitat characteristics, including indices of prey abundance, associated with species presence and breeding success in nocturnal birds.

 Develop species distribution and population models of sufficient accuracy to be used as planning layers by state and council and for assessment of population trajectories.  Identify site-specific management recommendations for nocturnal birds. (Review in context of various generic codes, e.g. forestry practices, road construction, etc.)  Understand the impact of threats such as vehicle strike, secondary poisoning or electrocution.  Inform, and support land management for the conservation of nocturnal birds.

Powerful Owl distribution in southeast Queensland Powerful Owl observations

Before we started the Powerful Owl project in southern Queensland in 2017, we guessed that there might be 30 to 50 breeding pairs in the region. Since 2017, Powerful Owl have been recorded in 186 grid cells (5km2 resolution) in southeast Queensland, with additional sightings recorded from additional 73 grid cells prior to 2017 (Figure 1), many of which came from the Queensland Government’s historic records (Queensland Herbarium 2020). Two of these grid cells contains three active breeding hollows within it, and another grid cell contains two pairs. Powerful Owl are also thought to be present in large blocks of forest that have not been surveyed. Together, we suggest there are a minimum of 300 pairs in southeast Queensland, and initial species distribution modelling indicates there could be over 950 pairs in the region (see abstract below). While there remains a high level of uncertainty regarding the population size of Powerful Owl in southern Queensland, we are confident that Photo: Powerful Owl chick; Amanda Robertson the population is much larger than we guessed three years ago, possibly nine times higher than originally thought.

Since 2018 we have confirmed 70 Powerful Owl pairs are active in the region, with multiple sightings of a pair of owls 1 km or less apart. In addition, successful breeding has been recorded at 46 distinct areas. At 25 of these locations a total of 31 breeding hollows have now been identified.

The council areas where we were able to identify the most breeding pairs, were those where targeted funding permitted regular outings where volunteers were taken out into the forest (Table 1).

Powerful Owls can likely turn up in any forested habitat occasionally (The Department of Sustainability and Environment 2011), so we want to continue to confirm pairs in locations on multiple occasions or confirm breeding to get a more precise understanding of population size.

Throughout Queensland 1,883 sightings have been collated from 2,223 surveys into Birdata. In 2018, 200 Powerful Owl sightings were recorded from 444 surveys, in 2019 347 sightings were recorded in 655 surveys, and 597 sightings were reported in 985 Powerful Owl surveys in 2020.

In 2019, two instances were reported this year where owls flew toward observers landing within three meters. In both cases observers left the area immediately. In 2020 one observer reported being swooped by an owl on two occasions when visiting a hollow on private property. The observer subsequently kept their distance, and were able to confirm young later in the year with no further swooping. Photo: Powerful Owl pair; Amanda Robertson

No other swooping or aggressive behaviour has been reported in Queensland Owls. Once again, this year we did not look for data on mortality, but six Powerful Owl were found dead due to vehicle collision, one to electrocution, and two others were hospitalised due to collision.

Table 1. Summary of pairs, breeding pairs and hollows found in council areas of southeast Queensland in 2018 & 2019.

COUNCIL # OF # BREEDING # HOLLOWS PAIRS ADDITIONAL PAIRS Brisbane 11 18 4 Fraser 0 0 0 Gold Coast 0 1 2 Gympie 0 0 1 Ipswich 1 3 2

Lockyer 0 0 1 Logan 3 7 0 Moreton 1 5 3 Noosa 0 0 0 North Burnett 0 0 0 Redland 6 8 1 Scenic Rim 0 1 3 Somerset 0 0 0 South Burnett 0 0 0 Southern Downs 0 0 1 Sunshine 1 3 0 Toowoomba 1 3 0

Figure 1. Map of Powerful Owl records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution.

Other Nocturnal bird locations in southeast Queensland in BirdData database

Records on other nocturnal birds have been collected as part of the Powerful Owl project and there are some historic records in Birdata (Figure 2a – 2e). There is likely more data in other databases. It has been surprising how few observations of other nocturnal birds are being recorded during Powerful Owl surveys and this suggests that capturing data on other species will require more targeted efforts.

Figure 2a. Map of Barking Owl and Barn Owl records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution, available in BirdData.

Figure 2b. Map of Southern Boobook Owl and Eastern Grass Owl records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution, available in BirdData.

Figure 2c. Map of Masked Owl and Greater Sooty Owl records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution, available in BirdData.

Figure 2d. Map of Marbled Frogmouth and Australian Owlet-nightjar records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution, available in BirdData.

Figure 2e. Map of Tawny Frogmouth and White-throated Nightjar records in southeast Queensland at 25 km2 resolution, available in BirdData.

Engagement

The project received a large boost in engagement after the Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, The Honourable Leeanne Enoch joined us at Mt Coot-tha to announce the Powerful Owl project would get funding for the next three years as part of the Palaszczuk Government’s $1.4 million in funding for threatened species projects. This announcement led to media coverage and growing numbers of people contacting the project with sightings or to get involved.

Since then, BirdLife, Birds Queensland, Natura Pacific and other groups and local councils have helped the project reach a growing number of people. The restrictions around activities due to COVID-19 also resulted in a large increase in opportunistic sightings and on-line engagement. Details on the numbers of people participating in the project, public engagement

Number of people involved

 The project mailing list includes over 787 people, 857 people are signed up to the Brisbane Powerful Owl Facebook group, and over 2,000 people have attended various talks since 2018.  548 people are now formally signed up to the project (148 from 2020) and have attended workshops were given maps of areas, permits, notification requirements, methods, and flyers for letterboxing private landholders.  11 Powerful Owl presentations were given this year attended by 420 people. Six included the full three-hour workshop followed by a field visit, two included a 1-hour presentation followed by field visits, one was an on-line live workshop, and two one- hour presentations were given (see below for details).  COVID-19 forced the cancellation of four workshops, but all those who had RSVPed were sent links to on-line videos of workshop content (see below).  Groups of volunteers are starting to form in some areas with local leaders.  Over 300 volunteers have gone out in the field with me or other experienced people to actively look for owls or check on existing territories on casual visits outside those at workshops.  We trialled the collection of data on the number of arboreal mammals observed, and the distance walked on each survey in a google form. While 7 people did report these data indicating and average of 4.2 arboreal mammals were seen on walks of an average of two kilometres. These variables will need to be incorporated into Birdata if we hope to capture enough data to analyse. We also talked about including the number of trees with large hollows as another variable to include in the future.

Photo: Powerful Owls with different prey items; Amanda Robertson

Table 2. Summary of Powerful Owl workshops and presentations held in the last year.

Date Location URL # of people attended Full three-hour workshops followed by field visit 29/02/2020 THECA, 47 Fleming Rd, Chapel https://tinyurl.com/rrt45sm 52 Hill 1/03/2020 Toowoomba City Library, 155 https://tinyurl.com/rn9uneg 24 Herries Street, Multipurpose Room, Level 3, Toowoomba City 7/03/2020 177 Meakin Rd, Slacks Creek https://tinyurl.com/rv4nq9m 24 8/03/2020 Ipswich Central Library, 40 https://tinyurl.com/vp3232c 22 South St, Ipswich, Qld 14/03/2020 Indigiscapes, 17 Runnymede https://tinyurl.com/smyhcbj 55 Road, Capalaba 15/03/2020 149 Acacia Rd, Karawatha https://tinyurl.com/wnydhg8 31 One-hour presentation with no field visit 26/8/2020 Gecko Environment Council- https://tinyurl.com/y3fuo2vv 82 Currumbin RSL, 165 Duringan St, Currumbin 22/10/2020 Albert Valley Wilderness https://tinyurl.com/y5f7njhz 35 Society, 1368 Beenleigh Rd, Cedar Creek One-hour presentation followed by field walk 21/9/2020 Woodfordia's Bushtime, 87 https://tinyurl.com/y49vcew2 20 Woodrow Rd, Woodford 28/9/2020 Woodfordia's Bushtime, 87 https://tinyurl.com/y49vcew2 25 Woodrow Rd, Woodford On-line live workshop one-hour 25/9/2020 On-line Gold Coast workshop, https://tinyurl.com/y4m2grfz 50 live, Natura Pacific and City of Gold Coast hosted

Table 3. The links to on-line workshop content and number of views so far

Name of video URL Number of views The Powerful Owl Project - Overview https://youtu.be/ieDWU78HuCc 618 Overview from Gold Coast on-line https://tinyurl.com/y4m2grfz unknown workshop The Powerful Owl Project – South East https://tinyurl.com/y4r8nb3s 857 Queensland Owls and Ecology

The Powerful Owl Project - Research https://youtu.be/A5Nxm-8EGJI 155 The Powerful Owl Project - What we have https://youtu.be/eoRfC2ykcSU 255 learned The Powerful Owl Project - How to find https://youtu.be/1kqU1AY8-0w 613 Powerful Owls The Powerful Owl Project - Project Safety https://youtu.be/5NBRxruVUv8 129 and Rules The Powerful Owl Project - QUT Acoustic https://youtu.be/-gOK_sv80uI 286 Monitoring The Powerful Owl Project - Glider Talk https://youtu.be/9NtRRm4P9pI 175

Photos: Eleven Powerful Owl presentations or workshops were given in 2020, with attendance at each workshop varying from 20 to 55.

Volunteer engagement and feedback

Promotion of the project was helped again this year with the help of BirdLife, Birds Queensland, and Natura Pacific. We were also invited to speak to the members of The Hut Environmental & Community Association (THECA), Gecko Environment Council, Woodfordia, and the Albert Valley Wilderness Society. Further promotion was provided by council staff, through word of mouth, email announcements, newsletters, social media, and advertising.

Advertising was purchased again this year in the online events bulletin Weekend Notes, and through boosting on Facebook. With a $75 Weekend Notes advertisement, 213 unique readers were reached Photo: Powerful Owl; Michael Willis with an announcement of a Powerful Owl workshop schedule. A $345 spend on Facebook reached far more people (49,271), with 4,062 engagements and 4,277 clicking on links in those posts about the workshops. In 2020 we also saw a very large increase in the number of people visiting the Powerful Owl website https://birdlife.org.au/projects/urban-birds/powerful-owl-project-pow with 23 times more unique visitors visiting the site in 2020 than did in 2019, and 41 times more people downloading content from the site. A variety of Powerful Owl Facebook posts have now exceeded tens of thousands of likes and shares. The Project’s private Facebook group has now grown to 857 https://www.facebook.com/groups/brisbane.powerful.owls/

Additional promotion resulted from media coverage (see below). Owl experts Jasmine Zeleny and Matt Wright have volunteered to help with field work and helped deliver half the content of the workshops.

The project has continued to grow this year, with 148 formally signing up to participate. The most growth this year has been in informal participation, and a growing number of opportunistic sightings being reported.

We again asked volunteers to fill out a survey about their participation in the Powerful Owl project. A few new questions were added this year, while many were left the same to provide some comparison. Last year 58 people responded, and this year 41 people responded to the survey. It is hard to know how representative these results are of the entire 548 people signed up formally to the project, but results are still informative.

This year participants did an average of 16 surveys (range 0 to 70) in 2020, which is slightly up on the average of 11 last year. Participants also walked on average of 2.6 km per survey (range 0 to 7), which is down slightly on last year’s average of over 3km. Participants this

year indicated they drove on average 18km to do surveys (range 0 to 200). 82% of participants ranked the project at 8, 9, or 10, with 42% giving it a perfect score of ten. These results were very similar to last year with no one scoring the project less than five, but there were far more people who scored the project a ten this year. 88% of participants this year would recommend the project to a friend, which is down slightly on the 93% reported last year.

This year 90% of respondents learnt something new about owls (96% last year) and 78% now find themselves looking and listening for owls when they get the chance (86% last year). In addition, 73% of them felt proud to be a part of the project and the work they were doing (76% last year), while 61% reported the project was allowing them to reconnect with nature (50% last year). 32% of participants met new people in their area that they go out on surveys (30% last year) with and 63% of people engaging with others about the project (15% last year). These results indicate that most people found the project rewarding and engaging, with over half reporting the project was a catalyst to reconnecting with the natural world. The project also required increases in physical activity with volunteers reporting on average walking over two kilometres on each survey while conducting on average 16 surveys for a total average of 41 kilometres walked by each volunteer.

We were encouraged to see that an increasing proportion of people are submitting records each time they go out to look for owls, even if they do not see anything (Figure 3). In 2019 29% of participants indicated they always entered their surveys in Birdata and that increased to 49% in 2020. This encouraging Photo: Powerful Owl; Kevin Jensen result indicates that we will have much improved data on sampling effort, which will allow us to develop more precise predictions of species occupancy.

A few additional questions were added to the survey this year. One was if people wanted to shorten the workshops. 52% indicated they did not want a change while 41% wanted to “shorten the indoor presentation, and cover field identification, calls and survey protocols on a field trip.” Fortunately, we can accommodate both going forward. We asked participants to rate the workshops and 67% indicated they were excellent, 31% indicated they were good, and the remaining 2% indicated they were fair. Also 95% of people were accessing a variety of on-line resources with 71% accessing owl calls, and nearly half watching on-line videos accessing last year’s report and survey methodologies. 60% have used the maps provided on survey locations and over 30% of people accessed other material in a shared Dropbox folder,

downloaded management guidelines, downloaded the project flyers for letterboxing, and 6% have downloaded the education materials.

Figure 3. Results of volunteer survey regarding the frequency that participants record their surveys in Birdata regardless of whether they see an owl 2020 (n = 41), and 2019 (N=59).

Participants also provided written feedback (Appendix A) which we will draw on to look to improve the program next year. The comments were varied, but many indicated a desire for more field training, and chances to get together. Program improvements will also be looked at during the end of year meeting and our project advisory committee meeting in early December.

To further help people to learn about nocturnal birds, thousands of nocturnal bird booklets have been printed with funding from ABEF and Ipswich City Council. These are distributed at all live presentations and are also available on-line: https://birdlife.org.au/documents/Nocturnal_birds_reduced.pdf Grant funding from ABEF also allowed us to purchase blue-tooth speakers and red torches for some of the most active volunteers.

Flyers for letterbox drops were also printed this year and given to some volunteers who distributed them with some responses that led to a couple more Powerful Owls being located.

Education materials have in previous years been developed by the Powerful Owl project in NSW to fit in with the curriculum. See the Powerful Owl education kit available for download here: http://birdlife.org.au/projects/powerful-owl-project We will continue to look for people that might be interested in delivering education programs in schools.

Electronic monthly newsletters are sent to the 787 people on the project monthly email list and links to each newsletter are posted to Facebook.

October 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y3kntm7w September 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y2f7r867 August 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y33enc4d July 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y3qjy878 June 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y4763b9x May 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y3oqfdvo April 2020: https://tinyurl.com/yyunnyqx March 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y4deojq4 February 2020 update 2: https://tinyurl.com/y3lorqob Photo: Powerful Owl; Sylvia Alexander February 2020: https://tinyurl.com/y5qcx7rr December 2019: https://tinyurl.com/y4d6xxa7 November 2019: https://tinyurl.com/yxg2newh

Rat Poison Campaign

BirdLife made a submission and initiated a campaign to regulate second generation anticoagulant rodenticides. The Powerful Owl project staff and volunteers assisted with these submissions. These compounds are highly regulated in the EU, the USA and Canada. Almost 4,000 people made a submission to the Australian Pesticide and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) review into rodenticides through the BirdLife network, asking for the most harmful second-generation products to be taken off supermarket shelves.

The APVMA has recently released a first response to those review submissions, indicating they will be updating labelling of products. While this is a positive move it does not go nearly far enough to protect birds, or to bring Australian regulations in line with European and North American standards. BirdLife will continue to push for stronger regulation of these compounds. https://www.actforbirds.org/ratpoison

Media attention

As we near the end of 2020 we estimate that media coverage has reached over 1 million people throughout southeast Queensland with stories about both Powerful Owl and the project (Table 4). In 2019, the greatest amount of media coverage came as a result of the minister for the environment announcing three years of project funding. In 2018, media attention came as a result of parallel interest in a zip-line development at Mt Coot-tha, and a press release sent out by one of our volunteers. In both years we have generated numerous internal project updates, and external newsletter articles and social media links.

Table 4. Summary of media coverage

Year Outlet / program location reach URL 2020 ABC Radio: Southeast Tens of https://tinyurl.com/y3vug8np Catherine Feeney Queensland thousands 2020 ABC Radio: Scenic Southeast Thousands NA Rim Local Queensland 2020 ABC Print: News National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y8ofrz8p Science thousands 2020 Channel Ten TV: National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y3jkqgpr Totally Wild- thousands featuring Jasmine Zeleny and Rob Clemens 2020 Sydney Morning National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y5wutnyg Herald thousands 2020 Podcast: Natura National Tens of https://tinyurl.com/y545sg4a Pacific thousands 2020 Cosmos magazine National Thousands https://tinyurl.com/yycnv4q7 2020 Planet Ark article National Thousands https://tinyurl.com/yym97tme 2020 Print: The Local Local SE Thousands https://tinyurl.com/y5uaekfa Bulletin Brisbane Queensland West – by Jim Butler 2020 Electronic BirdLife Tens of https://tinyurl.com/y26qt68r communications thousands https://tinyurl.com/y6ctum32 https://tinyurl.com/yyzf664m https://tinyurl.com/yxnbm9at 2019 ABC – on-line National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y2e7j87f thousands 2019 Channel 7 TV: Southeast Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/yybxjvax 7pm news Queensland thousands

2019 Gold Coast Southeast Tens of https://tinyurl.com/qmwepxv Channel 7 Queensland thousands Facebook 2019 Queensland Southeast Thousands https://tinyurl.com/wc5jpcd Government Queensland Facebook - Science 2018 Print: Brisbane National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y7dtppa6 Times thousands 2018 Print: Sydney National Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y64m3tau Morning Herald thousands 2018 Print: Beaudesert Local southeast Thousands https://tinyurl.com/y6slbna5 Times Queensland 2018 Natura Pacific: on- National Tens of https://tinyurl.com/yypowetb line doco thousands 2018 Print: Jimboomba Local southeast Thousands https://tinyurl.com/y6n5hpdf Times Queensland 2018 Print: Redland City Local southeast Thousands https://tinyurl.com/y5yl766q Bulletin Queensland 2018 ABC TV Southeast Hundreds of https://tinyurl.com/y7f4e89z Queensland thousands 2018 Print: National Thousands https://tinyurl.com/y6efd57c Architecture.com 2018 Print / on-line: Southeast Thousands https://tinyurl.com/yxor59of Land for Wildlife Queensland article

Stakeholder Engagement

Many council and state employees are included on project email updates, and are sent data and project reports at the end of the season. Last year we had our first meeting of the Powerful Owl advisory group, which included representatives from within the project as well as QUT, Deakin University, University of Queensland, Redland City Council, Moreton Regional Council, Ipswich City Council, Sunshine City Council, Faunagraphic, and BirdLife national office.

We will be having another meeting of the project advisory committee in early December of this year. Photo: Powerful Owl; Nick Bradsworth

So far, the diverse group of attendees advised on ways to improve the project, discussed ways improve conservation instruments within different levels of government, and to identified related projects of interest to participants.

Acoustic Monitoring

QUT Acoustic Monitoring

The aim of this research project is to use bioacoustics to monitor Powerful Owls (Ninox strenua) in south-east Queensland. The development of an automated species recognition tool will provide insight into the vocalisation habits of this secretive species, with the aim of providing an efficient method for monitoring breeding success and improved field detection relative to traditional observation methods. Acoustic recognisers are automated tools developed to detect vocalisations of a particular species amongst complex environmental acoustic data (Duan et al., 2011). One of the most promising applications of passive acoustic monitoring using ARUs is the monitoring of vocal cryptic species, such as the Powerful Owl (Duchac et al., 2020).

This project addresses the following questions:

• What are the vocalisation characteristics of Powerful Owls and can different vocalisations be linked to behavioural functions?

• How does the vocalisation behaviour of Powerful Owls change throughout the breeding season?

• Can automated acoustic recognisers be utilised to determine whether a pair of Powerful Owls have bred successfully?

• How far do Powerful Owl vocalisations travel in different environments? How should acoustic monitors be placed in order to maximise monitoring efficiency?

Current Progress: 16 acoustic monitors were deployed for approximately 6 months in active owl territories and have now been returned from the field (Figure 4,). Approximately 7 terabytes of long-duration recordings have been obtained. Manual annotation of the recordings is being conducted in Figure 4. Locations of initial acoustic sensor deployment Raven Pro in order to build a locations

training dataset for acoustic recogniser application. Directional recordings will be obtained over the following months for call classification. Once manual annotation is completed, recogniser testing will begin, along with call attenuation testing. 20 Birdlife Audiomoths (small acoustic monitoring devices) will also be deployed in the coming weeks to provide additional testing data and gain insight into summer vocalisation habits.

Additional deployments

Seventy-seven acoustic sensors are being deployed in 2020 (Figure 5). These deployments are intended to further test how often Powerful Owl are detected when they are deployed in areas where Powerful Owl have been detected previously. We were also hoping some of these deployments might confirm the presence of a territorial pair, or uncover evidence of breeding success in areas where it was not detected in 2020. Data has been retrieved from 44 locations, and five additional sensors are currently in the field. Unfortunately, seven sensors were stolen, and one sensor was left on the ground but the mounting strap and micro SD card was stolen. Twenty additional sensors will be deployed in November by QUT in order to explore how well acoustic monitoring can detect breeding success in territories where young owls were produced this year. There is little understanding of how often Powerful Owl call over summer, or how well breeding success might be detected once the chicks are flying around well. Close to 3TB of acoustic data has been collected and a few more TB are expected to be collected by the year’s end. These data will be analysed, and screened for Powerful Owl detections in the coming year.

Deployments at 30 known breeding locations are planned again in March and April of 2021 to test the detection probability at sites known to have Powerful Owl at a time of year when adult birds are calling the most throughout the area to set up a territory prior to breeding. In March and April, to test and refine species distribution models, another 60 sensors will be deployed. Thirty will be deployed at locations predicted to have suitable habitat and where Powerful Owl have not been recorded previously. A third set of 30 sensors will be deployed in forested areas with at least one tree of at least 85cm diameter at breast height which are predicted to be unsuitable for Powerful Owl.

Figure 5. Locations of 77 acoustic sensor deployment locations in 2020. Red dots are locations where seven sensors were stolen.

Impact of summer 2019/20 bushfires on forest owl habitat

The fires in eastern Australia during the summer of 2019/20 were unprecedented in scale and severity. Remote sensing data on fire extent were overlayed onto species distribution models to estimate the impact these fires had on the habitat of Powerful Owl, Australian Greater Sooty Owl, and Southern Masked Owl.

Methods Bird records were sourced from Birdata (BirdLife Australia 2020) and ebird (Sullivan et al. 2009) and included all records of each owl in Australia. The records from these sources included Powerful Owl 19,462 records, 3,721 Australian Greater Sooty Owl records, and 5,402 Southern Masked Owl records.

The environmental predictor variables that were selected were believed to be related to the ecological niche of these owls and included: area of closed forest, area of woodland forest, area of open woodland forest, area of rainforest, average normalised Photo: Powerful Owl; Brett Coleman difference vegetation index (NDVI), average vegetation forest height, area of remnant vegetation cover, stream density, stream aspect, annual precipitation, maximum temperature, precipitation in the wettest quarter and temperature in the coldest quarter, and population density. All variables were either totalled or averaged at a 4km2 resolution (Table 5). The 4km2 resolution was set to capture variables at the scale of core breeding habitats and to minimise overlapping territories which are occasionally only one kilometre apart.

Variables were aggregated, processed and resampled to a matching resolution and projection using ArcMap (v.10.7.1, ESRI, Redlands, CA, USA) and in RStudio (RStudio Team 2015, R Core Team 2018) using the following packages: ‘raster’ (Hijmans 2017), ‘rdgal’ (Bivand et al. 2018), ‘sf ‘(Pebesma 2018), ‘sp’ (Pebesma and Rivand 2005) and ‘dplyr’ (Wickham et al. 2019).

Fire data were derived from VIIRS sensor aboard the joint NASA/NOAA Suomi National Polar- orbiting Partnership (Suomi NPP) and NOAA-20 satellites at a resolution of 375m. NRT VIIRS 375 m Active Fire product VJ114IMGTDL_NRT is available on-line https://earthdata.nasa.gov/firms doi: 10.5067/FIRMS/VIIRS/VJ114IMGT_NRT.002

Spatial variation in sampling effort was accounted for by generating a spatial bias grid layer for use in Maxent which contained the number of Birdata or eBird surveys conducted in each grid cell.

Table 5. Predictor variables used in Maxent models generated for three forest owls in Australia.

Predictor Description Reference Area of four classes of forest Classified forest cover at 100m2 resolution was Australian Bureau of cover reclassified into four forest classes: closed Agricultural and forest, woodland, open woodland, and Resource Economics rainforest. The area was totalled in each 4km2 and Sciences (ABARES, grid cell for each of these four classes. 2019)

Normalised difference Averaged over two years (2018 and 2019), Bureau of Meteorology vegetation index (NDVI) based on four six-month periods of NDVI data (BOM, 2019) and averaged by resampling from 100m2 resolution. Vegetation height Vegetation height was totalled from 100m2 Terrestrial Ecosystem resolution data. Research Network (TERN, 2011) Climatic variables Averaged from 1976 through 2005 and Future climate layers resampled from 5km2 resolution. Climatic for Australia variables included: annual precipitation, (Vanderwal, 2012). maximum temperature, precipitation in the wettest quarter and temperature in the coldest quarter. Remnant vegetation The area of remnant vegetation was first (Queensland converted from polygons to a 100m2 raster, and Government, 2018) then area was totalled. Stream density and stream The total length of streams in each 4km2 grid (GeoScience Australia, aspect cell was used to represent stream density, and 2019) the stream aspect was derived from averaging reclassified aspect into four 90-degree directions with southern aspects given a value of 1, east and west a value of 2 and north a value of 3. Population Density The density of human population at 100m2 Australian Bureau of resolution was totalled within each 4km2 grid Statistics (ABS, 2017) cell.

Models were run iteratively in MaxEnt machine learning software which has proven to predict distributions well from presence only data (Phillips et al. 2004, Phillips et al. 2006, Elith et al. 2011). The following settings were used within Maxent: output format was ‘cloglog’, predictor response curves and jackknife tests were included, all hinge features were selected, a random seed value was used with five replicates of 5,000 iterations using cross- validation, and samples were added to the background with the regularization multiplier set to a factor of one. Model performance was assessed using the area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (AUC) (Elith et al. 2011). The predictions were mapped as probabilities of occurrence and as either suitable or non-suitable based on a threshold rule to

maximise training sensitivity plus specificity. That number of cells was then divided by four to come up with an estimate of the number of pairs likely to be found in the study area. This step assumed there would be one pair per 16km2 which is close to the average Powerful Owl home range of 14.6 km2 (Bradsworth et al. 2017).

Results Maxent model AUC suggested these models did a fair to good job of capturing the distribution of Powerful Owl, Australian Greater Sooty Owl and Southern Masked Owl with values of 0.85, 0.93 and 0.90 respectively. When overlayed with estimates of the areas burned in the 2019/20 summer bushfires of eastern Australia over 1/3 of the predicted habitat for each of these species was impacted by fire with 31.5% impacted for Powerful Owl, 40.3% impacted for Australian Greater Sooty Owl, and 32.2 % impacted for Southern Masked Owl. These values are broadly similar if somewhat higher than estimates from independent work conducted elsewhere (see Table 6 below). The recently published work (Ward et al. 2020) used more precise fire mapping data which may account for some of these differences. Also, we used some predictive variables such as forest cover which may have resulted in more precise predictions for these species as opposed to the bio-climatic variables used in Ward’s work. Either way, the results are broadly similar and raise concerns about the possible impacts of possible more frequent or severe fire on these owls in future decades.

Figure 6. Species distribution models generated with MaxEnt software for Powerful Owl, and overlayed with estimated fire mapping from the summer of 2019/20 derived from NASA/NOAA VIIRS sensor data. Top shows probability of occurrence and bottom shows suitable habitat based on threshold values that maximized training sensitivity plus specificity.

Figure 7. Estimates of suitable habitat impacted by fire: Powerful Owl 31.5%, Australian Greater Sooty Owl 40.3%, and Southern Masked Owl 32.2%. Suitable habitat was estimated by maximizing training sensitivity plus specificity of Maxent derived predictions. AUC values were 0.85, 0.93 and 0.90 respectively.

Two research papers submitted to Sunbird in 2020

Michelle Phung, and Tyde Bands, two students at UQ each led a paper which was submitted for review to the journal Sunbird. If accepted for publications the full papers will be freely available on-line https://birdsqueensland.org.au/sunbird_downloads2.php

Michelle has led a paper on her species distribution modelling which she presented in last year’s annual report, and Tyde has presented a review of nest site fidelity, breeding success and occupancy rates of Powerful Owl based on New South Wales data.

Abstracts of both papers are presented below.

Phung, M., Clemens, R. S. (2020) How many Powerful Owl Ninox strenua are in South East Queensland? In Review Sunbird.

ABSTRACT

The Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua) is a threatened cryptic apex predator with a poorly understood distribution in southeast Queensland (SEQ). A citizen science project was initiated in 2018 to overcome low detection probabilities and grow knowledge of the distribution of Powerful Owl in (SEQ). Predicting where Powerful Owl occur in the landscape is of growing importance due to ongoing clearing of forest habitat in SEQ. In this research, we produced a species distribution model (SDM) using MaxEnt to improve our understanding of the number of Powerful Owl in SEQ, to help us improve where we target survey effort, and to determine how much additional work will be required to develop accurate, high resolution mapping suitable for use in planning layers. Recently collected data, historic data and ecologically relevant environmental predictors were used to generate this SDM. The model was refined iteratively to account for spatial sampling bias. The predictions generated from the best model indicated that Powerful Owl habitat is widely distributed throughout SEQ and suggests that Powerful Owls are more abundant than previously thought. Available observation data suggest there could be 350 pairs, while SDM estimates indicate there could be over 950 pairs in SEQ. More work is needed to verify these estimates, and to develop models of sufficient accuracy to be incorporated in planning schemes. These improvements will require better predictor variables, more representative sampling, and additional measures to address sampling bias.

Bands, T. L., Mott, B., Zeleny, J., Wright, M., Clemens, R. S. (2020) Nest site fidelity, breeding success, and occupancy of Powerful Owl Ninox strenua as indicated from a long-term citizen science project in New South Wales. In Review Sunbird.

ABSTRACT

Birdlife Australia’s Powerful Owl Project has amassed a dataset on Powerful Owl (Ninox strenua) territory occupancy and breeding success that spans 12 years and is inclusive of 228 separate territories in the greater Sydney region of New South Wales. Year-on-year Powerful Owl nest site fidelity averages 76%, with a recruitment rate of 1.02 fledglings per territorial pair. On average, breeding is attempted in 59% of occupied territories each year, and an average of 92% of territories are occupied in any given year. Over four years, 46% of pairs switched nest trees at least once. Statistical tests did not reveal any difference in the number of chicks produced if pairs switched nest trees or re-used nest trees to which they had fidelity. No relationships were found between average breeding success in a territory and human population density nor distance to nearest neighbouring Powerful Owl nest tree. Recruitment rates suggest stable recruitment in this largely suburban population of Powerful Owl. The switching of nesting trees by Powerful Owl reinforces the importance of having large trees with hollows in the landscape. Long-term Powerful Owl recruitment will likely require multiple potential nesting trees, as well as hollows for their preferred arboreal prey.

Review of conservation status of three forest owls

The summer bushfires of 2019/2020 prompted a review of the conservation status of three forest owls of eastern Australia including the Powerful Owl, the Greater Sooty Owl, and the Southern Masked Owl. At this time data was found to be insufficient to warrant listing under IUCN criteria, but we report the findings of the review below.

Further work to confirm the population impacts of the recent fires, to quantify population declines, or which demonstrate the impact of high mortality rates or poor breeding rates on population viability will be required to demonstrate that thresholds for IUCN listing have been met.

Data were not sufficient to capture population change throughout most of the range of these three forest owls. When records were excluded if within 50km of Melbourne Sydney or Brisbane, there were few records left to assess population change throughout most of these species’ ranges (mean # of records each year in remote areas: Powerful Owl = 72; Greater Sooty Owl = 18; Southern Masked Owl = 20).

The criteria for listing species as threatened have become more stringent in recent years. For species that are declining, thresholds need to be exceeded in a time period spanning over three generations. For Photo: Australian Greater Sooty Owl; Amanda Robertson these owls the time periods are 24 years for Powerful Owl, 17 years for Australian Greater Sooty Owl, and 12 years for Southern Masked Owl. Under IUCN, criterion A thresholds for a vulnerable or near threatened listing would be the most likely to be met. However, evidence would need to indicate that the population had declined by 30% for a vulnerable listing to be given or by 25% for a near threatened listing.

While the threats highlighted below lead us to suspect that these thresholds may have been exceeded, we do not have sufficient data to demonstrate these declines have happened. Population declines are inferred due to ongoing loss of large hollow-bearing trees, forest clearing, and recent extensive bush fires. Global warming is expected to increase the likelihood of both fire and drought throughout the range of these species. Overall forest habitat and large trees with hollows are predicted to continue to be lost.

Further, while these thresholds were exceeded when looking at the amount of habitat impacted by fires in 2019/20, fire severity was not believed to have been severe enough in all these areas to have resulted in over 25% of these populations to have been killed in the fires

(Table 6). This was based on assumptions made about four classes of fire severity impacted populations, with 10%, 30%, 80% and 100% of each population assumed to have been killed in the four classes of fire severity.

None of these species would currently meet criterion B or D. Currently, only the Australian Greater Sooty Owl has a population of less than 10,000 mature individuals in the population which is one of the thresholds for Criterion C. However, Criterion C also requires thresholds of 30% or 25% decline are clearly demonstrated with data. Criterion E requires a population viability analysis, which has not been conducted for any of these species. It has been noted that Powerful Owl in urban areas have high mortality rates, and are known to occupy territories where they cannot breed, but no data on mortality or recruitment is available from most of any of these species ranges.

Table 6. Estimates of fire impacts and population decline are reported here.

Species % habitat % habitat % habitat % killed 2 Rate of p-value of burned 1 burned 2 burned 3 annual population mean and population decline 4 range decline 4 Powerful 31.5 17.7 23 10.6 -0.002 0.89 Owl (7.4 – 14.9) Greater 40.3 32.5 38 19.6 -0.2 0.64 Sooty Owl (13.6 – 27.4)

Southern 32.2 20.1 NA 12.0 -0.014 0.711 Masked (7.4 – 14.9) Owl 1 Estimate taken from this document 2 Estimates reported from separate internal assessment by BirdLife Australia 3 Estimate reported from published paper (Ward et al. 2020). 4 Estimates based on reporting rates from data > 100km from cities (few records)

Powerful Owl Ninox Strenua The following people helped compile the information in the review below: Larry Chen, Robert Clemens, Nick Bradsworth, Holly Parsons, Beth Mott, and Raylene Cooke.

Overview The Powerful Owl is currently listed as Vulnerable in Queensland, Vulnerable in New South Wales, and Threatened in Victoria. It is not listed under the EPBC Act, no recovery plan or federal conservation advice has been drafted. IUCN status is currently at Least Concern and our review did not uncover sufficient data to change that listing. Combined threats are suspected to have impacted these species enough for listing, but evidence is lacking.

Table 7. Summary of Powerful Owl population

Metric Estimate Minimum Maximum Reliability Source Extent of 396,000 km2 376,000 km2 415,800 km2 High This occurrence document Area of 195,000 km2 NA NA Medium BirdLife 2020 Occupancy Number of 13,000 7,000 19,000 High This mature document, individuals Garnett & Crowley 2000 Generation 8.2 6.2 10.3 Low Bird et al. Time (2020)

Infraspecific taxa Monotypic.

Taxonomic uniqueness: high (Hogan 2008); subspecies/species: 1, species/genus: 37, genera/family: 28, families/order: 2.

Range The Powerful Owl is endemic to eastern and southeastern Australia, where it is found mainly on the seaward side of the Great Dividing Range (HANZAB 2006). Most widespread in New South Wales, where approximately half of the population is estimated to occur (NSW Scientific Committee 2008). In Queensland, found only in the southeast, principally south of the Dawson River (Pavey 1993; HANZAB 2006). Limited to southeast in Victoria, and presumed vagrant in Southern Australia (HANZAB 2006).

Abundance The number of mature individuals is suspected to be at around 13,000 based on MaxEnt predicted area of occurrence divided by a suspected average home range / density (Clemens 2020). Ongoing population decline is inferred from forest clearing (Evans 2016; DEC, NSW

2006; Bruce et al. 2020), and widespread bushfires in the summer of 2019-20. Recent modelling indicated that 31% of this species’ predicted area of occurrence was impacted by these bushfires. Threats across this owl’s range are likely leading to a significant loss of habitat.

The global population of mature individuals has been estimated to be at approximately 7000 individuals (Garnett and Crowley 2000), with 3000-4250 individuals in the core of its range and 2000-3250 in New South Wales (Garnett & Crowley 2000). Another estimate places the population in New South Wales at 2000 pairs, with a minimum of 10,000 individuals (Debus 1994; Kavanah 1997). In greater Melbourne, there are estimates of around 30 pairs (Cooke 2020). In urban Sydney the known number of territories has expanded from 50 to over 230 territories since 2011. Whilst some of this population increase can be attributed to greater monitoring effort, historical indigenous records from the area do not identify the regular presence of Powerful Owls in the 1940s and earlier, suggesting the urban population increase is a recent phenomenon (B. Mott, pers. comm. BirdLife July 2020). In Greater Melbourne, there are estimates of around 30 pairs (N. Bradsworth, pers. comm. Deakin University July 2020).

While the species has shown adaptive ability in utilising degraded and anthropogenic habitats such as city parks (Isacc et al. 2014), deforestation through logging and bushfires have caused an ongoing decline in its population (HANZAB 2006; Department of Environment and Conservation (NSW) 2006; NSW Scientific Committee 2008).

Ecology Powerful Owls inhabit sclerophyll forests and woodlands, as well as forest edges, plantations and extensive parklands (Isaac et al. 2008, Olsen et al. 2020). This species frequently favors dense, well-shaded areas of structurally diverse forest, especially close to gullies or streams, for roosting (Cooke et al. 2002, Olsen et al. 2020). Eggs are laid in the winter, from May to June (NANZAB 2006), in the large tree cavities averaging 1 meter wide and 2 meters deep (NSW Scientific Committee 2008; Cooke 2000). Owls typically select older living trees of advanced age; breeding pairs in Victoria selected trees between 350 and 500+ years of age (HANZAB 2006). Diet consists of significant numbers of medium-sized to large mammals, particularly arboreal species, including Common Ringtail Possums and Greater Gliders (HANZAB 2006; Cooke & Wallis 2004; Cooke et al. 2006). Powerful Owls predate primarily arboreal and occasionally terrestrial mammals, as well as bats, birds, and invertebrates (HANZAB 2006). In Sydney there are several pairs eating mostly rats and rabbits (B. Mott, pers. comm. BirdLife July 2020). Home range size estimates are extremely varied and are likely linked to prey availability, from over 4700 ha in box-ironbark forests (Soderquist and Gibbons 2007) to as small as 338 ha in suburban Melbourne (Bradsworth et al. 2017). Movement patterns within their home range is heavily dependent on the amount of riparian vegetation available, with areas of concentrated movement and hunting close to river systems (Cater et al. 2019).

Monitoring A variety of monitoring has been undertaken at local scales over the years (HANZAB 2006). In Victoria, research and monitoring of the urban Melbourne population has continued for over 25 years at Deakin University (Cooke et al. 2018). In the broader Sydney region, BirdLife has run a monitoring program (Bain et al. 2014), which has expanded to Melbourne and Brisbane in recent years. Generally, there is only opportunistic monitoring throughout most of the Powerful Owl’s range (e.g. Bilney 2013).

Threats Trends of deforestation for purposes such as timber, ranching, and settlement expansion have resulted in loss of habitat for this species (NSW Scientific Committee 2008; Isaac et al. 2013; Cooke et al. 2017). In all, 53% of Powerful Owl forest habitat is estimated to have been lost (Simmonds et al. 2019). Additionally, the loss of suitable nesting trees through the logging of large, old-growth stands and replacement with secondary growth and commercial plantations is likely to contribute to a downturn in the owl’s range and abundance (NSW Scientific Committee 2008). While the owl has shown itself capable of utilising some human- altered or artificial habitats (Bradsworth et al. 2017), there still exists the risk of habitat fragmentation as a result of extensive urban and suburban sprawl (NSW Scientific Committee 2008; Bradsworth et al. 2017; Carter et al. 2019). In the sub-urban environments around Sydney, mortality due to either collision or electrocution has been estimated to be as high as 20% annually (BirdLife unpublished data). This could be increasing adult mortality past thresholds that would push local populations toward exponential decline (McCarthy et al. 1999). In the Brisbane region, the amount of clearing for settlement has roughly doubled in recent years (Technology and Innovation 2015). Within remaining forests there is evidence of a decline in large, hollow-bearing trees due to past logging activities and repeated prescribed burning (Eyre 2005; Eyre et al. 2010). Additional risks due to powerline collisions, pesticide or rodenticide poisoning, and vehicle strikes (Grilo et al. 2020; Slater et al. 2020; Lohr and Davis 2018; Debus and Chafer 1994; NSW Scientific Committee 2008) are also present.

While forest clearing rates have increased dramatically in recent years in Australia (Evans 2016; Reside et al. 2017; Taylor 2015), much of that clearing has taken place outside the Powerful Owl’s predicted area of occurrence (Evans 2016), with only approximately 1% of these forests cleared since in the last 17 years (Ward et al. 2019). However, the summer bush fires of 2019-2020 which burned more than 80,000 km2 of forest, impacted 31.5% of the predicted area of occurrence of Powerful Owl (Clemens 2020). A separate recent paper reviewing fire impacts estimated that approximately 23% of Powerful Owl habitat was impacted (Ward et al. 2020). While we suspect that the recent BirdLife modelling is more precise as it was focused solely on three species of owls and used predictor variables related to these species such as forest cover, it highlights the uncertainty regarding the extent of impact. It is also unclear how variable fire severity throughout these areas might have resulted in population impacts (Ward et al. 2020), but old hollow-bearing trees would have likely been at higher risk of being lost to fire (Salmona et al. 2018). Unfortunately, the

frequency and severity of fires are likely to be exacerbated by climate change (Cary and Banks 2000; Williams et al. 2009). Drought-related dieback is also a growing threat associated with drought and exemplified in Western Australia (Matusick et al. 2013; Hoffmann et al. 2019)

Powerful Owls require large old trees with large hollows to breed. Old growth tree loss will likely be exacerbated as the climate changes with predicted increasing warm, dry days leading to up to a 65% increase in fire danger in southeast Australia (Williams et al. 2009). Increasing fire frequency and severity will likely further reduce available large hollows (Salmona et al. 2018). Threats to old trees are increasing and include: droughts, fire, pests, forest clearing for agriculture, road or infrastructure fire breaks, timber harvesting, and climate change (Lindenmayer et al. 2016). There is a progressive decline in numbers of hollow-bearing trees in production forests as logging rotations become shorter and as dead stags collapse (Ball et al. 1999; Lindenmayer et al. 2012).

Table 8. Summary of Powerful Owl threats

Threat Impact Certainty Research Management Management Principal source priority priority feasibility Fire very high very high high high low Williams, et al. (2009), Salmona et al. (2018) Drought medium medium high high low Lindenmayer et al. (2016), Matusick et al. (2013) Climate change very high high high high low Williams et al. (2009) Forest pests low low high high low Lindenmayer, et al. and pathogens (2016) Commercial low medium low low low Taylor 2015 logging Forest Clearing high high medium high high Evans 2016 Rodenticides low low medium medium high Lohr and Davis (2018) Automobile medium medium medium low low Grilo et al. (2020) collision Electrocution medium medium medium low high Slater, et al. (2020)

Australian Greater Sooty Owl Tyto tenebricosa tenebricosa The following people helped compile the information in the review below: Larry Chen, Robert Clemens, Nick Bradsworth, Holly Parsons, and Raylene Cooke.

Overview The Australian Greater Sooty Owl is currently listed as Vulnerable in New South Wales, and Threatened in Victoria. It is not listed under the EPBC Act, no recovery plan or federal conservation advice has been drafted. IUCN status is currently at Least Concern and our review did not uncover sufficient data to change that listing. Combined threats are suspected to have impacted this species enough for listing, but evidence is lacking.

Table 9. Summary of Australian Greater Sooty Owl population

Metric Estimate Minimum Maximum Reliability Source Extent of 177,845 km2 169,000 km2 186,737 km2 Medium This occurrence document Area of 115,000 km2 NA NA Medium BirdLife 2020 Occupancy Number of 8,000 4,000 11,500 Medium BirdLife 2020 mature individuals Generation 5.7 4.3 7.1 Low Bird et al. Time (2020)

Infraspecific taxa Tyto tenebricosa arfaki of New Guinea is the only other recognised subspecies.

Taxonomic uniqueness: subspecies/species: 2, species/genus: 13, genera/family: 2, families/order: 2.

Range The Australian subspecies (tenebricosa) of Greater Sooty Owl (Tyto tenebricosa) is endemic to eastern and south-eastern Australia, ranging from east-central Queensland south to the Dandenong and Strzelecki ranges of Victoria (Bruce et al. 2020). Suitable habitat is lacking in the Hunter Valley, so there appears to be a gap in this subspecies distribution in this area (NSW Scientific Committee 2008). Subspecies occurs from coastal lowlands west towards the tablelands and dividing range (NSW Scientific Committee 2008). Majority of range likely occurs in New South Wales, where more than 5000 birds are estimated to occur (Garnett & Crowley 2000).

Abundance The number of mature individuals is suspected to be at around 8,000 based on MaxEnt predicted area of occurrence divided by a suspected average home range / density (Clemens 2020). Ongoing population decline is inferred from forest clearing (Evans 2016; Bruce et al. 2020), with modelling of recent intense and widespread bushfires in the summer of 2019-20

indicating over 40% of this species’ predicted area of occurrence was impacted (Clemens 2020). Threats across this owl’s range are likely leading to a significant loss of habitat. This species’ difficulty of detection (Bruce et al. 2020) explains how a traditional “area of occurrence” approach of using a (16 km2) grid over occurrence records results in a much lower estimated AOO of 4,000 km2, while our MaxEnt approach accounts for survey bias and doubles the more traditional estimate. The density of Sooty Owl across the range of predicted suitable habitat is suspected to be lower than a maximum saturation with average home range sizes, therefore placing the total population at under 10,000 mature individuals.

Ecology The Australian Greater Sooty favours moist or wet forests, particularly rainforests, moist eucalyptus forests, and gully forests with a dense mid- and understory (NSW Scientific Committee 2008; Bruce et al. 2020). Eggs are laid in tree hollows up to 10 meters deep, and 30 centimetres or more in girth (NSW Scientific Committee 2008). Rock crevices and caves are also used (Bruce et al. 2020). Breeding time varies, though typically between March and April (HANZAB 2006). Lays 1-2 eggs (Bruce et al. 2020). Carnivorous, taking a range of mammals, birds, insects, and others (NSW Scientific Committee 2008), though mammals predominate (Bruce et al. 2020, HANZAB 2006).

Monitoring A variety of monitoring has been undertaken at local scales over the years (HANZAB 2006). Monitoring is opportunistic throughout much of the Australian Greater Sooty Owl’s range.

Threats It is estimated that, historically, 37% of the Australian Greater Sooty Owl’s forest habitat has been lost (Simmonds et al. 2019). While forest clearing rates have increased dramatically in recent years in Australia (Evans 2016; Reside et al. 2017; Taylor 2015), much of that clearing has taken place outside the Australian Greater Sooty Owl’s predicted area of occurrence (Evans 2016), with only approximately 1% of these forests cleared in the last 17 years (Ward et al. 2019). However, the summer bush fires of 2019-2020, which burned more than 80,000 km2 of forest, impacted 40.3% of the predicted area of occurrence of Australian Greater Sooty Owl (Clemens 2020). A separate recent paper reviewing fire impacts estimated that approximately 38% of Australian Greater Sooty Owl habitat was impacted (Ward et al. 2020). While we suspect that the recent BirdLife modelling is more precise as it was focused solely on three species of owls and used predictor variables related to these species such as forest cover, it highlights the uncertainty regarding the extent of impact. It is also unclear how variable fire severity throughout these areas might have resulted in population impacts (Ward et al. 2020), but old hollow-bearing trees would have likely been at higher risk of being lost to fire (Salmona et al. 2018). Unfortunately, the frequency and severity of fires are likely to be exacerbated by climate change (Cary and Banks 2000; Williams, Bradstock et al. 2009). Drought-related dieback is also a growing threat associated with climate change and exemplified in Western Australia (Matusick et al. 2013; Hoffmann et al. 2019)

Greater Sooty Owls require large old trees with large hollows to breed. Old growth tree loss will likely be exacerbated as the climate changes with predicted increasing warm, dry days leading to up to a 65% increase in fire danger in southeast Australia (Williams et al. 2009). Increasing fire frequency and severity will likely further reduce available large hollows (Salmona et al. 2018). Threats to old trees are increasing and include: droughts, fire, pests, forest clearing for agriculture, road or infrastructure fire breaks, timber harvesting, and climate change (Lindenmayer et al. 2016). There is a progressive decline in numbers of hollow-bearing trees in production forests as logging rotations become shorter and as dead stags collapse (Ball et al., 1999; Lindenmayer et al., 2012).

Rodenticides (Lohr and Davis 2018), electrocution (Slater, et al. 2020), and automobile collision (Grilo et al. 2020) are known threats to raptors.

Table 10. Summary of Australian Greater Sooty Owl threats

Threat Impact Certainty Research Management Management Principal source priority priority feasibility Fire very high very high high high low Williams, et al. (2009), Salmona et al. (2018) Drought medium medium high high low Lindenmayer et al. (2016), Matusick et al. (2013) Climate change very high high high high low Williams et al. (2009) Forest pests low low high high low Lindenmayer, et and pathogens al. (2016) Commercial low medium low low low Taylor 2015 logging Forest Clearing high high medium high high Evans 2016 Rodenticides low low low medium high Lohr and Davis (2018) Automobile low low medium low low Grilo et al. (2020) collision Electrocution low low medium low high Slater, et al. (2020)

Southern Masked Owl Tyto novaehollandiae novaehollandiae The following people helped compile the information in the review below: Larry Chen, Robert Clemens, Nick Bradsworth, Holly Parsons, and Raylene Cooke.

Overview The Southern Masked Owl is currently listed as Vulnerable in New South Wales, Threatened in Victoria, Endangered in South Australia, and a priority taxon in Western Australia. It is not listed under the EPBC Act, no recovery plan or federal conservation advice has been drafted. IUCN status is currently at Least Concern and our review did not uncover sufficient data to change that listing. Combined threats are suspected to have impacted this species enough for listing, but evidence is lacking.

Table 11. Summary of Southern Masked Owl population

Infraspecific taxa Nine subspecies, of which five in Australia (including T. n. galei, T. n. kimberli, T. n. melvillensis and T. n. novaehollandiae) and four on islands to the north.

Taxonomic uniqueness: very high; subspecies/species: 9, species/genus: 13, genera/family: 2, families/order: 2.

Range Southern Masked Owls are found in both far south-west Australia and throughout forests of southeast Queensland (Olsen 2002, HANZAB 2006). They are most common east of the Great Dividing Range and are rarely observed more than 300 kilometres from the coast (Garnett and Crowley 2000; HANZAB 2006). The most records of Southern Masked Owl have been observed in New South Wales (Garnett and Crowley 2000).

Abundance The number of mature individuals is suspected to be at around 12,500 based on MaxEnt predicted area of occurrence divided by a suspected average home range / density (Clemens 2020). Ongoing population decline is inferred from forest clearing (Evans 2016), with recent modelling of intense and widespread bushfires in the summer of 2019-20 indicating that 40.3% of this species’ predicted area of occurrence was impacted (Clemens 2020). Threats

across this owl’s range are likely leading to a significant loss of habitat. Previous estimates of the number of pairs were up to 400 in Victoria and up to 2000 in New South Wales (HANZAB 2006), with a total Australian population estimate of 7,000 mature individuals (Garnett and Crowley 2000). The modelled estimates are larger than previous estimates. Southern Masked Owls are not easy to detect, but they are widely thought to be rare in the wild. They are also widely distributed in a variety of forests in southeast Australia, so it is possible that modelled estimates indicate a more even density of distribution than is present.

Ecology Southern Masked Owl breed and roost in hollows in large trees in a variety of forest types (Garnett and Crowley 2000). Prey includes a variety of mammals, birds and lizards, but they principally take terrestrial mammals. Breeding areas are often next to open areas where they can hunt (HANZAB 2006). Breeding areas are generally associated with riparian areas and pairs tend to occupy a home range from 5 to 10 km2.

Monitoring A variety of monitoring has been undertaken at local scales over the years (HANZAB 2006). Monitoring is opportunistic throughout much of Southern Masked Owl’s range.

Threats Historically, 28% of Masked Owl forest habitat is estimated to have been lost (Simmonds et al. 2019), but estimates are not available by sub-species. While forest clearing rates have increased dramatically in recent years in Australia (Evans 2016; Reside et al. 2017; Taylor 2015), much of that clearing has taken place outside the Southern Masked Owl’s predicted area of occurrence (Evans 2016), with only approximately 1% of these forests cleared in the last 17 years (Ward et al. 2019). However, the summer bush fires of 2019-2020 which burned more than 80,000 km2 of forest, impacted 32.2% of the predicted area of occurrence of Southern Masked Owl (Clemens 2020). Unfortunately, the frequency and severity of fires are likely to be exacerbated by climate change (Cary and Banks 2000; Williams, Bradstock et al. 2009). Drought-related dieback is also a growing threat associated with climate change and exemplified in Western Australia (Matusick et al. 2013; Hoffmann et al. 2019).

Southern Masked Owls require large old trees with large hollows to breed. Old growth tree loss will likely be exacerbated under climate change, with predicted increasing warm, dry days leading to up to a 65% increase in fire danger in southeast Australia (Williams et al. 2009). A separate recent paper reviewing fire impacts estimated that approximately 15% of Masked Owl habitat was impacted (Ward et al. 2020). However, a larger proportion of this impact would have been felt by the Southern Masked Owl, as the fires occurred primarily within this subspecies’ habitat. While we suspect that the recent BirdLife modelling is more precise as it was focused solely on three species of owls and used predictor variables related to these species such as forest cover, it highlights the uncertainty regarding the extent of impact. It is also unclear how variable fire severity throughout these areas might have resulted in population impacts (Ward et al. 2020), but old hollow-bearing trees would have

likely been at higher risk of being lost to fire (Salmona et al. 2018). Increasing fire frequency and severity will likely further reduce available large hollows (Salmona et al. 2018). Threats to old trees are increasing and include: droughts, fire, pests, forest clearing for agriculture, road or infrastructure fire breaks, timber harvesting, and climate change (Lindenmayer et al. 2016). There is a progressive decline in numbers of hollow-bearing trees in production forests as logging rotations become shorter and as dead stags collapse (Ball et al., 1999; Lindenmayer et al., 2012).

Rodenticides (Lohr and Davis 2018), electrocution (Slater, et al. 2020), and automobile collision (Grilo et al. 2020) are known threats to raptors. The Masked Owl is not adapting to sub-urban environments.

Table 12. Summary of Southern Masked Owl threats

Threat Impact Certainty Research Management Management Principal source priority priority feasibility Fire very high very high high high low Williams, et al. (2009), Salmona et al. (2018) Drought medium medium high high low Lindenmayer et al. (2016), Matusick et al. (2013) Climate change very high high high high low Williams et al. (2009) Forest pests low low high high low Lindenmayer, et and pathogens al. (2016) Commercial low medium low low low Taylor 2015 logging Forest Clearing high high high high high Evans 2016 Rodenticides medium medium medium medium high Lohr and Davis (2018) Automobile low low medium low low Grilo et al. (2020) collision Electrocution low low medium low high Slater, et al. (2020)

Comparisons of forest plots near Powerful Owl breeding and random locations

An exploratory investigation was made into the differences between Powerful Owl breeding locations and randomly selected locations within the Powerful Owls range. Specifically, we wanted to identify the average and minimum forest patch size used at Powerful Owl breeding sites. We also wanted to explore if forest patches at Powerful Owl breeding sites differed significantly from random areas. This will build on our

growing understandings of Powerful Photo: Powerful Owl, male, female and chick; Owl habitat requirements (Kavanagh Amanda Robertson 1997, Loyn et al. 2001).

Methods Records that indicated active breeding in Birdata (BirdLife Australia 2020) were collated, plotted and a 1km buffer was generated around each point in ArcGIS. Evidence of breeding included a nest hollow location, breeding behaviour, juveniles sighted, or a group of three or four owls sighted in an area. In well sampled areas overlapping buffered points were eliminated by removing overlapping areas where evidence of breeding location was weaker, and in areas where the evidence was equal, areas were removed randomly. The clearest records of breeding locations were breeding hollows, followed by recently fledged young, and breeding behaviour. In areas outside the data rich areas of Sydney and Brisbane non- overlapping areas were retained if three or four Powerful Owls were recorded in winter or spring. This left 190 non-overlapping breeding areas ~314 ha in size.

A set of 190 randomly selected locations was then selected that was at least two kilometres from the breeding plot centroids but no more than 20km from a centroid. This was done by generating a merged 20km buffer around each breeding centroid, then subtracting a 2km buffer from those polygons, and creating random points within the remaining polygons. Each of the random points was then buffered by 1km resulting in a second set of 190 random areas ~314 ha in size.

Four variables were summarised within each random and breeding plot. The first variable was total forest cover where forest classes of closed forest, rainforest, woodland and open

woodland were reclassified into one forest class (ABARES, 2019). Annual rainfall was then totalled from each plot (Vanderwal, 2012). The average plot elevation was then calculated from a 9 second DEM (Geoscience 2008). Finally, the length of all streams within each plot was calculated to represent stream density.

Plots were then imported into RStudio (RStudio Team 2015, R Core Team 2018), data was then extracted and either totalled, or averaged using the following packages: ‘raster’ (Hijmans 2017), ‘rdgal’ (Bivand et al. 2018), and ‘dplyr’ (Wickham et al. 2019).

Results Breeding plot had significantly more forest cover, more annual rainfall, and were at lower elevations than random plots (Figure 8). The density of streams was not significantly different at breeding and random plots.

Breeding plots had a median of 59% of the plot covered in forest or 187 ha of forest in a 314- ha plot. Random plots had a median of 21% of the plot covered in forest or 65 ha of forest in a 314-ha plot. Forest cover in breeding plots ranged from 15 ha to 314 ha, while random plots ranged from 0 to 314 ha. Only two breeding plots had less than 30 ha of forest, and only five of the 190 has less than 50 ha of forest. Breeding locations with less than 50 ha of forest were not places where breeding hollows were identified, so it is possible these locations were simply ones that juveniles dispersed to soon after breeding. In Queensland, all breeding locations had more than 50 ha of forest. However, based on Google Earth imagery there were two locations where the patch of contiguous forest around the breeding hollow was only ~30-ha in size, but these areas had forested corridors joining the breeding patch to other larger patches of forest, and housing in the area was low density with many trees. We did not assess how low-density housing with many trees was classified in the forest layers and this is something as well as connectivity that should be explored further. Together the available evidence indicates that breeding in southeast Queensland is unlikely to occur in areas with less than 50 ha of forest habitat, and is more common in areas where over ½ of the area is forested.

It was surprising to find that annual rainfall was higher in breeding areas than in random plots no more than 20km away, but it is likely that forested areas have higher rainfall totals. The finding that Powerful Owl were found at significantly lower elevations than random sites is consistent with the idea that Powerful Owl are found predominantly in low-land or bottom land forest. However, there is scarce sampling for Powerful Owl at higher elevations, so it is possible that this finding relates to sampling bias. It was also surprising that stream density was not significantly higher in breeding plots, but this analysis did not distinguish between streams that flow regularly, and those that are usually dry. We would expect Powerful Owl to be found more regularly near streams that flow more regularly.

We will continue to explore the habitat characteristics associated with breeding sites, and breeding success. We expect some improvements by only using breeding locations where the breeding hollow has been located, and by collecting some vegetation data at plots centered on breeding hollows and random locations.

Figure 8. Comparisons of Poweful Owl breeding plots and random plots 2km to 20 away from breeding locations all ~314 ha in size. A = comparisons of total forest cover significantly different Mann-Whitney U p-value < 0.001; B = comparison of totalled annual rainfall significantly different Mann-Whitney U p-value < 0.001; C = comparison of elevation significantly different Mann-Whitney U p-value < 0.001; D = comparison of stream density showed no significant differences.

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Appendix A. Powerful Owl Project Volunteer Survey Results 2020

What changes would you like to see in the project? Since all other owls now look outnumbered by Powls it would be great to expand the program to all other owls. I think I would like see survey information from the other surveys in assigned areas such as cabbage tree creek, bunyaville and one mile creek, cashmere Communication is improving but i would like some support on printing copy of information to deliver to residents etc. The project itself was great! I rather suggest something in the next season as I just joined the project. More interaction between those just starting out in the project and those with experience. I know COVID-19 made it difficult for face to face, but there was a lack of interaction at other levels, such as email, online meetings it even phone calls. None Excellent as is Totally happy with it. Nothing needs changing. We are very happy with the project. More organised survey walks with experienced people Perfect as is. None More information about recording the data and trouble shooting None that I can think of Better training, compulsory training and rudimentary certification, more objective and transparent protocols which must be signed off on by all members, more involvement in the development of protocols particularly those pertaining to ethics, somewhat more academic output, much less emphasis on photography on social media groups, better networking including perhaps a dedicated website with portal, significant improvement of the Birdata app (including controls which default to private lists for P Owl project observations), more advanced management structure The BirdData app via which we record our sightings sometimes doesn’t seem to reliably work with all locations (e.g., D’Aguilar NP, or Mt Coot-tha forest don’t come up via the location search). Many times, I’ve gone to enter sightings or calls heard, but the App seems stuck on locations near Sydney- even when I ensure my phone’s GPS is on... Sign up and form filling is cumbersome and not user friendly more information passed between participants in each small area

Covid really killed off my participation this year. Notwithstanding that I would have undertaken more surveys if I had linked up with more people. Get some social benefit. There was always talk of linking up people but it never happened. It is a pretty inconvenient assignment; going out on dusk (dinner time) and not actually doing much walking but going to places that one would not normally walk. None Perhaps a twice a year meeting of smaller (area-territory) would improve communication and knowledge on a local level. Perhaps a twice a year meeting of smaller (area-territory) would improve communication and knowledge on a local level. Recording of sightings of a known pair is a valid part of the project, rather than surveying for new territories. More volunteers involved. I would like the project to continue throughout the Summer to learn more of the outcome of owlets (mortality vs survival rates). Nothing to add Nothing to add

What could we do to increase the benefits of participating? Great project, exceeded any expectations, nothing comes to mind how this could be even better. I don't think I need additional benefits Some more support connecting residents and work with government especially QLD It feels inspiring when I hear or see an owl, so knowing where it is most likely to find an owl Look for other birds as well once the PO sometimes is not present. It would be a way to keep people engaged. More interaction More events once covid allows to bring more people together No extra benefits needed Nothing Have several organised local surveys after the training Happy as is. None Have a T Shirt for the project. Perhaps some personal accounts of joys of seeing the owls Certification for members who complete training and familiarise themselves with protocols, opportunities for official middle management positions Set up a private FB page be more informative with what was seen/heard in each survey area Doing a good job now. As mentioned, I think encouraging closer contact with other participants in a smaller area or by suburb, for instance, West Logan, East Ipswich, McDowell etc. would bring benefits. Some organised field trips to known nest sites Add extra hours to the day - you guys are great, life is a struggle, wish I could help more More workshops I would very much like to have a positive sighting End of season social gathering perhaps (though difficult to implement at the current time) End of season social gathering perhaps (though difficult to implement at the current time) More group meetings :)

What kind of further field training would you like? Once first owl is found no further training needed. I'm good - just being able to ask questions of Rob/Matt/Jasmine is enough How to use the recording machine Identification of material in pellets Recognize better PO environment and used resources (trees that would work as a nest). It would be nice to try to set up a quiz with the different birds and calls so we could feel more confident to identify species. More on identification of calls, types of hollows to look for and other nocturnal animals Habitat I guess Would like to know more about calls of other night creatures that I might hear when I am in the field Learning skills to help us identify other birds we see or hear on our surveys would be very helpful. More walks with people who know how to find the owls NA None Are we allowed off tracks? Not applicable Field training needs to be more formalised, should be compulsory, and trainees must be assessed much more thoroughly for their understanding. Go out with experienced spotters None I think more, maybe shorter field visits could be considered. For example, visit a site that contains some wash to show the general layout of the areas the Owls like to roost could be of assistance. It has been my experience that newer researchers concentrate too much on trying to spot the Owls roosting instead of looking for signs they are actually in the area first. bush safety e.g. snake bite response. Capacity to form local groups Just more info grams in emails To accompany experienced researchers on field trips. More workshops. Nothing to add Nothing to add Some recordings of Baby Powerful Owls

What have you learned from the project? It was an eye opener. Before visiting first workshop I was of an opinion Powerful Owls are rare and impossible to find, as opposed to Southern Boobooks, but in fact in Redlands I now there are more Powls than any other owl. a lot about p'owl behaviour and calling (and other ninox owls) and what constitutes p'owl habitat. Where to look for powerful owl. A lot about owls, and a deeper understanding of the natural areas that I've surveyed in. The importance of communication with everyone involved in the project, whether it be in the field or in volunteer engagement. Patience; more often than not having to hear signs of Powerful Owl presence later in the evening. Tracking/problem solving; having to observe canopy coverage with types of trees, other bird behaviours, creek direction, whitewash and feathers to find the likely location of the owls. The importance of following a survey/data entrance routine. How to Identify different species within each forest. Habits of PO and other nocturnal birds. That there are different owls which can be identified by calls as well as visible features. Powerful owl info. Everything about the owls So much about owls! Patience Did learn some information about owls Powerful owls are difficult to spot Pretty much everything we know about owls. More about birds, owls especially. The range of places they can be found in. Different owls, bird behaviours, different birds, More about nesting habitat to look out for That there are far more Powerful Owls in SEQ than previously thought Powerful owl habitat and behaviour including breeding times Patience That the Owls are initially hard to find but once found I think a pattern of observing them can be worked out without intruding too much on their territory. Bird calls, how to spot POWLS. More aware of the ecology of my local pair of owls About different types of aussie owls Learning about habitat and owl territories amongst many other things. The timing of owlets fledging Owl ecology and habits Owl ecology and habits Trees

Is there anything else you would like to learn? Purely, because I am Redlands local, I would like to know if there are any other owl active? I'd like to know more about how and why they communicate with each other Interact with residents nearby of the habitat and spread awareness of the owl habitats. How the occurrence of every animal species or vegetation type helps each other and how they influence Powerful Owl occurrence No More on the daily routine of the owls Nothing in particular that can't be discovered through further field work. Unsure - probably more about the relationship between owls, environment and protection No The best way to find owls How long should we continue to monitor the group after the young have fledged? Is it better to just note where they appear to have settled while teaching the young, before separating, and moving back towards the nest tree for the breeding season or do we still need to study them in the â€œin between periodâ€ before they start the mating season again? Where they nest and how we can secure future nesting options. Always learning and open to new experiences. More about owlets after fledging. Nothing to add Nothing to add

What improvements would you suggest for the workshops or reference materials? further encouragement for people to actually get out and do surveys Let us know if we should report other birds at the PO survey option. Some description of the area being surveyed were a bit complicated. More learning in the field. Haven't been to one due to covid None No problems Clearer maps Can't think of any Reference material must be subject to revision, must be transparent and accessible at any time through a common portal, and must supplement field training. All OK The workshops, in general are very good. I think we should be considering the shorten indoor presentation combined with some sort of field work.

I would like to see a QR code, or similar, linked to Owl calls on all material handed out so that the public can immediately reference the calls when reading things like our letterbox leaflet. More field-based workshops where possible