Two Simple Tricks That Help Owls Stay in Their New Homes

A study shows that there is a way to successfully transplant burrowing owls to new habitats when developers build over their homes.

As far as wild animals go, the western burrowing owl is a tolerant neighbor to humans. When new houses and roads are built next to the tunnels that they call home, these owls put up with the noise and carry on hunting the insects and rodents that they eat. But the owls are increasingly on a collision course with humanity.

Developers are always looking for more land to build on, and in places like Southern California, that means moving into the owls’ habitats. To date, most builders have displaced owls by collapsing their burrows, forcing them to find a new place to live nearby. Even so, in heavily urbanized environments, the birds often have nowhere to go, putting the species’ future at risk.

As a result, wildlife officials working with developers are increasingly collecting and transplanting the owls to distant new areas that conservationists think will meet their needs. Evidence that this technique works has been thin, though. New research published on Thursday in the journal Animal Conservation shows it can be very effective if the birds are tricked into believing there are already other burrowing owls near the places where they are transplanted.