Super-cool' birds of prey make valuable contributions

Written By Peter Allan

Ginger with Inspector, the Spectacled Owl. Photo submitted by Ginger Boehme-Vertefeuille

 

By Patricia Lane and Ginger Boehme-Vertefeuille

Ginger Boehme-Vertefeuille invites us to get close to raptors. This 19-year-old from Cowichan Valley, British Columbia, spends her summers educating visitors at Vancouver Island’s The Raptors. 

Tell us about your work.

Birds of prey fascinate people — with their size, speed and deadly — intent but 30 per cent are threatened with extinction, so they are much more vulnerable than most of us realize. Vancouver Island’s The Raptors facility offers people of all ages a chance to watch as eagles fly within a couple of feet of them or to carry a hawk or owl on their own wrists as they walk through a forest. Our goal is to use proximity to increase awareness about the critical role these super-cool animals play in their environments.

For example, turkey vultures are not exactly beautiful at first glance. They scavenge and never hunt for themselves. But they help clean their surroundings. They eat rotting deer and other animal flesh and their digestive systems can cleanse it of anthrax, botulism and rabies. This service makes the environment safer for others, including humans.

We bring hawks to places where gulls might be an expensive nuisance or even a danger, like airports, landfills and rooftop gardens. Once we fly the hawk, the gulls quickly decide to hang out elsewhere. This is a much more desirable way of managing human-nature interactions than some other alternatives!

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Peter Allan
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