Displaced by the L.A. fires, a burrowing owl finds a new home

These unique birds used to be prevalent in Santa Barbara, but the loss of habitat and food sources landed them on the candidate list for the California Endangered Species Act. (KSBY via CNN Newsource) (Willingham, James)

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — Wayne Chapman, a restoration manager with UC Santa Barbara’s Cheadle Center, is working to bring burrowing owls back to Coil Oil Point.

“Coil Oil Point — its original name in Chumash was some variant of ‘pokoy,’ which is burrowing owl,” Chapman said.

These unique birds used to be prevalent in Santa Barbara, but the loss of habitat and food sources landed them on the candidate list for the California Endangered Species Act.

“It’s a lot of things — food sources, poison, but mostly loss of habitat,” said the Ojai Raptor Center’s Jaclyn Desantis.

Desantis says that to survive, the owls mostly eat bugs and rely on burrowing mammals to dig their tunnels, both of which are declining due to poison and pesticides.

“All the flat places in California is where we have intensive agriculture in giant urban centers, and so those places have essentially been taken away from these birds entirely,” Chapman said.

That’s why Chapman says UCSB’s North Campus open space is crucial for their survival.

“So right now we have at least one. We might have two. But this is the first and only site so far in Santa Barbara County that was kind of carved out especially for them,” Chapman.

On Friday, the Ojai Raptor Center released a rehabilitated burrowing owl into the open space. This owl had been injured in the Los Angeles area but was unable to be returned to its original habitat because of the recent wildfires.

“This is a critically, you know, declining species. So we’re just so thrilled when we’re actually able to successfully rehabilitate them and release them back,” Desantis said.

Juliet Lemar, CNN