New Britain boobook suspected to be rarer than had previously been assumed because its rainforest habitat was being degraded by logging and forest clearance for conversion to oil palm plantations. Following the re-evaluation of its population size, this assumption was found to be correct and its numbers are now thought to be within the range of 15,000 to 30,000 individuals. Its total range is less than so its category was subsequently changed to "Vulnerable" status in 2008. New Britain boobook The New Britain boobook ("Ninox odiosa"), also known as the spangled boobook, New Britain hawk-owl or Russet hawk-owl, is a small owl that
Southern boobook treated Australian and New Zealand boobooks, along with several taxa from Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as one species—"Ninox novaeseelandiae"—with 16 subspecies. In his 1968 book "Nightwatchmen of the Bush and Plain", Australian naturalist David Fleay observed that the boobooks from Tasmania more closely resembled those of New Zealand than those from mainland Australia, though he followed Mees in treating them as a single species. The southern boobook was split from the Tasmanian boobook and morepork in volume 5 of the "" in 1999, though several authors, including Australian ornithologists Les Christidis and Walter Boles, continued to treat the three