How Landowners Can Help to Conserve Raptors

| Habitat Conservation | Protect Woodlots | Create Windbreaks |
| Preserve Nest Sites | Ensuring a Safe Supply of Food |
| Reduce Chemical  Use | Trap with Care | Shooting Raptors is Illegal |
| Falconry | Electrocution | Roadkills | Enjoy, But Do Not Disturb |
| Help Injured Raptors | Report Bird Band Information | The Problem Raptor |

The effect of human habitation on the Canadian prairie landscape has been an increase in farmland and cities, and a decrease in stretches of natural grassland, parkland and wetland. This has made it increasingly difficult for raptors to meet their needs for food, and for safe places to nest and raise their young.

Farmers and ranchers can help to conserve raptors. By avoiding certain activities and undertaking others, they can help to preserve the habitats and food sources that raptors depend upon. Many of these improvements require very little change in the landowner's routine.

Habitat Conservation

Habitat loss poses the greatest threat to many raptors today. Only one quarter of Canada's original prairie remains as grassland; the rest has been plowed or drained.

Today, 80 percent of the Short Grass Prairie and 80 percent of the Fescue Prairie are gone. Only one quarter of the Mixed Grass Prairie and one quarter of the Aspen Parkland still remain. TheTall Grass Prairie has all but disappeared. What is left as wildlife habitat is marginal farmland and even that is disappearing.

Like the life it supports, Canada's native prairie grasslands are vanishing. Native grasslands are important to the Canadian economy, and to the agricultural community. The grass provides summer food for cattle and other livestock. Rain soaks into grassland, and this adds to the water table that affects the amount of drinking water available in many communities. In dry conditions, grasslands retain soil moisture, which prevents desertification. Finally, unploughed land does not blow away in dust storms.

Some native grassland is needed if humans are to continue to use the prairies:

Within one human lifetime, the prairies have passed from wilderness to become the most altered habitat in this country and one of the most disturbed, ecologically simplified and overexploited regions in the world. The essence of what we risk losing when the grasslands are destroyed is not a species here or a species there, but a quality of life, the largeness and wildness that made this country remarkable.

- Dr. Adrian Forsyth

When you realize that habitat loss is the greatest threat to raptors and other wildlife, then the importance of maintaining, enhancing, and even increasing the amount of native habitat becomes clear.

As a landowner, you can help to conserve habitat in the following ways:

• Protect wetlands, grasslands and woodlands. Natural habitat contributes to the water table, and helps to maintain soil stability. Good soil-management practices help both landowners and wildlife;
• Plant trees and windbreaks. These provide shade for cattle and protect the soil from wind erosion;
• Restore cultivated land to native or tame prairie (For further information on land restoration, please refer to Conservation of Canadian Prairie Grasslands: A Landowner's Guide by Garry C. Trottier, Canadian Wildlife Service.);
• Build nest boxes and nesting platforms, and let raptors help you with the control of agricultural pests;
• Set aside land for your favourite raptor. Even a single tree in a pasture can provide a critically important nesting site for the threatened Ferruginous Hawk;
• If you must burn stubble fields, do so before April 1 to avoid burning Short-eared Owl nests.

Top

Protect Woodlots

Along the northern edge of the prairies, raptors make use of woodlots, stands of trees and bushes as both nesting sites and hunting habitat. Most raptors in aspen parkland need large woodlots to survive.

The larger the woodlot, the healthier and greater the number of species within it. Round or square woodlots are better than long thin ones and they are even better if they contain standing dead trees, which provide nesting sites for raptors.

While limited grazing does little harm to woodlots, livestock do chew the buds of trees and shrubs, and trample the understory. This can affect wildlife habitat if grazing pressure is high.

Top

Create Windbreaks

Trees along the edges of fields act as windbreaks and therefore decrease soil erosion, while also providing habitat for raptors. Windbreaks five or six trees deep, edged with grasses and berry bushes, provide habitat for small mammals and songbirds, offer nesting and perching sites to raptors, and increase the yield of adjacent crops.

Top

Preserve Nest Sites

You can encourage raptors to stay on your land by preserving natural nest sites.

Merlins, Long-eared Owls, and Great Horned Owls make use of the old nests of crows and magpies. While crows and magpies are often considered pests, they are also nature's sanitary engineers, cleaning up edible refuse, insects, and small mammals. By allowing these birds to nest on your land, you foster the nesting of raptors in subsequent years, while reducing the threat of disease from garbage.

Kestrels and small owls nest in tree holes. By leaving large trees and dead trees standing alone, you are encouraging woodpeckers, and therefore raptors, to nest on your property.

Burrowing Owls nest in the burrows of ground squirrels and Badgers. Ensure that enough of these digging animals remain in pastures to provide owls with holes in which to nest.

Top

Ensuring a Safe Supply of Food

Raptors occupy the top of the food chain, eating animals that eat other animals, insects and plants. Since landowners often regard the prey of raptors as pests, these birds in fact provide a free pest-control service. A landowner also has chemical ways to control pests and weeds. Raptors are particularly susceptible to these chemicals. Some pesticides kill raptors directly, some accumulate in the bodies of their prey, becoming more concentrated with each link up the food chain, and some reduce the abundance of prey to the point where raptors leave or die. When this happens, the free help vanishes, and the landowner is left with a continual need to control pests chemically.

One example of the danger of pesticides was the effect of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) on Peregrine Falcons, Ospreys and Bald Eagles during the 1950s and 1960s. Many populations of these species were decimated when DDT and DDE 1,1-Dichloro, 2,2-bis [p-chlorophenyl] ethylene - a by-product of DDT - were absorbed by the prey of these birds. The chemicals accumulated in the bodies of the raptors that ate the contaminated prey, resulting in the production of thin-shelled eggs that broke during incubation. Fewer chicks hatched, and PeregrineFalcon and Bald Eagle numbers plummeted. Because of the impact of DDT on raptors and wildlife in general, Canada and the United States began to restrict its use in 1969 and 1972 respectively.

Top

Reduce Chemical Use

DDT poisoning still threatens the raptors that migrate south to countries that allow its use. Furthermore, another pesticide - Dicofol, found in Kelthane also contains DDT, and its application is still legal in North America. Unfortunately for raptors and other wildlife, the use of this pesticide and others is increasing.

When Carbofuran is sprayed near the burrows of Burrowing Owls, adults as well as young owls often die. To assist with the recovery of this threatened species, Carbofuran should never be sprayed within 250 metres (275 yards) of the nest of a Burrowing Owl.

Other poisons besides pesticides also threaten raptors. Strychnine kills raptors. Strychnine is used most often in such ground-squirrel poisons as Gopher Cop and Strychnine Gopher-kill Liquid . When Prairie Falcons and other raptors eat ground squirrels that have eaten this poison, they may also die as a result. If you use strychnine-coated grain, place it directly in the hole, so that Burrowing Owls and other birds are less likely to die from eating exposed grain that is poisonous.

Remove poisoned ground-squirrel carcasses to protect raptors, coyotes, and other animals. Similarly, carcasses of livestock euthanized with barbiturates should be removed, so that scavenging raptors are not poisoned.

Anticoagulant poisons - which include Warfarin, Diphacinone, Chlorophacinone, Fumarin, Brodifacoum, Difendadoum, and Bromadiolone - kill raptors too. People throughout the world use anticoagulant bait to kill small mammals. In the few days it takes the poisoned rodent to die, it is active and free for the raptor's taking. Anticoagulant poisons pose a threat to farm pets and livestock as well as to raptors, and landowners who apply these substances should do so sparingly, and with care.

Raptors control ground squirrels and rodents free of charge. One pair of Ferruginous Hawks kills an estimated 480 ground squirrels in one summer while raising its young. If raptors become less common on prairie land, each year landowners will have to pay more to control agricultural pests. The health of raptors and other wildlife is an indication of human health and the health of our prairies. Landowners who use fewer pesticides not only decrease costs, they also reduce the exposure of wildlife and themselves to chemicals.

Top

Trap with Care

Steel-jawed leg-hold traps set for coyotes and foxes can kill raptors, or mangle their legs. An eagle will sometimes escape from a trap, flying off without its toes or with the trap dangling from its legs. Most raptors released from traps do not survive their injuries.

• Raptors are less likely to notice unbaited traps than conspicuously baited ones.
• If you use bait, place it away from the trap, and cover or bury the bait so that raptors cannot see it. Most birds, unlike mammals have a poor sense of smell, and cannot find a covered bait.
• Do not use pole traps. Most raptors perch on fence posts to rest, and to watch for prey. Traps placed on posts are especially deadly to raptors.

Top

Shooting Raptors is Illegal

In the past, raptors were seen as vermin and shot indiscriminately. Today, thanks to a change in attitude, shooting them is illegal. Most people now recognize the beneficial role of raptors on the prairies, particularly their importance in the area of pest control. There is no good reason to shoot raptors, but there are many good reasons to help them flourish.

Top

Falconry

Rather than persecute raptors, some people are so enamoured of these birds that they hold them captive and hunt with them for sport, just like kings of old. Using free-flying, trained raptors to capture live prey is called falconry.

In Canada and the United States, no person may take, capture, possess, import, export, or transport a live or dead raptor without holding a valid permit. Even the "adoption" of apparently deserted young is illegal without a permit.

Falconry is an exciting sport that combines the skills of raptors and the patience of humans.

Top

Electrocution

Some raptors are prone to electrocution because of their size, their behavior, and their habit of perching or nesting on powerpoles.

When electrical wires are too close together, raptors may be electrocuted when they touch two or more wires with their wings or other body parts simultaneously, or - more frequently - when the prey they are carrying touches the second wire. Because of their large size, Bald Eagles, Golden Eagles and Great Horned Owls comprise 70 to 90 percent of all raptors electrocuted. Electrocutions not only kill or injure many raptors, they also create unnecessary power failures for landowners. To prevent electrocutions, energized wires, ground wires, and other metal hardware need to be adequately separated.

By increasing the gap between ground wires and energized conductors to 1.2 metres (4 feet), the risk of electrocutions is reduced. Wires and other metal equipment can also be insulated. Locating wooden perches well above energized wires, and installing guards for perches in dangerous areas, may also help with this problem.

Top

Roadkills

Mice, voles and other rodents that thrive in ditches are often killed on highways. Raptors that hunt or scavenge these rodents can be hit by vehicles as well. Frequently the raptors killed this way are the young of the year.

No obvious solutions to this problem exist, aside from encouraging people to drive more slowly and to watch for wildlife on the roadway. Moving dead animals from roads to ditches can also help.

Top

Enjoy, But Do Not Disturb

Raptors are fascinating to watch. On the prairies, with an unobstructed view, you can see them from a long distance. Avoid approaching nests, especially early in the summer before the young have hatched and are visible in the nest. Although nesting birds may appear calm or leave quietly when approached by humans, they undergo great stress when this happens, and some may not return to their nests.

Top

Help Injured Raptors

Every year hundreds of raptors suffer from injuries and illnesses that make survival in the wild impossible. Without medical attention and facilities, many of these birds would perish.

Birds that are unable to survive in the wild because of injury may be able to reproduce in captivity. Their healthy offspring can then be released back into the wild.

If you find a young raptor by itself, leave it alone - its parents are probably nearby. If you are convinced it needs assistance, contact your local wildlife officer or raptor rehabilitation centre.

If you see an injured or sick raptor, contact your nearest rehabilitation centre (See Appendix 1).

Top

Report Bird Band Information

Aluminum rings or bands are placed on the legs of some raptors to help track their movements and to record their life spans.

If you find a dead bird wearing a leg band, report the species (if possible), the band number, the date found, the location, and the reason for death if known, along with your name and address, to:

If you see a live bird wearing coloured bands in addition to an aluminum band, report this information to the address above. Tell the Bird Banding Office the order in which the colours appear on the bird's right and/or left legs. The Office will send you information on when and where the raptor was banded.

Top

The Problem Raptor

Contrary to old folk tales, raptors do not eat the hearts of newborn lambs. They do not attack cattle, nor do they steal babies from cribs. Most raptors are far too small to even attempt such assaults.

On the other hand, the larger raptors will occasionally catch small livestock and poultry. Easy prey, such as free-roaming chickens, are the most common farm quarry of these birds. Animals rarely suffer attacks when confined by proper fencing or by night-holding pens with roofs. Occasionally, however, the odd pest surfaces. When other control methods fail, farmers or ranchers may find it necessary to shoot a raptor. In such cases, landowners must file a report with the local Fish and Wildlife officer, and obtain a special permit.

Top