Snowy Owl declared regionally extinct in Sweden
No confirmed breeding has been recorded since 2015, triggering an official status change.
This assessment comes from BirdLife International, which reports that the Snowy Owl has now been declared Regionally Extinct in Sweden. The decision follows ten consecutive years without any confirmed breeding and marks the first time in two decades that Sweden has officially lost a bird species.
BirdLife describes the loss as both a national milestone and an Arctic warning, underlining how quickly conditions are changing for cold-adapted species at the southern edge of their range.
A species shaped by boom-and-bust years
The Snowy Owl has never been a constant presence in Sweden. Instead, its appearance has always depended on the great boom-and-bust cycles of the Arctic, moving south in years when prey was abundant and conditions allowed breeding.
For centuries, Sweden formed part of this southern fringe. In particularly productive periods, birds settled in the mountain tundra, with the 1970s seeing several hundred pairs breeding during favourable years.
The silence since 2015
That pattern has now broken. According to BirdLife, no nests, chicks or breeding attempts have been recorded since 2015. With a full decade of absence, Sweden has now concluded that the Snowy Owl no longer breeds within its borders.
As BirdLife puts it, “Rodent years are becoming increasingly rare,” a simple explanation for a complex ecological shift. Without explosive increases in lemmings and other small mammals, Snowy Owls often do not attempt to breed at all.
Changing winters, shrinking opportunities
BirdLife points to climate change as the dominant driver behind the owl’s disappearance. Warmer winters are bringing more rain and less stable snow cover, disrupting the subnivean spaces that rodents rely on for survival.
When those prey populations fail, the consequences ripple upwards. For a predator so tightly bound to Arctic conditions, even small changes in snow and temperature can remove the narrow window in which breeding is possible.
A wider message beyond Sweden
BirdLife stresses that this loss should not be viewed in isolation. The Snowy Owl’s disappearance from Sweden is presented as a signal of wider stress across northern ecosystems, where specialist species are increasingly squeezed out.
“The moment is now, nature can’t wait,” BirdLife warns, framing Sweden’s regional extinction as both a warning and a call to act before similar losses follow elsewhere.
Not necessarily the final chapter
Although the Snowy Owl still survives globally, BirdLife notes that any future return to Sweden would depend on improved environmental conditions and stronger protection of northern habitats.
For now, however, the verdict is clear: a bird once synonymous with Sweden’s high mountains and winter landscapes has fallen silent, leaving behind an unmistakable message about the pace of change in the Arctic.
December 2025
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