The Heart-Faced Mouse-Killing Machine

by Maggie Rufo

Barn owls are the James Dean of the raptor world: they live fast and die young, having an average life span of 18 months. Barn owls are global citizens: found on every continent, below the snow line, except Antarctica. Barn owls are peacemakers: in Israel, Palestinians and Israelis work together using barn owl nesting boxes to protect crops from rodents. Barn owls have super powers: they can hunt and catch prey by sound alone. Barn owls are good neighbors: a rare raptor that is not territorial with others of its kind. Barn owls can be the stuff of nightmares: their blood curdling scream in the darkness and their beautiful heart-shaped faces have made them the stuff of legends, either revered or reviled, depending on your culture. Barn owls are nature’s free non-toxic pest control: the US Fish & Wildlife Service once called barn owls the species most beneficial to “man.” From India to Israel to Florida’s sugar cane fields to the vineyards of California, the barn owl is ubiquitous and useful. One barn owl can eat 25,000 mice in a year.

And yet, barn owls are in trouble. Loss of habitat in the U.K. and the Midwestern U.S. makes them an endangered species, one that people are trying hard to bring back. On the highways of California they are frequently seen crumpled on the sides of roads. It seems like no other animal is more represented as road kill then barn owls. Their natural enemy is another beautiful beneficial predator: the great horned owl. But, there is a more insidious hidden enemy: rodent poisons. Recently the Hungry Owl Project (HOP), based in Marin County, recovered a barn owl that had been banded with a Federal bird band. HOP’s bander recognized the number sequence as one used by the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory, under which she is authorized to band barn owls for HOP. The band records revealed that this was a very special barn owl. She had lived eight years, well past the average life span, and was found within ten miles of her birthplace where, as a young chick, she had been banded in a HOP nesting box. HOP was naturally excited to know that one of “its” owls had lived so long and, as a female, probably produced many generations of owls. This was one fit bird! Our excitement soon became tempered when we learned, via testing, that this beautiful, otherwise healthy bird lost her life to the use of rat poison and worse, in a community that has installed a number of barn owls boxes to help keep rodent populations in check. What a terrible loss to the barn owl community and to us! It truly takes a village to protect our beneficial predators who have every right to live free from poison, not just because of their usefulness as rodent control, but simply because they exist, free and wild to thrill and scare us in their own element, the dark of night.

--Maggie Rufo is a certified naturalist, HOP volunteer, and RATS steering committee member.

One red-tailed hawk can eat 30 rats in a month. Photo by Dave Harper.   
 

The Low Down On the New D-CON Deal

by Lisa Owens Viani

In May, after six-plus years of stalling, Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of d-CON, finally agreed to comply with the U.S. EPA’s orders to cancel some of its most dangerous consumer rat poisons. Reckitt Benckiser has agreed to phase out production of 12 of the second-generation anticoagulant products it has been selling over-the-counter by December 31, 2014, and to cease distribution by March 31, 2015. But we aren’t uncorking the champagne bottle just yet. First of all, many other d-CON products will remain on the market—including several “first generation” anticoagulants, which are also poisoning wildlife, as well as the scary new nerve toxin bromethalin, for which there is no antidote. ThE new agreement also leaves children, pets, and wildlife at risk for another 10 months from second generation anticoagulants.

MANY dangerous first generation anticoagulants and other poisons, sold by several manufacturers, including Reckitt Benckiser, will remain on consumer shelves. These products include the poisons chlorophacinone and diphacinone, “first generation” anticoagulants that have killed many birds of prey and other wildlife, and bromethalin, among others. California Fish and Wildlife records show that diphacinone and chlorophacinone have killed golden eagles, Canada geese, barn owls, bald eagles, kangaroo rats, bobcats, turkey vultures, coyotes, great horned owls, badgers, foxes, and mountain lions. Some of these products will still be sold in non-tamper proof containers, continuing to present a risk to children.

Several pet dogs have been poisoned with bromethalin, and one of our veterinary advisors has said he is “extremely frightened” about this new poison: there is no antidote and the “symptoms” of being poisoned by it mimic other conditions. The labels on bromethalin products state that it is “extremely toxic” to birds and mammals. If a robin in your backyard eats the worm-shaped bait (yes, they make it in the shape of worms so it will be attractive to worm-eating “pests”!), you can assume it will die.

But our biggest challenge moving forward is that the EPA will continue to allow the pest control industry to use second generation anticoagulants in perpetuity—and for agricultural supply stores to sell them in bulk. The EPA argues that pest control operators “apply the poisons more carefully,” making them safer to use. However, they have no scientific evidence to show that most poisonings are caused by homeowners. A bait box with a poisoned rodent staggering out of it creates a toxic bomb, whether placed by a pest control company, a homeowner, restaurant, or business.

RATS has posted a table of all of the poisons—and their brand names—that will still allowed for over-the-counter sale at http://www.raptorsarethesolution.org/dangerous-rat-poison-products-still-being-sold-over-the-counter/ along with their known impacts. We’ll celebrate when all of these toxins are gone from the hardware and ag supply store shelves and are no longer used by pest control companies.

--Lisa Owens Viani is Co-founder and Director of RATS

City Birds

by Allen Fish
 

Urban birds of prey are gifts. They reduce rats and gophers without poisons. They remind us of the intricate, operating ecosystems we live within. A pair of Cooper’s hawks lives in your neighborhood only because the habitat, nest tree, prey, and lack of human disturbance are all there to support them. Raptors are inspiring. For kids and adults, the unpredictable glimpse of a rising red-tailed hawk or a dusk-cruising barn owl may be startling, thought-provoking, uplifting, exciting, or all of the above at once. The charisma and mystery of a hawk or owl tends to leave us a little changed for having crossed their path.

In 2002, my longtime colleague Ralph Pericoli called to my attention that there were a lot of Cooper’s hawks in our neighborhood of Berkeley, California. Ralph and others were monitoring many of them as part of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory’s Bay Area Raptor Nesting Study. But Ralph and I conspired to take the study in a new direction—we wanted to conduct an intensive, check-every-tree-for-nests approach to finding all the Cooper’s hawks nesting in a very small geographic area. This would allow us to learn both the annual chick numbers and the density of Cooper’s hawk nests in our neighborhood.

We selected the most urban parts of Berkeley and Albany, CA, a roughly rectangular study area, 3.6 x 2.9 miles. We invited experienced GGRO volunteers to meet with us one Sunday afternoon at a small café in Berkeley, expecting five people. Twenty-five showed up! So after moving our meeting to a local schoolyard, we divvied up the nearly 6,900-acre study area into 24 sections, trained people to find Cooper’s nests, and got down to searching.

Cooper’s hawks are forest raptors, secretive and almost cat-like. They are often portrayed as bird-hunting specialists; however they are known to take up to 30% mammals and reptiles as well. While we were getting started, Ralph and I were motivated by wanting to add to a national knowledge of burgeoning Cooper’s hawks in urban zones. In spite of having spent most of the 1960s-1970s on various “special concern” and “blue-lists” for being nearly endangered, Cooper’s Hawks in the 1990s-2000s seemed to be on an upward growth curve.

Why were they increasing? Why had they declined earlier? No one knows, exactly, but DDT use in the 1950s was documented as a problem for Cooper’s. Also, given their size and some predilection for birds, Cooper’s hawks tended to be singled out as “chicken hawks,” which made them targets for guilt-free shooting both by farmers and pigeon-fanciers. But by the late 1990s, many of these persecutions of Cooper’s seemed to be subsiding, and serious urban studies were becoming established in Stevens Point, Wisconsin; Tucson, Arizona; Vancouver, British Columbia; and Terre Haute, Indiana.

So, what did we learn in our 9-year study (2002-2010) of Berkeley Cooper’s hawks? Read the full article on our blog.

Allen Fish is Director of the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory and Co-Founder of RATS

Help Us Spread The Word!

Over the past year, RATS has done a series of targeted PSAs in the Bay Area—on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and AC Transit buses. We are now expanding our campaign into Northern California—particularly billboards in Mendocino County, where rat poison use is especially high. We need your support! Please consider sending us a contribution of any amount on our secure webpage.