Rare Bird Could halt UCSB Project

By Nick Robertson Valley Voice 3/17/99 pp. 1, 10
A proposed UC Santa Barbara housing construction site near the Devereux Slough, already facing environmental scrutiny, has a newly- found feathered resident that rattles the development effort.
The 174-acre campus owned parcel, located between the slough and Ocean Meadows Golf Course, has UC Regents approval to bad over 100 homes on the site, but outcry from campus and community environmental entities has caused Chancellor Henry T. Yang to reconsider the project's merits.
The site is used by a variety of bird species for foraging, according to Santa Barbara Shores Homeowner's Association President Cynthia Brock, and is important as a part of the Ellwood open space network despite past degradation. "For us, we don't look at the site in isolation from its surroundings," she said. "The grasslands there aren't as pristine as the ones [at Ellwood], but it's still great foraging habitat."
After learning of the proposed development, the Homeowner's Association joined several other environmental organizations at a meeting of the UCSB North Campus Advisory Committee, a group of professors appointed by Yang to examine the housing project and garner public input While the autumn meeting was valuable, according to Brock, the Chancellor c "I st'adcril- wA-out demonstration, so the group invited Yang to the site for a firsthand tour. Earlier this month, Yang joined members of the various organizations on the property for the walking tour, including Santa Barbara Audubon Society board member David Kisner, who brought his birdwatching equipment. Along the tour, the group looked skyward to see sensitive bird species that are familiar to the area, such as white-tailed kites and Beldig's savannah sparrows, but it was while they were looking at the ground that they spotted the day's ornithological highlight
"As we were walking across the site we were talking about issues, like access, said  Kisner, a field biologist by trade. "as we were moving up the road there, I looked over...I yelled at everybody, going 'Stop stop stop stop!"' . Kisner had spotted a burrowing owl, a rare species that had been known to live in that site, but had not been seen there in years, he said. As Kisner set up his telescope so that Chancellor Yang could get a dose look, the environmentalists gaped in amazement at the find. "I've heard about this bird and learned about it in my zoology classes, and it's one of those species that you study about and never expect to see, so it was a golden moment," said UCSB ecology and -evolution major Tessic,-,. Scheeter, who serves as faculty housing liaison for Associated Students' Environmental Affairs Board. "Whether or not the burrowing owl meant anything to the Chancellor prior to us seeing it on the site tour, it was fairly obvious from our reaction that it was a pretty exciting event."
 Although there is at least one burrowing owl living at the Bridle Ridge property in the Santa Ynez foothills, the species is hardly ever seen in this area any more, according to Mark Hohngren, UCSB’s Associate Curator of the Museum of Systematics and Ecology. The bird is a unique predator in that it hunts by both night and day, lives primarlly iand in abandoned rodent holes, and makes a noise like a rattlesnake to deter attackers, Holmgren said. "It's a very rare species and it's one that's declined more than many other predators. Now we're lucky if we get one bird in the winter any more," he said, adding that site examinations indicate this Owl has been there for the season. "There's been an unbelievable decline 'in this animal and there's no definitive answer as to why that's occurred."
Scheeter believes that the bird count decline is indicative of the lack of foraging space available to the flying creatures as areas face additional urban sprawl. "The more I study about populations of wildlife, I learn nearly all of them are adversely impacted by disturbance and nearby development," she said, adding that an intrusive building project on the site could disturb or pollute the slough, a UC Reserve System parcel. "[The wildlife corridors for movement are being eliminated." Further studies are underway to deter- mine more about the site's burrowing owl and its habits, and to explore the possibility of it proliferating there.
As for the Chancellor, he seemed to enjoy the tour according to those who accompanied him, and received an opportunity to obtain community opinion, according to North Campus Advisory Committee chair Scott Cooper.
"The Chancellor wants to make sure that all campus constituencies are involved and have input into the final form of recommendations," he said, referring to the committee's written advisements regarding the proposed development, which are scheduled for campus review within two weeks. "The Chancellor is very concerned that he has total campus support for whatever we proceed with."

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