2023 World Owl Conference

Where the city and nature meet.

The Driftless Area was spared by the most recent glaciers and as a result is characterized by steep forested hillsides, deep river valleys, and karst topography. Local habitats include eastern deciduous forest, marshes, and dry bluff prairies.

Denver Holt is the founder and president of the Owl Research Institute and Ninepipes Wildlife Research Center, a non-profit organization in Charlo, Montana dedicated to long-term field research. He has been studying owls for over 40 years, including 29 years working with Snowy Owls and 33 years with Long-eared Owls, among the many species he has investigated over the decades. He has published over 100 papers and technical documents about owls, including four species accounts for Birds of North America and served as the team leader for the Strigidae species accounts for The Handbook of the Birds of the World.

Denver’s keynote presentation will not focus on the sexy Snowy Owl, but rather the lesser understood Long-eared Owl. He and his team have found over 250 nests and banded over 2,000 individuals over the decades. This has allowed him to look at composition of winter roosts, mating systems, stress hormones, plumage differences between the sexes, and to document their declining numbers.