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Wildlife Featured in this article
- Burrowing owl
Over 100 burrowing owls released in Canadian wild
The owls are head-started and released as breeding pairs
The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo is celebrating the release of over 100 burrowing owls in the wild. A conservation team recently released 20 owls into a field in Suffield, Alberta, bringing their total to 119.
“Every one of them counts, which is why 100 is such an exciting milestone,” Graham Dixon-MacCallum, conservation research population ecologist with the zoo, told the CBC.
The burrowing owl is listed as endangered in Canada, due to loss of grasslands, a reduction in prey populations and other factors. Since 2016, the zoo has been head-starting owls in captivity and releasing them as breeding pairs into artificial burrows in the wild.
Read more from the CBC, and watch the world from the owls’ perspective below.
Header Image: The Wilder Institute/Calgary Zoo has released over 100 endangered burrowing owl in the Canadian wild. Credit: The Wilder Institute
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