in mature spruce/fir forests of North America, but are easily- 

 located during the courtship period by conducting nocturnal surveys 

 using the call playback technique (Palmer 1987) . 



Once thought to exist only as isolated Pleistocene relict 

 populations at high elevations in the Rocky Mountains (Baldwin and 

 Koplin 1966), breeding populations were found in the 1980 ' s in 

 Idaho (Hayward 1983), Colorado (Palmer 1987), and Montana (Holt and 

 Ermatinger 1989) . Recent surveys have revealed boreal owls 

 throughout the Rocky Mountains (Hayward et al. 1987, O'Connell 

 1987) . Boreal owls have been located throughout most of western 

 Montana and may^ be quite common in certain habitats (Holt and 

 Ermatinger 1989, Mullen 1990) (Fig. 1) . The lack of knowledge of 

 boreal owl distribution was probably because of the inaccessability 

 of high elevations during March and April, when boreal owls are 

 most easily detected. 



Region 1 of the U.S. Forest Service lists the boreal owl as a 

 sensitive species and therefore is required by the National Forest 

 Management Act to monitor it's status and provide habitat to ensure 

 viable populations on national forest lands throughout their range 

 (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1986). Boreal owls were not known 

 to occur on the Lewis and Clark National Forest in the Little Belt 

 Mountains, but the presence of suitable habitat suggested they may 

 be present and led to this survey. 



SURVEY AREA 

 Surveys were primarily conducted on the Kings Hill Ranger 



