City to Owls: Drop Dead
Berkeley Parks supervisor rejects plan to protect Burrowing Owls in Cesar Chavez Park
Bruce Pratt, City of Berkeley Parks Superintendent, has rejected a plan by volunteers of the Chavez Park Conservancy to install a temporary fence to protect visiting Burrowing Owls from loose dogs. If volunteers erect the fence anyway, Pratt says, the city will tear it down.
After more than five years of attempting to persuade the City to install a more meaningful permanent fence around the Burrowing Owl Sanctuary in the northeast corner of the park, the Chavez Park Conservancy last month proposed instead to install a temporary plastic fence inside the permanent fence. The Conservancy would pay for the materials and volunteers would do the labor, costing the City nothing. In the spring, after owls left, volunteers would take the temporary fence down again.
In an email on Sep 13, Pratt rejected the proposal and said “at this time, the City has no plans to change or augment the existing Burrowing Owl area barrier.” He promised “the immediate removal of unauthorized modifications.”
The existing fence around the Burrowing Owl area was installed in 2011 as part of an art project financed by a wealthy Marin County donor. The fence is 32 inches high and has wide gaps between its horizontal cables. Dogs of all sizes have been filmed, photographed, and reported for years clearing this barrier and invading the owl preserve. Two Burrowing Owls have lost their lives to unleashed dogs in the park. Others have been harassed and flushed in fear of their lives.
Everyone who loves the Burrowing Owls knows that the “art” fence is not an effective barrier to unleashed dogs. The Chavez Park Conservancy’s proposal to install a four-foot high green plastic garden fence inside the art fence would provide visiting owls with security against loose dogs while preserving high visibility for park visitors.
The City’s decision says that Berkeley does not care about the Burrowing Owls and is unwilling to make the slightest move to protect them, even if it costs the City nothing.
A petition launched two years ago to protect the owls is being revived and is available online here. The Chavez Park Conservancy is also consulting with legal counsel over the issue.
Learn more — much more — about the Burrowing Owls in Cesar Chavez Park:
- The Owls Need a New Fence brochure
- The Owls Are Special brochure
- The Owls Came Back movie
- Binge Burrowing Owl photos and videos.
- View Favorite Owl Photos.
- Read “Open Letter to Audubon’s Glenn Phillips”
- Read all posts on Burrowing Owls in the park.
- Read the 2022 “The Owls Need a New Fence” memo
- Read the 2020 “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” memo
- Read about the history of the Open Circle art project
Pingback: Park News 9/21/2024
Please STOP CALLING IT A FENCE! It’s literally 2-3 wires going horizontally; that is NOT a fence! It gives them credit that is not due! There is NO protection for the owls. Full stop. It’s very discouraging that in Berkeley (of all places) we can’t protect these precious creatures. Sigh. Marty, and others, thanks for your efforts!!
The city has betrayed the Owls for many years now, including with that ugly $100,000 “art project” that helped drive away the last owls.
I do not understand so come back to the usual reasons: Money and other ways to profit. Anyone who betrays such a special amazing animal for no rational reason is showing he’s the man to work with for other assaults on nature for profit.
We used to see at least 6 Burrowing Owls on the rocks on the northeast side of Cesar Chavez Park, before there was a fenced area. Then $100,000 was spent to make an art project that is now called the “owl sanctuary,” but is part of why the owls were driven out. There were two remaining owl burrows and one was paved over and the other covered with a huge bench. Why? Meanwhile, there was a plan to eliminate all the California Ground Squirrels who are friends of the owls and who help them. That was stopped, but the people who knew the extensive history of the owls and Ground Squirrels and ere their protectors were cited for feeding their friends, and driven out of the park. Because of the obsession with nativism, the two women first in charge of “protecting” the owls talked about killing all the “non-native” plants, ignoring the extensive non-native landscaping at the businesses nearby, and that the plants feed so many other birds as well as providing protection from the dogs killing the owls.
In spite of the fact that dog owners have almost every part of the Bay Area to walk their dogs, this fragile, delicate area is overrun with dogs, including off leash in the small no-dog area. The dogs are allowed to torment and kill the owls. Even humans I know are afraid to go to the park because of the dogs.
I joined the group to protect the owls in the beginning and quit because of how those in power would not do what was needed, which is very simple: Ban all dogs. It’s been many years now that we see people ignore the signs for the leashed areas, so clearly that doesn’t work. Why is that one lobby so much more imporant than the Burrowing Owls and those of us who don’t feel safe there?
This is a horrible decision by the Berkeley parks supervisor (and whomever else advised him). A thoughtful and reasonable way to protect the burrowing owls has been made, and it does not require taxpayer money. (Even if it did require a small sum of taxpayer money, I would be in favor of such an expense.)
I urge the City Council to take action to override parks supervisor’s ruling.
I signed a petition, but sorry, I think we can contribute to a rolled-up WIRE fence, not an ugly green plastic one.
I hope if enough sign the petition, the city will change its mind, but let’s not make it green plastic.
Thanks,
Virginia