Barn Owl Project Flies High Thanks to Grant Funding and Volunteer Efforts

What happened?

Barn owl numbers have suffered through the loss of traditional nesting sites in old farm buildings and large hedgerow trees.

However, they will take readily to specially designed and expertly sited wooden nest boxes, which is a simple and effective conservation tool to increase the breeding habitat of the barn owl.

In 2019, a project to create a network of landowners and nest boxes across East Cleveland and the wider Tees Valley was set up – since then more than two hundred boxes have been built and placed so far. Funding from the Tees Valley Community Foundation has helped towards the cause; the mission is to ensure barn owls are around for years and generations to come.

Funding helps to support the barn owl monitoring effort, the purchase of materials for making the boxes, volunteers to travel to the area to monitor and maintain them, and rings to tag the owlets as part of studies into age and movement. It also helps towards the delivery of owl sessions to local school children and community groups.

How we helped...

Our funding made an impact in the following ways:

  • Helped support the costs of volunteers’ travel to monitor and maintain all the owl boxes in the network for the 2021 breeding seasons
  • Purchased the rings needed for the owlets as part of studies on owl age and movement
  • Enabled advice and assistance to landowners on owl conservation measures
  • Enabled the replacement of some of the older and dilapidated boxes in the network avoiding the loss of known breeding sites
  • Supported a volunteer to obtain his statutory owl licence
  • Kept volunteers working on owl pellet analysis during the covid pandemic
  • Enabled a session to be delivered about owls to a local school and a talk on barn owls to a community group.
  • Worked towards achieving the goal of ensuring  barn owls are around for future generations in East Cleveland
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