Landscapes are important frames for understanding and bridging environmental perspectives, including between Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems. Landscapes are both “natural” and “cultural,” for, as Indigenous societies attest, all landscapes manifest the coevolutionary interplay of human and nonhuman forces.  We apply three integrated ecological lenses to analyze this interplay: historical ecology, ethno-ecology, and political ecology. Our case study is the Alsek-Dry Bay region of Southeast Alaska and Western Canada, at the intersection of the northern Tlingit and Athabaskan worlds. Historically an epicenter of astonishing geological dynamism and disruption, biological productivity and diversity, this landscape was also a mecca of cultural exchange, contestation, and appropriation. Ironically, the Alsek-Dry Bay landscape is now “preserved” as the center of a celebrated World Heritage Site based solely on its “natural” landscapes and “wilderness” character, and not for its Indigenous identity as a place of outstanding cultural significance – where the trickster-worldmaker Raven literally transformed the cosmos and topography – and the product of deep cultural-environmental histories. Bringing these ecological perspectives together enables a broader appreciation of the natural and cultural dynamism that has shaped such sites and of the enduring value and lessons of Indigenous knowledge systems that have coevolved with rapidly changing landscapes.

In this chapter we review the parameters that are of importance for the species, its prey species and its predators. The favored habitat for the Little Owl varies from the natural landscapes of steppe and arid deserts to anthropogenic areas. The common features are open areas with low grass, perches and cavities in the ground, rocks, trees or buildings. The species avoids forests, fallow land and large parcels of arable land. A mosaic effect seems to be important for the species, due to the use of habitat edges, in particular for the richness in prey found there. The relations between the landscape factors will determine local owl densities and demographics. All quantitative studies available were done on anthropogenic habitats. Of natural habitats, only qualitative descriptions were available. We first discuss natural habitats in general terms, then we give an overview of different types of occupied anthropogenic habitats, followed by the actual preference of the species toward certain habitat parameters. The latter studies entail both occupied and unoccupied habitats, while habitat typology studies consider only occupied habitats.