Dead Owls
Great Horned Owls Electrocuted
These photos were not easy for me to take. The thought of how these two beautiful creatures were electrocuted still brings me to tears. Last Monday, I met with an agent from the federal agency, US Fish and Wildlife. Ken Adams is his name. Drove in from Chicago on a rather nasty day. Freezing fog and slick roads…. A young black guy from Central Ohio, Ken has been with USFW for over ten years and seems to enjoy his work and to truly care about the wildlife he has sworn to protect.
After showing him where and how I believed the birds were killed, he related to me that he’d dealt with cases like this before, and that power companies tend to have a very compelling interest (i.e., risk of bad p.r.) in doing whatever they can to fix problems such as these very quickly. He added that he thought a retrofit of the equipment would solve the problem but will advise that the whole section of power cables and utility poles be inspected ASAP.
We’ll see what, if anything, happens. Adams took the owls with him to have a necropsy completed on them, and said that he’d call with any new info/follow-up.
Dead owls update:
Feeling pretty confident that Jo-Carroll Energy is going to repair or mitigate the cause of the electrocution of the pair of great-horned owls. My contact at the power company received confirmation of their electrocution via a necropsy report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent who had conducted the investigation.
Ronald Polhill and I are cooperating in the effort to hold the power company and US Fish and Wildlife’s feet to the fire, monitoring and documenting what is or what is not being done at the site of the raptors’ killing. We’re just praying that other raptors who frequently hunt the stretch of Center Rd. where this happened aren’t also killed or maimed in the meantime.
Some very rare good news to report regarding the welfare of our feathered friends…. Back in January, a friend called to tell me that he had seen a great-horned owl hanging from power lines near his home. Knowing my background, he thought I’d be interested. He was right; and I arrived at the site to find not one but two of these beautiful raptors lying dead on the ground beneath a utility pole that held up power lines belonging to a local utility company.
Long story, short: As a result of an inspection by US Fish and Wildlife Service back in February and a necropsy that confirmed the owls’ electrocution, followed by what then amounted to being five months of increasingly antagonistic and angry email correspondence with a power company representative — plus a recent letter-to-the-editor of a local newspaper — , my friend informed me yesterday that work had indeed begun by the power company to insulate the power lines to prevent any other animal deaths.
So kudos to Jo-Carroll Energy for finally getting around to doing the right thing.
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