The world’s largest, rarest owl is used for target practice in Siberia

The montane forests of far-eastern Russia have given rise to one of the finest nature books of recent years, The Great Soul of Siberia. In it the Korean cameraman Sooyong Park describes his quest to document the life of the region’s Amur tigers, evoking both his totem beast and its remarkable landscape in loving detail.

Jonathan Slaght is an American author, cut from the same cloth in terms of the sheer grit required to cope with the sub-zero temperatures and gloomy, snow-entombed winter woods of Siberia. Nearly 20 years ago he embarked on a similarly arduous mission, not to study the world’s biggest cat, but its largest owl, a ten-pound beast called Blakiston’s fish owl (Bubo blakistoni), named after the English naturalist Thomas Blakiston.

This magnificent monster is unusual for being largely piscivorous and for having lost the precise feather structures which enable most of its family to fly soundlessly. Since subaquatic prey cannot hear any approach, the owl has exchanged the group’s impressive winged silence for an even more dramatic woodwind thrum from its 6.5 feet wingspan.

On the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where a small, if well-documented, population of the owl also persists, it is reputed to take young deer, dogs and cats. But to the indigenous people, Blakiston’s fish owls are bathed in a semi-religious glow as guardian spirits of their homeland. Alas, the Russian communities of the Siberian forests don’t care much either for the emblematic or living creature. As a result, it is as rare and threatened as it is magnificent. Slaght’s pioneering census and ecological surveys have established a population that is marginally healthier than was previously thought, but there are still only about 2,000 breeding pairs in the world.

Siberia’s remarkably tough frontier inhabitants rely on two key occupations — forestry and hunting — and the slaughter of forest wildlife is commonplace.