Barn owl dies on farmland again: remember the right way to set up bird nets
Text/photos: Kaohsiung Wild Bird Society
In the past three months there have been three incidents of barn owls being poisoned or caught in bird nets, of which 2 barn owls died and 1 was rescued and released back into the wild. This shows that the threats to the survival of the endangered barn owl are everywhere, and the future of a population of fewer than 100 is uncertain!
On the evening of February 9, Lin Shizhong, chairman of the Kaohsiung Bird Society, saw a picture posted by a farmer friend in a Line group: there was actually a barn owl in the paddy field! The chairman had a bad feeling and wrote the message "its little life is over"! In fact, the farmer who posted the picture practices natural farming, using no pesticides, chemical fertilizers or herbicides, but to prevent bird damage he still strung bird-deterrent cords around the paddy field; compared with the aggressive bird control of ordinary farmers who use bird nets or poison, this practice already counts as friendly, yet it still caused the death of the barn owl!
(3) Owls are farmers' good friends:
Take the barn owl as an example: an adult can eat 1-2 mice in one night, and during the period of raising 4 chicks, the parent birds can catch 6-12 mice in one night and bring them back to the nest to feed the chicks. Their ability to control rodent damage is astonishing, and in a year they can catch hundreds of mice! Tainan and Kaohsiung are currently the most important habitats for barn owls in all of Taiwan, China, especially in the shallow mountain and hill areas; places where tall grass (cogon grass) appears, cemeteries, field training grounds, firing ranges, orchards, secondary forests and other locations with few people and a mosaic of diverse environments all have a chance of them appearing.
(4) The bird society hopes to cooperate with farmers to promote eco-friendly agriculture and natural farming, and also hopes everyone can pay more attention to the various biological phenomena in farmland.
Record them in writing or with photos, and upload them immediately to respond on social media; if this time the photo could have been uploaded and shared with the bird society immediately, perhaps this precious life could have been saved! We hope this painful price can let us learn a valuable lesson and turn it into action and strength for conservation!
(5) The bird society calls on the Agriculture and Food Agency, county and city agriculture bureaus and farmers' associations everywhere to promote bird-friendly control work:
The successful case of pheasant-tailed jacana conservation in Tainan is the best example of the government supporting farmers in promoting friendly agriculture and ecological compensation! Agricultural authorities should incorporate eco-friendly control work into farmers' education and extension and into considerations for grain purchasing, and subsidize related control materials to achieve the effect of friendly control; bird societies everywhere are also willing to provide assistance.
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