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US Wild Animal Rescue Database: Animal Help Now
International Wildlife Rescues: RescueShelter.com
Australia Rescue Help: WIRES
Germany-Austria-Switzerland-Italy Wild Bird Rescue: wildvogelhilfe.org
If you find an injured owl:
Note your exact location so the owl can be released back where it came from. Contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitation specialist to get correct advice and immediate assistance.
Minimize stress for the owl. If you can catch it, toss a towel or sweater over it and get it in a cardboard box or pet carrier. It should have room to be comfortable but not so much it can panic and injure itself. If you can’t catch it, keep people and animals away until help can come.
Do not give food or water! If you feed them the wrong thing or give them water improperly, you can accidentally kill them. It can also cause problems if they require anesthesia once help arrives, complicating procedures and costing valuable time.
If it is a baby owl, and it looks safe and uninjured, leave it be. Time on the ground is part of their growing up. They can fly to some extent and climb trees. If animals or people are nearby, put it up on a branch so it’s safe. If it’s injured, follow the above advice.
For more detailed help, see the OwlPages Rescue page.
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Looking it up quick, successful hybridization, meaning the offspring can reproduce, seems very common in birds, with somewhere 10-20% of species being able to do it. I found one old study from the 70s putting mammals at 6% and birds for 10%.
I know animals like mules are typically infertile, and the fancy hybrids like zonkeys and ligers/tions are also. It seems to be the males of these hybrids that are infertile, females seem fine.
Sparred Owls, the hybrids of the Spotted/Barred pairings are usually killed when they do these programs, so I dont know how much they've actually been studied. They seem to have a mix of both physical attributes like coloration, a mix of spots and stripes, and also a mixed of behavior and calls.
I feel bad the headline is going to get not many people to click on it here, but that's the actual title of the article... I do think this is an important issue now and is only going to become more important in the future when the same is going to happen to other species if we can't pull the environment back and this starts to happen with more and more species.
The biggest downside to the hybrids will be if the hybrids are more successful than the actual Spotted Owls, if we magically come up with a solution/breeding program/environmental fix/genetic miracle, etc., how do we ensure we're "bringing back" the actual Spotted Owl.
Yes, the article title is unfortunate. I have changed the post title.