I once saw a northern spotted owl.

I was in wildlife professor Rocky Gutierrez’s office at Humboldt State University quizzing him about his owl studies when he asked if I’d ever seen a northern spotted owl. You can’t be expected to advocate for something you’ve never seen, he said, and hustled me into his pickup.

As we bounced along a mountain road in northern California’s Six Rivers National Forest, he explained that there was no doubt the owl’s population was declining. Its ancient forest habitat had been sliced and diced by 100 years of logging. Owls were not living long enough or reproducing fast enough to replace themselves as predators, and habitat loss was taking its toll.

Spotted owls need large territories, Gutierrez said. They can’t be packed into small old–growth reserves. I knew that’s what the U.S. Forest Service had proposed to do in its 1984 spotted owl habitat plan. And if spaced too far apart, the young ones won’t be able to find mates, he explained. That, too, seemed to be a problem with the plan, in which the too small owl preserves were too widely spaced apart.

Gutierrez braked abruptly. We got out and he started hooting into the valley. I heard what sounded like a dog barking in reply. Gutierrez careened down the hillside as I tried to keep up. He stopped and hooted. The dog barked again, closer this time. Off we scampered through the trackless forest.

He stopped. Out of breath, I asked, Where’s the owl?

Look up, he said. Not ten feet above my head, the owl gazed back implacably. It isn’t big, I thought, medium–sized, just as the reference books claimed. It didn’t act like wildlife. Fearless or dumb, it sat showing interest only when Gutierrez scuffed his toe in the duff, mimicking a crawling mouse.

Most people have never seen a spotted owl, so I’m fortunate for even one encounter. For most, the owl has been more important as a symbolic link to ancient forests than as a threatened wildlife species. It’s not about the owl, people would say, it’s about the forests. They’re right, too. No matter how pivotal the owl was in the courts of law, it was always about the forests.