Alastair Duncan’s artist-led project, Owls Eat Rats, is picking up steam. This year it received another big shot in the arm with a $50,000 award from Taronga Zoo’s Hatch accelerator program. The purpose of the program is to inspire creative, forward-thinking solutions that allow wildlife to thrive alongside productive agriculture lands. This funding is allowing a safer alternative to pesticide use, a pilot project that uses barn owls to keep rodent populations under control through natural predation, a method to be expanded. It specifically focuses on Fenner Dunlop’s Banyula Farm, where we are using regenerative ag to restore habitat.
For the last several years, David Brook has honed his skills at building barn owl nesting boxes, key ingredients to this project. Each successful breeding event of barn owls at Banyula Farm contributes to the removal of hundreds of rats, alleviating the reliance on harmful rodenticides.
Balancing Agriculture and Conservation
Banyula Farm is leading the way to meet the demands of profitable agriculture while protecting the unique environmental treasure of Australia. The farm’s director, Matthew Bleakley, made special mention of barn owls and their success in lowering the necessity of using harmful rodenticides. As the project matures, farmers and pest controllers are supposed to become more convinced that natural pest control methods work.
With support from an Environmental Growth Fund grant, Alastair Duncan’s project installed hunting roosts and nesting boxes for barn owls. Each pair of barn owls needs at least three nesting boxes in close proximity to survive. To monitor the success of the project, cameras are installed inside the boxes, allowing for observation of owl behavior and growth.
Duncan mentioned that 90 percent of the pellets are produced by rats. The other pellets are from house mice, which are one of the biggest dangers to our agriculture industry. This incredibly impactful statistic illustrates the barn owls’ efficiency at preying on unhealthy rodents and helping keep them in check from destructively overwhelming cropland.
The Impact of Rodenticides
Pollution with persistent organic pollutants—rodenticides are a prime example—represents a second major threat to barn owls. Secondary rodenticides build up inside the owls’ bodies with each contaminated prey item they eat. This build-up can dramatically impair their foraging efficiency, reproductive success, and overall time of death.
Brook shed light on the urgent need to address the hazards created by toxic rodenticides. What’s next We’ve started working alongside local wildlife hospitals, Taronga Zoo and various universities. Long-term, we hope to provide more inclusive assessments of barn owl toxic rodenticide impacts. Through this collaborative approach, we hope to continue gaining insight and taking preventive action against the dangers posed by these chemicals.
As awareness grows regarding the adverse effects of second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides on wildlife, various organizations are advocating for a ban on these products. Endangered Species Coalition Farmers are reluctant to use poison because, frankly, they don’t want to. Brook said, “Farmers aren’t opposed to the idea of not using poison … but they don’t have the option.”
Future Expansion Plans
Duncan intends to introduce the barn owl project on the Sunshine Coast, partnering with the Australian Macadamia Society. He’s convinced that if they can show some success from different areas of the country, they can inspire more widespread adoption of natural pest control techniques to American farming.
The next stage of this effort will focus on hard-nosed research to determine what’s possible to duplicate in other contexts and sectors. Duncan explained, “In addition to increasing our presence in existing territories, we want to prove with data and research that we can deliver farmers a compelling, cost-effective, cleaner alternative to poisons.”
Even more excitingly, he laid out a vision for a future without rodenticides on farms. It would be wonderful to be completely rodenticide-free one day, Bleakley enthused. He reinforced the direction in which he would like to see sustainable agriculture go in the future.
