BC’s Spotted Owls: 17 and counting down …
Extinctions aren’t textbook facts and figures; they’re events we watch happen right before our eyes. Welcome to the new millennium.
Fifteen years ago, there were as many as 500 spotted owls in British Columbia forests–still a perilously small number, but a number with hope.
Today, there are 17. And the chances that those few will find each other and and mate successfully–given the stresses of constant logging and habitat destruction–are even slimmer than they seem.
There is a term biologists use to describe an animal that still has a physical presence on the planet, but is no longer viable as a species: biologically dead.
BC’s government has put its [almost negligible] efforts into a captive breeding program for the owls, rather than focusing on habitat protection. The mistake here is that it doesn’t matter how many owls there are, if they don’t have enough of the territory–both in terms of size of territory and age of genuine old-growth forest–they need in order to thrive. It’s just possible that the government’s “save the owl” program will be what renders it biologically dead.
To read more about BC’s beautiful and endangered spotted owls:
Click here for a recent article in the Tyee.
Click here to learn about Melanie Jackson’s Dinah Galloway Mystery Series, particularly The Summer of the Spotted Owl.
Click here for info about Karen Dudley’s spotted-owl-centred mystery, Hoot to Kill.
And then write the Premiere, would you? You and your whole class. Your whole school. Your district. Organize a Save the Spotted Owl letter-writing campaign. Flood the parliament buildings with your mail.
I’ll be watching for the news story.