2025 AWF Grant Update: Arcata Leavitt

October 7, 2025

Each year, the Audubon Wildlife Fund supports research and other projects that directly benefit birds and wildlife in Montana. We recently checked in with the 2025 Audubon Wildlife Fund Grant recipients, and are excited to share these updates on their research and projects.

Grant recipient

Arcata Leavitt, master’s student in Ecology at Montana State University

Project

Evaluating bioacoustic methods for detecting and monitoring active Great Gray Owl nests, and assessing the habitat characteristics of active nest sites.

Update

Montana State University graduate student Arcata Leavitt spent the spring and summer of 2025 deploying autonomous recording units (ARUs) to find and monitor Great Gray Owls across southwest Montana. As part of her master’s research, she is evaluating the effectiveness of using bioacoustic data to find and monitor active nests. With the support of the Montana Audubon Wildlife Grant, she collected ~3TB of data with ARUs across 14 sites and preliminary results suggest that ARUs may be effective to monitor active nests. With the help of her undergraduate field technician Tori Flath, committee member Katherine Gura, and advisor Justine Becker, she located a previously unknown Great Gray Owl nest in Custer-Gallatin National Forest. This pair went on to fledge two chicks in July.

This previously unknown Great Gray Owl nest was found in 2025. Photo: Alex Becker.