The Illinois Department of Conservation (DOC) is spending $180,000 to study the eating habits of owls. Last week both the Tribune and the Sun-Times ran versions of an AP story out of Springfield that told about the project.
Representative Ted Leverenz, a Maywood Democrat who is also chairman of the House Appropriations I Committee, declared, “Apparently the owl was wiser than we were”–a statement whose meaning I find rather obscure. His legislative aide said the chairman would like the money to be shifted into efforts to prevent poaching.
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When I talked to Representa-tive Leverenz, he amplified his remarks, saying the study had already gone on for 18 months, 3,000 pellets had been collected, and it was time to call a halt to the proceedings. He suggested that Pam Gibson had been hired because she writes a newspaper column that is frequently critical of the department, and that since they hired her the criticism has stopped. He was also doubtful of the value of this kind of research and convinced that if it were to be done, it should be done with DOC staff rather than with free-lancers hired from outside.
We should also study owls because they are of great importance in natural systems. Owls are top predators, the creatures at the apex of the food chain–a position that makes them very vulnerable. Poisons introduced into the lower links of the food chain ultimately find their way into the bodies of top predators. Since any perturbation anywhere in the system will ultimately show up in their lives, we can learn about the state of the whole system by studying them.
The study also provides baseline data that can be referred to in the future if we begin to suspect that harmful changes are occurring. I have written before about the problems we have in being certain that our perception of the decline of certain songbird species is real. Solid data from 1990 will be helpful in 2010.
So the study seems amply justified to me. The first 18 months of collecting have been concentrated mainly in northern and central Illinois. The last 18 months will shift the emphasis to the southern third of the state.
To me this project is the very best sort of thing to spend our tax money on. It is providing us with vital information at a very low cost. It is not wasteful. It is not a boondoggle.
