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Local hikers in Portola Valley may have recently spotted wooden boxes nailed in the trees. These are barn owl nesting boxes meant to support owl reproduction and rodent control.
The force behind the project is Eliza Low, a 17-year-old rising senior at Menlo School.
Low, who grew up in Portola Valley, contacted the town’s Conservation Committee about building nesting boxes for the town’s open spaces. She had already built and installed one on Hillbrook Trail and wanted to propose another at Frog Pond Park. Low presented her project to the committee during a meeting on March 25.
While volunteering at an aviary at the Traveling Natural History at Chewonki Program in Maine, Low learned that barn owls were great at reducing rodent populations — serving as a natural method of pest control. A family of barn owls can eat up to 4,000 rodents per year, she said.
Low’s project was a perfect fit for Portola Valley’s Conservation Committee, which had already been promoting local residents to build owl boxes on their own properties, said Marianne Plunder, chair of the Conservation Committee.
“We have seen an increase in interest and an uptick in residents installing the boxes because owl boxes are a safe and effective way to control rodents and the people of Portola valley understand and want to do their part,” she added.
In 2018, the Portola Valley Town Council voted to adopt a resolution urging the local community to discontinue the sale and use of rodenticide.
For nearly six years the town has been using non-toxic methods, such as trapping, on all sports fields, said Plunder.
Through rats, rodenticide can make its way up into the food chain, causing sickness and death in predators such as mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, hawks and owls.
In January, the state passed a bill prohibiting the use of anticoagulant rodenticide. This type of rodenticide interferes with the animal’s ability to produce blood-clotting agents and leads to internal bleeding and a slower death. As the poison remains in the rodents while alive, predators will feed on them and ingest the rodenticide.
Low explained that in general, 95% of mountain lions experience rodenticide exposure. She learned more about the impacts the poison had on wildlife while volunteering on a scat survey with the Bay Area Puma Project.
“There’s lots of natural alternatives, like rodent contraceptives or just good old fashion traps,” Low said. “Rodenticides are really not the only way, but yet they’re still so widely used and I want to bring attention to that and find ways to protect the animals that I care for.”
As a Portola Valley resident, the wildlife and outdoors have always been familiar to her. She said she often sees owls while she is driving home late at night as well as bobcats while walking through hiking trails.
“(Growing up in Portola Valley) has shown me just how wonderful it is to live among wildlife and made it so that I want to do everything I can to ensure that we can coexist with our wild neighbors and figure out ways to allow people and wildlife to live rather peacefully together,” Low added.
Low said she used her existing woodworking skills to build the boxes in her school’s workshop. She’s made a total of two and recruited four other students to make four more. She hopes to put up the other boxes as soon as she can.
Low, who will be joining the Conservation Committee, encourages the community to consider sanitation and exclusion practices to remove rodents before pursuing rodent repellents and fertility control options.
According to the Berkeley-based project Raptors Are The Solution, natural products to deter rodents include dry ice and cayenne pepper. It also warns that snap traps can be dangerous to other wildlife and should be used in bait boxes and closed areas where other animals can reach them.
Plunder said the Conservation Committee will be publishing monthly educational articles through the town newsletter that will include practical tips on what the community can do to uphold a healthy ecosystem in the town.
For more information on safe rodent control methods visit biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/Safe-Rodent-Control/. To learn about rodenticide alternatives visit raptorsarethesolution.org/preferred-pest-control-products/.
