Calgary Zoo releases 15 burrowing owls into the wild
Posted May 31, 2017 12:49 pm.
Last Updated May 31, 2017 12:51 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
For the first time ever in Alberta, the Calgary Zoo has released 15 endangered burrowing owls into the wild.
The owls, which were likely to die, were collected from the wild in the spring of 2016.
They spent the winter in captivity and then 14 were released into the wild in pairs, along with a single female.
“All of those have now laid eggs on the prairie,” Dr. Axel Moehrenschlager, the Zoo’s Director of Conservation said. “About half the birds we were able to transmit it with satellite transmitters, so now we can determine their survival, their migration and basically the fate of their offspring.”
The zoo hopes the offspring will hatch and join their parents on the fall migration to Mexico.
The project is expected to continue again with another set of birds being gathered this summer.
Wild populations of burrowing owls — the only species in the world that lives in the ground —- have declined by 90 per cent since the 1990s.
