Bird Watcher Crosses Fingers for Owls ; Airport Burrows Could Be Dangerous for Species, Planes
By POLLY SUMMAR Journal Staff Writer
Jim Walters, a retired biologist, spends part of every day just inside the grounds of the Santa Fe Municipal Airport peering into a spotting scope at the nesting burrowing owls behind a chain-link fence.
“For whatever reason, the little buggers enjoy being out here at the airport — they don’t seem flustered at all, even under full screaming takeoffs,” Walters said Friday morning as he focused in on a nest of six chicks some 30 yards away.
Walters has been watching burrowing owls in Santa Fe for the past 20 years since he moved here from California. And what he’s seen alarms him: colony after colony disappearing, from one next to the handball courts on Zia Road to one on a vacant field at Cordova Road and Old Pecos Trail.
“This is the last vestige of burrowing owls in Santa Fe County, to my knowledge,” Walters said. “It’s incremental development and habitat destruction, bit by bit.”
It’s not that small burrowing owls — some 9 inches tall — have a fondness for runways and the smell of jet fuel. It’s that burrowing owls build their nests in abandoned prairie dog holes.
So how did the prairie dogs decide on the airport? According to previous Journal reports, the city long has used the airport as a dumping ground for relocated prairie dogs. But in the past two years, hundreds of those relocated prairie dogs have been collected and shipped somewhere else.
“Prairie dogs are a keystone species — a highly interactive species,” said Nicole Rosmarino, conservation director of Forest Guardians. That means the presence of a prairie dog attracts other animals.
Some 200 species of wildlife have been documented on or near prairie dog colonies, Rosmarino said.
Jim Montman, director of the Santa Fe Municipal Airport, knows that only too well.
“They attract the burrowing owls and hawks and coyotes and wild dogs, none of which mix very well with aircraft,” Montman said. “The FAA has a zero tolerance on holes in the safety areas, but they also understand … the Federal Migratory Bird Act.” According to the act, once certain species of migratory birds — including burrowing owls — have established a habitat, it’s illegal to disturb them without a federal permit.
But it’s the prairie dog holes that are a particular problem.
“If a landing gear leaves the runways and hits a burrow, you’d end up with a severely damaged aircraft” and possibly injured people inside, Montman said.
So the airport and the city of Santa Fe are working with Hawks Aloft, a program based in Albuquerque, to try to deal with the burrowing owls.
“If they’re outside the safety areas, we typically don’t do anything with them,” Montman said.
“We’ve never had an aircraft hit an owl, but we have had other birds hit,” said Montman, “as well as prairie dogs and coyotes.”
Each October, when the burrowing owls migrate to southern New Mexico and northern Mexico, the airport deals with the burrows that are in precarious locations.
“We go in and cover up those burrows and otherwise take care of the habitat near the runways and runway safety areas so they don’t relocate into an area that’s a problem with flight safety,” Montman said.
“We’re proud of trying to work with these groups, to make sure we’re not violating any federal laws.”
Beyond those safety precautions, the city is working with a number of environmental groups on the burrowing owl and prairie dog situation.
Rosmarino said, “We are trying to encourage the city not only to not harm these owls and prairie dogs at the airport, but also to create a preserve at the airport. Mayor (David) Coss has recently publicly advocated such a preserve, part of which would be located at the airport.”
That would sit well with bird watcher Walters.
“These animals, or similar ones, have been here since the Miocene ages, 27 million years ago,” he said.
“But suddenly, in the last 50 years, we can’t manage to all live together.”
(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.