Saving Snowy Owls

Five injured snowy owls have been brought in to a rehabilitation centre in Vineland just in the last two weeks. All of them appear to have been hit by cars. The Owl Foundation says if people keep throwing garbage out of their car windows, more owls could be hurt or killed.

Injured snowy owl number five arrived in the morning at the Owl Foundation in Vineland. John Hoadley is with the Welland SPCA: “I do believe it’s a juvenile female.”

The Welland SPCA was called to come rescue her after Mike Viscek, an employee with Rankin Construction, saw the owl in distress at the side of Highway 406 at Woodlawn in Welland. He was there inspecting the new on-ramp: “It was hopping and flapping it’s wing, it wasn’t trying to get away from us too quickly so we knew something was wrong.”

John said: “When we were able to take a closer look, we noticed some blood staining on the left wing.”

In the last 2 weeks since the Owl Foundation has received the 5 injured snowy owls, one has died. The other 4 are being monitored as they recover from their injuries.

Annick Gionet Rollick is a Zoologist with the Owl Foundation: “So far out of the 5 admitted all of them have collision injuries so we have to assume they’re colliding with a vehicle or a structure.”

Annick says the Snowy Owl population has skyrocketed in Eastern Canada this year. they’re spreading out looking for food. annick says when people throw organic waste or garbage out their car window on to the side of the road they’re actually creating a threat to the snowy owl: “They’re not interested in the garbage, they’re interested in the mice, rodents and the skunks attracted to the organics on the side of the road.”

The Owl Foundation which is the only owl focused rehabilitation centre in Canada, has 30 injured owls in its care. They try not to stress the owls by handling them so they watch their rehabilitation through this monitor room. If the owls have enough strength to fly and catch their own prey, they’ll be released back in to the wild.

The Owl Foundation is hoping that, by educating the public, it’ll reduce the number of injured owls coming in to their care. There have been about fifty snowy owl sightings in just the Golden Horseshoe. The foundation relies on donations to operate, it costs about $300,000 a year to take care of the owls. If you wish to help out, you can go to their website: <http://www.theowlfoundation.ca/>

Editor’s note: This article was updated December 13th to clarify that the 30 birds the Owl Foundation has in its care are injured owls.