I'm a spotted owl biologist by profession and a nature photographer by passion. I've worked with these wonderful yet very threatened birds for the past five years. The last three of those years I have spent in Northern California, both in the coastal redwood forests and in the forests of the Sierra Nevada, where the owls tuck themselves away in dark canyons among other elusive wildlife. Though I see myself first as a field biologist, I am deeply passionate about my photography, and it is a tremendous force that drives me to document how these owls live and the mysterious, beautiful forests in which they live.
I believe that providing an intimate glimpse into these owls’ lives is especially urgent now, before the chance of their extinction becomes a possibility. The spotted owl’s fate, disturbed by a tremendous logging industry in the Pacific Northwest and the Sierra Nevada, has been further complicated by the invasion of the eastern barred owl. The barred owl, a close cousin of the spotted owl, used recent forest establishments in the Great Plains (due primarily to land settlement practices and fire suppression) to expand its eastern range to overlap the spotted owl’s range. Being a larger and more aggressive owl, it has displaced the spotted owl out of its former, old-growth forest habitat into less ideal second or third-growth forests, where they encounter difficulty in reproducing. The barred owl invasion is a complication that will require much research to determine if a solution can be found to prevent the extinction of the spotted owl.
For any questions, please email at dannyhof@gmail.com