Another year, another dead owl in Glen Canyon Park. Last year, almost to the day, I wrote about a dead Great Horned Owl. This time, it’s a barn owl. It may have been poisoned by eating rats that had been poisoned with a rodenticide. Barn owls are wonderful at keeping rodents down, since they eat almost nothing but mice and rats – but when the rodents have been poisoned, the owls die.
The poor owl has been sent to WildCare for a necropsy (that’s an autopsy for animals), so we can find out for sure. It costs $300 to perform this analysis, and so neighbors are asking for contributions to WildCare (which is a wonderful non-profit that takes in rescued wild animals and birds) to cover their costs.
Anyone willing to contribute can do so by mail, online or phone, please reference “Barn Owl Patient #1754″.
- Phone: Contact WildCare’s Stewardship Manager, Jan Armstrong, 415-453-1000, ext. 13,
- Online: wildcarebayarea.org (there’s a link on the website to donate money by credit card)
- By Check: Send it directly to WildCare, 76 Albert Park Lane, San Rafael, 94901.
This is relevant not just to Glen Canyon, but to all neighborhoods, including ours. We’ve seen barn owls here. Rodenticides kill not just mice and rats, but animals up the food chain: owls, dogs, cats, coyotes, hawks.
There’s an initiative to limit the use of some of the most destructive and dangerous ones: see WildCare’s Rodenticide Diagnostics & Advocacy Program . If you have additional questions about rodenticides, you may contact Wildlife Solutions Manager, Kelle Kacmarcik who is coordinating this effort. You may reach her at 415-456-7283, ext. 23.
Please help save our owls and other animals and birds!
FOREST KNOLLS NEIGHBORHOOD 
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