Jackson researchers had been attempting to trap the male barred owl for more than a week, but the wary raptor was proving elusive. First, the owl swooped in for the bait mouse but glanced off the trap. The next time, he performed evasive flight maneuvers and escaped.
Then on Thursday, they set up a different trap in the Teton County forest habitat, this time with dho-gazza nets — fine mist nets designed to envelop raptors that unknowingly fly into them.
“And then, literally out of nowhere, the female came in and got caught,” said Bryan Bedrosian, conservation director at the Teton Raptor Center.
His team affixed the female with a GPS tracker. And like that, the bird became the first-known barred owl tagged in Wyoming. To Bedrosian’s knowledge, it’s also the first barred owl tagged in the Rocky Mountains.
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The tagging comes two years after the pair became the first documented nesting barred owls in Wyoming, news that ruffled some scientific feathers. Though they are eastern birds, barred owls have expanded their range westward through the boreal forests of Canada and down into the Pacific Northwest, where they have outcompeted the imperiled northern spotted owls and created significant management conflicts.
A female barred owl was trapped and tagged with a transmitter in May 2025 as part of a project to understand the behavior and any conflicts with other Wyoming raptors. (Courtesy Bryan Bedrosian)
Wyoming raptor experts and others are wary about the impact the adaptable and aggressive barred owls could have on native species like great gray owls.
Those concerns prompted the Teton Raptor Center to initiate the tracking project. Bedrosian and his team aim to tag the female’s wily mate, along with any chicks that hatch from a nest the pair is currently tending. The goal is to gather data on the birds’ movement and behavior to see if and how it’s impacting other raptors.
“I’m not suggesting we do anything right now, but with any invasive species, it’s always easiest to do action at the beginning rather than being reactionary later,” Bedrosian said. Information gathering is step one.
Potential competition
Barred owls are similar in size to great horned owls, but lack the distinctive “horns.” They are similar in profile to great gray owls, but are smaller and have black eyes in contrast to the great grays’ yellow ones.
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In Washington, Oregon and California, their negative impacts on federally protected northern spotted owls have prompted wildlife authorities to classify them as invasive. Barred owls, which are territorial and eat a variety of prey, have edged out the more shy and specialized spotted owls.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has wrestled with the issue for years, even resorting to killing barred owls to help prevent further damage to the declining spotted owls. Those conflicts stirred up concern after the nesting pair was documented in Wyoming by nature photographer Tom Stanton.
A pair of barred owls preen and scratch each other in Teton County. Photographer Thomas Stanton discovered and documented their nest in spring 2023 — the first instance of breeding barred owls in Wyoming. (Thomas Stanton)
But Wyoming, unlike the PNW, has limited data.
The relationship between barred and spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest is “one of the most extensively studied cases of competitive exclusion in the history of wildlife ecology,” said Wyoming Fish and Game Nongame Bird Biologist Zach Wallace.
Meanwhile, Wallace said, “next to nothing is known about potential competition between barred owls and great gray owls.”
The Wyoming project, he said, is a good step toward filling in that information gap. That’s why his agency helped support the application for a grant that’s helping to fund it.
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The National Park Service is also in the loop on the project and monitoring the situation, Bedrosian said.
Data gathering
Barred owl sightings are not unheard of in Wyoming — the 2023 report is just the first documentation of a nesting pair. What scientists are trying to understand now is what the nesting birds do year round, and if others are present in the state and pose competition to other owls.
Teton Raptor Center is approaching the questions with a multi-pronged strategy. One prong involves analyzing years of historic acoustic data in the region.
The center also received grants from the Wyoming Governor’s Big Game License Coalition, the Jackson Hole Community Foundation and the Jackson Conservation District to help monitor the birds with GPS transmitters, satellite trackers and acoustic recorders.
Tom Stanton first glimpsed evidence that barred owls had successfully bred in Wyoming on June 28, 2023, when two fluffy chicks poked their heads from the tree cavity. Their mother watched from the cavity. (Thomas Stanton)
The team this spring placed recorders in roughly 200 spots in the Grand Teton National Park vicinity — those recorders yielded proof that at least one other individual, likely a bachelor male, has been in the region.
The final piece is the tracking. The hope is to tag each member of the nesting family, Bedrosian said. The owls produced three chicks in 2023, but their nest failed in 2024. They are nesting again currently, though it’s unknown how many eggs they have.
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But if they get trackers on all of the owls, ecologists can better understand their territory, where they spend the winter months, where their offspring go and if there is competition with other species.
“One of the biggest concerns is the potential impact on other species that aren’t used to this generalist, very aggressive predator,” Bedrosian said.
“Where this bird has been located is a historic great gray owl territory that is now vacant,” he continued. “And so did the barred owls push out the great gray? We don’t know. But if you take evidence from the Pacific Northwest with the spotted owls, it doesn’t look good.”
This month, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is a fitting time for reflection. Our focus turns toward family and community, and the changing weather causes us to slow down. It is a good time to take stock of the society around us. The Thanksgiving holiday naturally turns our minds to what we are grateful for — what already exists that we cherish. Christmas is a holiday of hope, focused on the promise of what is yet to come. With these holidays in mind, let us reflect on what parts of our state we are thankful for and hopeful about.
Perhaps the thing Wyomingites hold most dear is our heritage. Culturally, we are descended from pioneers and settlers — or from those who came before — and we take that frontier heritage to heart. We value independence, community and overcoming challenges. We are willing to endure hardship to build a life that we want, and we are closely attuned to the natural world and the benefits that it provides. Above all else, we know that our perch in this place is still precarious. These are perspectives that are hard to find elsewhere. They set us apart. By embracing these values, we create a society that fits our circumstances. These ideas would not fit in other places, but they fit here, and for that I am grateful.
I am also thankful for the good stewardship of our forefathers. Wyoming is a harsh place and it’s challenging to thrive here. Most of our land is arid and inhospitable, our physical conditions are difficult, and we are remote from most modern conveniences and luxuries. With poor planning or shortsighted leadership, this place could easily fall into decline.
Fortunately, we have been blessed with the opposite. The state’s early settlers understood the importance of building the infrastructure that would allow for growth. When it became clear that natural resources would power our economy, our leaders decided to set aside large portions of the state’s mineral revenue to support us in perpetuity. The easy decision — the short-sighted decision — would have been to spend those dollars on the needs of the day. They certainly could have built some nice things, and those projects would have been popular. They also would have been fleeting. Because of wise leadership and decisions that focused on the long-term, we all benefit from our state’s bounty.
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Just as we are grateful for the good decisions of the past, we should be hopeful for the future. Despite our state’s challenges, there are many good reasons to have hope. First, our state is full of opportunity. We have space, natural resources, and the ability to be nimble when it comes to building regulatory structures that can support new industries. Our people are hard-working and determined. We have existing expertise in manufacturing and mining that is missing in many other parts of the country. Our climate and location give Wyoming an advantage in attracting computing facilities to locate here. If we take advantage of the opportunities in front of us, Wyoming is poised to thrive, and that gives me hope.
I am also hopeful because there appears to be a growing consensus on the issues we face, which allows us to better meet these challenges. In surveys and conversations about Wyoming’s future, the challenges of economic diversification and talent retention quickly rise to the top. We recognize where our weaknesses are, which is a significant part of the battle. Once we agree on the problem, we can work to find solutions.
Finding a fix is often an easier undertaking than identifying the problem itself. Already, drilling into these challenges has helped us recognize the underlying problems connected to affordable housing, livable spaces, health care access and education. Understanding how these fit together and how improvements in one area can lead to improvements in others puts us on a much more manageable path. It will still not be easy to overcome our hurdles, but the fact that we must wrestle with difficult problems is not unusual or unique. We have answered big questions before. Now that we have a growing consensus on what those problems are, I am far more hopeful about our ability to move forward.
In this holiday season, we should take the time to contemplate the world around us. Self-reflection is important. We should look both behind us and ahead of us, toward the past and gratitude and the future and hope. Our state gives us plenty to consider on both accounts.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The Wyoming Department of Transportation has reported that the ongoing high wind speeds throughout the state have caused 39 vehicles to crash on Wyoming highways so far this week, primarily between Dec. 9 and Dec. 11.
According to a report from WYDOT, most of the crashes occurred on Interstate 80 near Cooper Cove west of Laramie, on I-25 on Wyo Hill south of Cheyenne and along I-25 near Wheatland at Bordeaux. Many blown-over vehicles were underweight, and some trailers were even empty.
WYDOT updates the minimum weights listed on overhead digital messaging signs based on real-time wind speeds. Drivers are encouraged to check weight-based wind closure information often to ensure travel is permitted.
It’s not just commercial vehicles that are at risk, either; the department reports that campers, toy-haulers and other large trailers are also susceptible to blowing over in strong winds.
June skiing and pond-skimming at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado
Skiers and snowboarders soak in the sun and attempt to make it across a pond on a June day at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado
Snowy Range ski area is scheduled to open for the season on Dec. 12.
Daily lift ticket prices range from $40 for children to $69 for adults.
Snowy Range, one of the closest ski areas to Fort Collins, is scheduled to open for the season Dec. 12 and remain open through April 12, 2026.
The ski area had a snow depth of about 30 inches on Dec. 9, spokesperson Kate Lessman told the Coloradoan in an email.
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Daily lift tickets range in price from $59-$69 purchased onsite for adults, $52-$62 for teenagers ages 13-17 and $40-$50 for children ages 5-12. Children age 4 and younger and senior citizens age 70 and older can ski for free. Tickets purchased in advance online are discounted $5.
More: Complete Colorado ski resort guide
Snowy Range Ski and Recreation Area is located about 100 miles northwest of Fort Collins and 36 miles west of Laramie, Wyoming.
For additional information, visit the ski area’s website.
Coloradoan reporter Kelly Lyell can be reached at KellyLyell@coloradoan.com. Follow him on x.com/KellyLyell, threads.net/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.
