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It's a classic win-win. The Hungry Owl Project is providing habitat and boosting populations of barn owls in the north bay, enabling the nocturnal predators to feast on mice, rats and other rodents we'd rather not be allowed to proliferate unchecked.
Alex Godbe with her friend, WookieBarn owls are just one of several species of owls that are common across the North Bay. Although they, like most owls, are nocturnal, Alex Godbe, Director of the Hungry Owl Project, says barn owls are easy to recognize when seen in flight. But don't expect to hear one fly past.
But just because you won't hear a barn owl in flight, don't assume you won't hear one at all.
A series of five owl boxes, provided by the Hungry Owl Project, were installed near the Marin Civic Center last fall to help control the burgeoning rat population in that vicinity.Left alone, barn owls can live a decade or more, Alex Godbe explains, and while they don't necessarily maintain any sort of social relationships, they are also non-territorial, and so can readily co-exist with one another, provided the food supply is sufficient for all.
The Hungry Owl Project offers instructions for building owl boxes as well as finished boxes for sale via their website.
This map, showing where Barn Owls can be found across North America, was prepared by the US Geologicial Survey.
A long-awaited survey of groundwater levels and fluctuations beneath the Santa Rosa plain was previewed to a keenly interested group of about 3 dozen stakeholders Thursday morning.
USGS Hydrologist Tracy Nishikawa presents research about groundwater in the Santa Rosa plain.The area under study reaches from above Healdsburg south to Cotati, and from the Santa Rosa foothills west across the Laguna to near Sebastopol. Some critics of the process have charged that those boundaries were drawn to accommodate political considerations, but Tracy Nishikawa, a research hydrologist for the US Geological Survey in San Diego, says the lines were based on geological considerations.
Studying possible future scenarios for water use has obvious applications for years when supplies grow scarce, but Jay Jasperse, Chief Engineer for the Sonoma County Water Agency, notes it will also be useful for flood control planning.
Harvesting biomass from one of the test "green rectangles" at the Santa Rosa Wastewater treatment facility. The plant mass is sent on to a digester to be converted to methane.At Santa Rosa's Regional sewer plant, ponds covered with fast-growing aquatic plants are being used to help clean toxics and pollutants out of the water as part of the wastewater treatment process. But there's another, very different benefit those plants can offer as well.
While showing off the FAB project at the treatment plant, Caden Hare explained that the effort to develop on site energy generation was driven in part by the needs of the facility itself.
With the recent expansion of the harvesting and digestors, Hare adds, the output from the biomass is already making a significant contribution to the plant's power consumption.
Del Tredinnick (front, center) of Santa Rosa's Public Utility Department with the FAB Project Development Team. Caden Hare is at the top right.
Much is being done to support wild salmon in our local waterways, from habitat restoration projects in remote creeks to extensively debated adjustments in the water flows in the
The coming Wild Steelhead Festival is only partially celebratory; as Brian Hines of Trout Unlimited explains, it also serves as a forum for advocacy on behalf of the still-threatened and endangered species.
Much of the habitat restoration work that has been done and is underway to boost spawning conditions and rates has been directed toward tributaries of the Russian River, less than the river itself. Sonoma County fishing guide Kent Macintosh argues that ongoing gravel mining in and along the main channel is countermanding the efforts to aid the salmon elsewhere.
Dams on the major waterways aren't the only ones that impose additional challenges for spawning salmon, adds Brian Hines.
The Sonoma County Water Agency has background information on the Biological Opinion and related recmnmendations, which will be the subject of a special meting on Thursday, February 9th, 9 – 11:30 am, in the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Chambers.
Most storm drains don't flow to sewage treatment facilities, but feed into local creeks, streams and rivers instead. So what goes down those drains is important to the health of those nearby waterways.
The emphasis on getting the rainwater runoff message out to young people was not surprising, observed Russian River Watershed Association chairman Jake MacKenzie of Rohnert Park. A recent precedent showed how effective that approach can be.
Possibly the biggest challenge facing this new outreach campaign, says Russian Riverkeeper Don McEnhill, is overcoming the widespread casual denial about what actually happens to the water that disappears down the storm drains.
