These 3 species present special problems for researchers and forest managers. They are difficult to study because they are nocturnal, wideranging and naturally uncommon throughout their distributions. They are considered sensitive to logging and other forms of habitat disturbance since they are among the top order carnivores in the forest ecosystems of eastern Australia and many of their main prey species and nesting requirements depend on elements of old-growth forest (Debus 1994a, Kavanagh 1997, Milledge 2004).
Each of the large forest owls are listed as threatened in NSW. Early assessments of their conservation status by Lunney et. al. (2000) suggested that the populations of each species and their current distributions have declined.
