In July 2019, we expanded our study of the movements and mortality rates of juvenile snowy owls by tagging six young owls in their nests on Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic -- a project we piloted in 2018 in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), Alaska with our colleagues at the Owl Research Institute. This is one of the very few times fledgling snowies have been tracked anywhere in the world, a critical step to understanding juvenile mortality and movements -- a completely unknown part of their life cycle. It was part of an ambitious plan to tag additional juveniles in North America, Greenland and Norway with colleagues in the International Snowy Owl Working Group.

Our plans to continue that work in 2020 and 2021 were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which field work in the Canadian Arctic was suspended out of concern over spreading the virus to remote communities in the North. In 2022 and 2023, due to a low point in the lemming cycle, snowy owls were not breeding on Bylot Island (or much of anywhere else in the eastern Canadian Arctic). We plan to resume this aspect of our study when conditions and owl numbers permit.

Several of the most important elements of Project SNOWstorm take place not in the field but in the lab, where we explore the largely unknown world of snowy owl health, and how the modern landscape they now inhabit places them at new and worrisome risk. 

Our team of wildlife veterinarians and pathologists, based at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center, along with colleagues in the U.S. and Canada, have necropsied more than 400 Snowy Owls that have been accidentally killed or found dead, and we've tested  blood samples from dozens of live birds captured for banding and tagging -- by far the largest examination of the health and condition of wintering snowy owls ever undertaken.

Some of the findings have been encouraging. We've found, for example, that contrary to long-standing assumptions about snowy owls in winter, most migrant owls are generally in good physical condition, not thin and starving as was once assumed.

But there are reasons for concern. Toxicology tests have shown that most snowy owls carry at least some level of dangerous chemicals in their bodies, from lead to rodenticides (rat poison) to pesticide residues like DDE. Most troubling, many snowy owls have shown significant levels of mercury, an insidious toxin generated by coal-fired power plants and vehicle exhaust, which bioaccumulates through the food chain until it causes behavioral and reproductive problems. Because mercury contamination may be tied to diet (especially the consumption of waterbirds like ducks, gulls and loons), our tracking data is proving valuable in discerning where snowy owls may be experiencing the heaviest exposure.

We are also closely tracking the impact of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which exploded across North America in wild and domestic birds in January 2022. Since the epidemic began HPAI has sickened and killed a number of snowy owls, which are most likely exposed when they prey on infected birds.

Project SNOWstorm's tracking work represents the largest and most diverse set of winter movement data for snowy owls anywhere in the world, and we're drilling down into it to see what it reveals about these Arctic migrants, the habitats they use, and how best to protect and conserve them.

We continue to publish a stream of peer-reviewed scientific articles based on our research, so our findings inform the wider conservation of snowy owls, in such prestigious international journals as Nature, Ornithology, Oecologia and Ibis, on subjects ranging from the winter survival of immature snowy owls; factors associated with the return of translocated owls to airports; whether snowy owls migrating north in spring use stopover periods to sample potential breeding sites; and the influence of landscape cover versus social dominance on snowy owl movement patterns.

We provided significant support for the post-doctoral work of Dr. Rebecca McCabe as she, with our colleagues in the International Snowy Owl Working Group, completed a global status assessment of snowy owl populations worldwide -- the first time such an effort has been made, and a critical step in determining conservation action for this species. This assessment is currently in peer-review pending publication.