Snowy Owl (Bubo scandicaus)

"Whole ecosystems are threatened, and the losses have started to feed on themselves ."

Elizabeth Kolbert 

   Over many years I have searched every winter for Snowy Owls and have had great good fortune in finding them. Understanding the habitat they prefer in their winter quarters is the key to success, and we are fortunate that the Region of Waterloo and Wellington County have for many years hosted reliable and sometimes large populations of this magnificent bird.

     

     Last winter, Miriam and I were unable to find even one. This winter, so far, despite scouring the areas where they have taken up residence year after year, we have failed again. The winter is not over, of course but our initial forays do not bode well. We have also noticed severely reduced numbers of that other enigmatic raptor from the north, Rough-legged Hawk (Buteo lagopus).

     Climate breakdown is having very serious consequences for Snowy Owls and all other arctic species.

     Snowy Owls breed on the treeless tundra and build their nests on the ground. The Arctic is heating up faster than almost any other region on Earth, and the permafrost, ground frozen for millennia, is thawing. The terrain is sinking and new ponds have formed. In addition to eliminating nesting habitat the meltwater is flooding the burrows of Lemmings (genus Lemmus), the principal component of the Snowy Owl's diet, essential to the growth of its young.

     So, in one stroke of human-caused catastrophe, we have robbed this iconic bird of home and food.

     This does not even begin to address the consequences of carbon and methane release. Or the madness of beginning to drill for more fossil fuels in areas like the Arctic National Wildlife refuge.

     It causes me immense sadness that I may have seen my last Snowy Owl, or at the very least may no longer have such familiarity with them. 

     Such are the distances the remaining members of their kind now have to wander in search of suitable breeding grounds, a bird banded in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario was recovered in Siberia.

     It is profoundly sad that humans have so affected the planet that extinction is proceeding at a pace that far exceeds anything that has ever occurred in the entire 4.6 billion year history of the Earth. Entire ecosystems are being obliterated and the Snowy Owl is just one victim of this human indifference.

     It will not end well for owls, but it will not end well for humans either. We have met the enemy and it is us.

     John Donne's truth is immortal:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” 

     Make no mistake, the bell tolls for us all and we are our own bellringers. As goes the owl, so go we.