To talk pest control, Clark County’s Green Neighborhoods program invited the community to a presentation outlining the services of its two preferred contractors: owls and bats.
Guests packed the upstairs of the Vancouver Water Resources Education Center on Sunday to learn about bats and owls and how they benefit the environment and human communities, and how they make excellent organic exterminators.
John Prucich, a falconer and former raptor handler with the Woodland Park Zoo and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, brought along three live birds to help with his presentation: Junebug, a common European buzzard, relative of the red-tailed hawk; Peabody Ziggy Stardust, a lesser yellow-headed vulture Prucich noted he did not name; and Wednesday, a Eurasian eagle-owl, one of the largest owl species and star of the show.
Owls are among nature’s apex pest hunters. An excellent way to deal with a mouse or mole problem, Prucich said, is to coax a barn owl to move into the neighborhood.
A single barn owl might eat up to a thousand mice in a year, he said.
“Imagine a barn owl in the neighborhood. It’s going to clean up,” he said. “A family of barn owls? About four- to five-thousand mice in a year.”
Many farmers in the past attacked owls for the trouble they caused poultry, he said, but now, in Eastern Washington, farmers build boxes where owls can roost and then hunt.
“That’s something you guys could do instead of using pest control like poison. You could actually build a barn owl nest box and put that up in your neighborhood,” he said. “Put it up, and you might see your whole rodent problem go away, and that way you’re not using any really nasty poisons or pest control.”
It could be a fun weekend project, he said, adding they don’t hunt cats or dogs.
It’s the fifth year of the Green Neighbors program, Environmental Outreach Specialist Sally Fisher said. Since it’s the program’s fifth birthday, she said, commemorating it with live animals seemed fitting, she said.
The program typically focuses on medication disposal, composting training or recycling, along with organic gardening.
“Reduction of pesticides is what we’re kind of focusing on today, because that’s so harmful to the birds, the animals,” Fisher said.
Sickness from pesticides can threaten bird and bat populations, Fisher said, which is unfortunate considering bats and some birds make for a prime pest-control service.
“We’re always trying to reduce pesticides in the environment, so we do a lot of education on natural gardening,” she said.
The county has a demonstration site at Pacific Community Park, she said, where people can see greener gardening techniques in action.
But there are other, less obvious, human activities that can affect bat and owl populations, Fisher said.
Prucich noted one of the greatest causes of owl and hawk deaths in Washington is collisions with passing vehicles.
Why? Litter. Tossed food, even biodegradable food waste like apple cores, attracts rodents to the roadside, Prucich said.
“When you throw out any food products out your window, you’re making great habitat for mice, and sadly, owls and hawks pay with their lives,” he said.
Keep a trash bag in the car so you can toss that orange peel in the trash, or better yet, compost, when you get home, he said, where it won’t risk a raptor’s life.
Like owls, bats are a boon to humans in that they’ll scarf down peskier bugs.
Some North American bat species can eat 2,000 to 6,000 insects in a night, but they can be disrupted by, again, pesticides, but also by hikers.
Common local bat species include the aptly named little brown bat and big brown bat, Fisher said.
Many of them settle in caves around Mt. St. Helens for the winter, she said, although those populations are often put in danger by careless hikers.
Humans traveling between caves can spread disease among the bats, she said, or wake them from hibernation during wintertime.
When they wake, they’ll go search for food, then starve when they come up empty.
Blocking cave entrances hasn’t helped, she said, because bats have flown right into the fencing.
People can help bats, and take advantage of their insect-eating diet and pollinating effects, buy building bat boxes, growing “moon gardens” with plants that attract bats and their prey, and by limiting pesticide use.
“Let Mother Nature do her work,” Fisher said. “She will.”
