Tag Archives: ARU

Roxan Chicalo: Searching for the elusive Western Screech Owl

A small group of people turned out to hear an overview of FOCI’s Western Screech Owl Project at Mansons Hall on Friday September 27, 2024. Participants listened to different owl calls, examined owl feathers and learned why putting up nest boxes is important. The speakers were the two biologists from Madrone Environmental who wrote FOCI’s final report. Cortes Currents interviewed the lead author, Roxan Chicalo, afterward.  

“What gets me up in the morning, when I’m working at these species at risk, is thinking about balanced ecosystems. Everything is working together to create the ecosystem that supports our lifestyles as humans. In my mind, every animal and plant has a role that they play,” she began.

“Screech owls are a small avian predator. They eat  anything from amphibians to small mammals to fish, insects, slugs,  all sorts  of different small animals in the ecosystem. As a predator, they  keep a check on those prey species populations so that they don’t get out of control, and they also support biodiversity. If one of these prey species booms in their populations, they might start to compete against  other populations of other animals. We might see that we’re having more extinction events.  That’s why we should care to  promote a balanced ecosystem and support that.” 

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What FOCI Achieved in 2023

With the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) AGM coming up on November 28, it seemed like an ideal time to ask Executive Director Helen Hall what the society achieved in 2023. 

“We’re actually doing 14 different projects, which involve everything from habitat restoration and conservation through to environmental monitoring and community education.  I just wanted to highlight some of those projects,”she explained.

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Provincial Biologist visits Cortes Island; Second Western Screech Owl discovered

A provincial biologist visited Cortes Island over the weekend. Emily Upham-Mills is an ecosystems biologist with the Ministry of Water, Lands and Natural Resource Stewardship and an important member of the team working with the Friends of Cortes Island (FOCI) on the Western Screech Owl Project

Helen Hall, Executive Director of FOCI, explained, “Emily very kindly came up on the weekend to talk to the community. This project is really important for FOCI. We’re doing really interesting scientific work and that data is going back both provincially and federally. It puts us in the spotlight with this particular species. It’s a project that’s running for three years. We’re in the second year of trying to discover whether there are Western Screech Owls on Cortes Island.” 

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