Nine species of Owls have been recorded in the United Arab Emirates, although only six of these are considered to by indigenous. Long-eared Owls, Asio otus, are a migratory species found across temperate regions of Europe, Asia, and North America. In the Middle East they have been recorded to breed in northernmost Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and the northwestern part of Iran. They are also occasional visitors to other parts of the region, including the United Arab Emirates, where they are considered to be vagrant and extremely rare. Between 1971 and 2013, there were sixteen recorded sightings of Long-eared Owls in the United Arab Emirates, although the species has not been recorded since.
In a paper published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa on 26 May 2025, Shakeel Ahmed and Sálim Javed of the Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, report the sighting of a Long-eared Owl in the Al Wathba Wetland Reserve in Abu Dhabi on 1 January 2022.
The 1 January 2022 sighting is the first recording of a Long-eared Owl in Abu Dhabi since October 1999, when another Owl was spotted in the Al Wathba Wetland Reserve. The Owl was spotted at about 6.30 am on the northern part of the reserve. The previous day the area had been hit by a storm, with high winds and heavy rain lasting all day.
Long-eared Owls are classified as being of Least Concern under the terms of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened species. Nevertheless, the global population of the species is known to be declining, which, among other things, means that sightings on the fringes of the species range are becoming rarer.
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