A quick flick of her wrist and her index finger was motioning me to check my lip.  There was a little blood, but I wasn’t surprised considering over the last two days we had logged 17 hours under the increasingly warming sun.  My lips were cracked but I hadn’t noticed until now.  Lines of dirt accumulated on the teeth of the other workers and as I rolled my tongue across the front of mine I knew I too was blessed with a temporary brownish smile.  As the shoveling came to a rest, I removed my gloves and slapped them against my ranger pants; creating a second dust cloud that drifted away on a slight breeze.  It was an miserable attempt at cleaning off before the sixteen of us made our way back to base.  At 5 o’clock we watched America’s stripes slide down the flagpole while “retreat” resonated from the speakers. We had reached the official end of the duty day, had shown our respect for the flag, and installed 36 artificial burrows in two days on the Umatilla Army Depot in Oregon.

Weapons Storage Bunkers (empty)

It was a whirlwind experience that began a few days before as Heather and I, under the banner of the Burrowing Owl Conservation Network, found ourselves exiting the tarmac in Portland and making the 180 mile drive to Hermiston.  As we followed the Columbia River the forests were eventually replaced by grasslands living atop sandy soils.  This is burrowing owl habitat and we were eager to get started restoring historic breeding grounds.

Artificial Burrows - 55 gallon juice drums

By Monday morning a small crowd gathered not too far after admittance through the guarded gates.  Heather and I were joined by representatives from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of British Columbia, the Global Owl Project, and the Umatilla Chemical Depot.  We were all here to help in the re-establishment of breeding burrowing owls on part of the ~20,000 acre government facility.  We were an army of sixteen conservation-minded individuals equipped with shovels and rakes.  According to depot officials, coyotes were trapped in an effort to protect a transplanted herd of pronghorn antelope.  Unfortunately, the trapping process resulted in the loss of the badger population, which was responsible for digging the burrows for the owls. When the badgers disappeared, so too did the burrowing owls.  As is always the case when man interferes with the natural ecosystem, the loss of one species caused the loss of another.

Top of artificial burrow - Bucket removed provides access to chamber

Burrow prior to installation

But thanks to the efforts of David Johnson, Director of the Global Owl Project, and Don Gillis, Natural and Cultural Resources Manager for the Umatilla Chemical Depot, a restoration effort is in place to give migrating burrowing owls a place to rear young when they return to Oregon during breeding season in late April.  To counteract the lack of natural burrows, we installed artificial ones using donated 55 gallon plastic Tree Top juice drums that were cut in half.  Besides creating artificial burrows, a study has been implemented using geo-locators and bands to track both the adults and young.  The idea is to create an area from which young owls can disperse to neighboring areas in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia and combat falling populations.  It’s an effort that I would like to emulate here in California and one of the many reasons we attended this event.

Heather checking band on yearling owl

Banded owl with geo-locator

And over this two day outing I received an incredible amount of information, realized just how great it was to have an opportunity to network with federal officials and other burrowing owl conservationists, and see how lucky I was to have access to a resident population of owls. Together we can turn things around in North America for this species.  By the way, I also found that digging in sandy soil is so much easier than the rocks and clay we routinely contend with here in Northern California.  Oh well…it’s for a good cause after all!

Tags: burrowing owl conservation, burrowing owls, Umatilla Chemical Depot

This entry was posted by Scott on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 3:24 pm and is filed under birds, conservation, Endangered species, Human Threats, Migratory Birds, Owls, Raptors, Wildlife, Wildlife management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.