The Chilliwack
Progress Thursday
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Golfers from around the province competed in Chilliwack this week.
Tensions rise as Yale treaty nears ratification.
Capture the magic of Mozart.
Y O U R C O M M U N I T Y N E W S PA P E R • F O U N D E D I N 1 8 9 1 • W W W. T H E P R O G R E S S . C O M • T H U R S D AY, J U N E 6 , 2 0 1 3
What’s killing the barn owls of the Fraser Valley? Alina Konevski The Progress
Above: Dick Clegg prepares to band one of three young owls in a barn in Chilliwack. Right: Three young owls, about six or seven weeks old, huddle together. For more photos and video, find this story online at www.theprogress.com. JENNA HAUCK/ PROGRESS
potent. And they’re very insidious in that they stay in the environment a long time,” said Clegg. Even animals that don’t eat rats, such as deer, have tested positive for rat poison. “I find whole batches of owls in boxes like this, dead,” said Clegg, indicating the wooden nesting box high up in Peters’ barn. “Quite a few people around here know I’m interested in these things, and they’ll give me a call, and say, ‘I’ve got an owl in my yard. It’s walking around looking kind of weak. And, oh, it just fell over.” Clegg picks up the dead owls and
ships many to a research facility at Simon Fraser University. He has about 10 in an office freezer right now waiting for shipping. Researchers are still trying to figure out whether rat poisons directly kill owls. What they know, however, is that 75 per cent of dead owls tested by Environment Canada between 2005 and 2011 returned positive for rat poison in their livers. This is higher than the last testing period, 1988 to 2003, when only 66 per cent of owls came back positive. Continued: OWLS/ p14
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Retired Chilliwack farmer Allan Peters had no idea that the rat poison he used around his former dairy farm may be harming local barn owls. But since local veterinarian Dick Clegg installed a nesting box in Peters’ old barn, Peters has grown protective of the charismatic, gold-coloured birds with a pale heart-shaped face that swoop at the rafters of his building. The neighbouring organic vegetable farm has also seen its rodent problem vanish since barn owls started nesting in Peters’s old barn, according to Clegg. Clegg has been working to protect barn owls in the area for over a decade. The Lower Fraser Valley is home to an estimated 250 to 1,000 adult barn owls, representing most of Canada’s population. Recently, the species was moved from being “of special concern,” to “threatened,” reflecting a decline in numbers. When frightened, barn owls screech and sway in unison, successfully intimating any predator or human that cares to look into their nesting box. But these tactics can’t protect them against the most common reasons for the species’ decline. One is habitat loss. Barn owls love old cottonwood trees, but have grown fond of decrepit wooden barns as well. As these are torn down and replaced with modern glass-and-concrete structures, owls have fewer places to rear their young. Another reason may be the proliferation of second-generation rodenticides, which Clegg believes to be the biggest killer of barn owls. When rats eat poison from a bait box, they have about a week before they die, a deliberate lag to prevent them from figuring out that the boxes contain lethal material. But it’s during that time that rats are likely to be eaten by owls. “The poisons now, what they call second generation, are much more
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