By Jill Sperling

Captive-born burrowing owls begin journey to freedom

Apr 27, 2018 | 4:52 PM

KAMLOOPS — Staff and volunteers of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society were busy banding birds at the BC Wildlife Park Friday. 

More than 100 burrowing owls born in captivity will be released into grasslands around the province.

Burrowing owls are considered extirpated, or extinct, in B.C., and they are an endangered species across Canada. 

With a little help from the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of BC, the birds are coming back to the grasslands in this province. 

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“We decided to try a different appraoch,” said the society’s president, Mike Mackintosh, “and that involved captive breeding the owls at different facilities in the province, keeping them for a full year until they’re full grown, and then re-introducing them to the grasslands where they once lived. We actually also, because this is a bird that lives and has its burrows underground, we also build the artificial burrows for them.”

The BC Wildlife Park is one of the facilities that breeds the owls. 

The park has 12 breeding pairs and contributes to the number of birds released each year. 

“It’s a great program to be involved in,” said Glenn Grant, general manager of the BC Wildlife Park. “It is really important that we repopulate the grasslands of B.C. with the burrowing owl, and being a conservation organization I think it’s important for us to do those things.”

Before being released into the pre-dug artificial burrows, the owls are weighed, measured, and banded with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Band. 

“It’s good to have all that information on the bands so that if we discover them on their migration, or when they come back, we can start piecing together what birds are coming back, and why they are coming back,” said Lauren Meads, executive director with the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society. “Is it the certain lineage? Or, is it certain sites? It’s just better to know what the individuals are, otherwise if we don’t band them then we don’t know.” 

The owls will be released into private and provincial land, local First Nations territory, and sites with the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Nature Trust of BC over the next few days.