Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl Monitoring and Habitat Assessment on Pima County Conservation Lands

To address obligations linked to the recently approved Pima County Multi-species Conservation Plan, I identified and estimated the quality of habitat for the Cactus Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl (Glaucidium brasilianum cactorum; hereafter “pygmy-owls”) and surveyed owls on Pima County Conservation Lands in south-central Arizona in 2017.

Population trends, extinction risk, and conservation guidelines for Ferruginous Pygmy-Owls in the Sonoran Desert

Climatic flux together with anthropogenic changes in land use and land cover pose major threats to wildlife, but our understanding of their combined impacts is limited. In arid southwestern North America, ferruginous pygmy-owls (Glaucidium brasilianum) are of major conservation concern due to marked declines in abundance linked to changes in land use and land cover during the past century. We reassessed abundance trends of pygmy-owls in northern Mexico across 17 years (2000-2016), which included data gathered over four additional years since inferences were last reported.