Safe Habitats for Barn owls in San  Francisco

The issue our group addressed with our Silver Award project was the lack of safe habitats for barn owls in our urban environment. We had a family of five barn owls nesting in one of our troop members' backyards this spring and summer. Most of the neighbors that we spoke with didn’t realize that we have barn owls living in San Francisco, they thought that barn owls mostly existed in rural farm areas. The owls moved from tree to tree and seemed to be lacking a safe nesting place. We also noticed poisoned rodents in the area and worried that the owls would be poisoned. One of our troop members' cats almost died from biting a poisoned mouse earlier this year and there are a lot of neighbors who have pets that have become sick from poison. We reached out to San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department at Lake Merced, one of our closest open areas, and learned that there are no barn owl boxes in place at Lake Merced. This issue needed to be addressed because barn owls need a safe environment in which to live and a food source free of poison.