Countywide : Burrowing Owls Find Last Refuge

More than 25 years ago, burrowing owls could be found in abundance in the county.

Wide-eyed and cute, they made their nests in holes and tunnels once inhabited by ground squirrels in the native grasses of the county’s hills and lowlands.

There, they would raise their young and live in colonies, preying on insects, rodents, lizards and small birds.

“It used to be that if anybody asked me to show them an owl, it was one of the species I could predictably show them,” said Pete Bloom of Tustin, a widely recognized expert on the bird. “Any resident who was around here in the ‘60s would tell you they’d see them all the time.”

But times have changed.

While up to 100 breeding pairs of burrowing owls were recorded living in Orange County in the late 1960s, only 12 pairs exist today, Bloom said.

Eight of them are dug into the bunkers at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, and four are barely hanging on in separate locations around the county.

“The main strike against them was just development moving in all around them,” said Bloom, 41, a lifelong Orange County resident who has studied the burrowing owl for 25 years and works as a wildlife consultant.

Bloom surveys parks and other areas in the county each year to record the burrowing owl population.

By next year he doesn’t expect to find any living outside the protection of the naval weapons station, where the state Department of Fish and Game and the U.S. military oversee wildlife management.

Statewide, the burrowing owl population has also been decreasing, but only to a level that has prompted the state Department of Fish and Game to list it as “a species of special concern.” That categorization carries no strict rules protecting habitats.

Currently, the Institute for Bird Populations, a San Francisco-based nonprofit group, is conducting a state census of burrowing owl habitats to determine how the bird is faring and to see if it should be classified as a threatened species.

With that status, state and federal money could be attracted for programs to promote the growth of the burrowing owl population.

Yet, to a small degree, the bird’s population has been increasing in recent years at the naval weapons station, even though no actions have been directed toward it.

In the mid-1980s, no burrowing owls could be found there, said the station’s natural resource specialist, Lisa Barrett.

But as Fish and Game officials began controlling the numbers of red foxes and other predators in their efforts to protect nesting grounds of the endangered California least tern and light-footed clapper rail, burrowing owls made a comeback on the station’s north side.

Still, Bloom said that a management plan backed up with funding would boost the population at a much faster rate.

For reasons that are not clear, the current population has not been keeping pace with the breeding pairs’ offspring in recent years, he said.

One possible solution, Bloom said, would be to introduce burrowing owls from other parts of the state into the weapons station population.

That would strengthen offspring by reducing inbreeding and increase their ability to protect themselves from predators, he said.

Bloom said the station could sustain up to 75 breeding pairs.

“We can wait for nature to take its course, and maybe 20 years from now we’ll have 20 pairs,” he said.

“The larger the population, the better its health.”