Abstract
Blakiston’s fish owl Bubo blakistoni is a large, endangered, aquatic prey specialist distributed throughout Northeast Asia. The island subspecies B. b. blakistoni is presently restricted to eastern Hokkaido Island and to Kunashir Island, with past records also from Sakhalin and Shikotan Islands. The mainland subspecies B. b. doerriesi is found along the western Sea of Japan coast and the western and northern coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk. The island population, at present, contains approximately 166–182 individuals, which represents an increase from a population low in the late 1980s. The size of the mainland population is more difficult to quantify given large expanses of un-surveyed potential habitat, but we estimate a range of 800–1600 individuals. Thus, globally, there are approximately 1000–1900 individuals (or 500–850 pairs) in the fish owl population.
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The southern Kuril Islands (Kunashir, Shikotan, Iturup, and Habomai) are the source of a long-standing territorial dispute between Japan and Russia. Japan believes that the seizure of these islands by the Soviet Union at the end of the Second World War was unlawful. These islands are known in Japan as the “Northern Territories,” and there is strong public opinion there that these islands should be returned to Japan.
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Slaght, J.C., Takenaka, T., Surmach, S.G., Fujimaki, Y., Utekhina, I.G., Potapov, E.R. (2018). Global Distribution and Population Estimates of Blakiston’s Fish Owl. In: Nakamura, F. (eds) Biodiversity Conservation Using Umbrella Species. Ecological Research Monographs. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7203-1_2
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