The short-grass prairies of Canada are flat and easily fenced. It is easy to own the land. The roads follow perfect grids, and sections of exactly one-mile square are parceled out. The owners of each of those squares are listed in the map books you can buy at the local general store. It is nearly impossible to find something or somewhere that is further than that mile from a gravel road or a track of some kind, and each of these tracks leads to another gas or oil well. The windswept expanses may look entirely empty, but there is actually an abundance of both natural beauty and human development. They are hidden in plain sight on the prairie, and it is hard to know where they intersect.
Because each scrap of land is barricaded by barbed wire and ownership is common knowledge, I can’t simply walk up to the lone tree where the mother bird is brooding her clutch. Trespassing is out of the question, as all actions are transparent on the flat open range. So, for every hawk nest and owl burrow I find, there is a conversation attached. I have to ask, and I have to explain.
Knocking at the doors of a ranch home, I don’t strike a very respectable figure. My jeans are dirty and worn, and battery acid has started to burn frayed holes in the denim. My eyes are obviously those of an exhausted individual, as researching both hawks and owls are at odds with each other. The bent aviator’s glasses on my head are what I would have been using to hide that fact if it weren’t impolite to introduce yourself behind mirrored lenses. I always expect to be greeted with irritation for having come to their door as an unannounced stranger, but consistently I am welcomed.
My purposed however, does not always draw the same kind of hospitality. “I am studying birds…” is all it takes for them to know that the bird is the often controversial burrowing owl. Barriers come up immediately. Ranchers know exactly what kind of animals are living on their land, and they definitely know if they have burrowing owls on their property. It is plain elitism to think they are ignorant of the ecosystems they are working with. When the owl isn’t at issue, everyone is delighted to take the naive university kid out to drink a couple beers and see the lekking grouse on their land, but when it comes to the endangered species, suspicion is the usual.
It’s not that they don’t like the birds. People usually brag about the animals living on their land and will brag about how well they've kept watch over the hawks and the owls. It's not that ranchers have any big profit making and development plans in their heads that an endangered species would stand in the way of. These are not exactly monitarily motivated people, since any one of them could sell their property and suddenly be a millionair. I guess what people fear is that the government is going to step in and tell them how to take care of their home. They think of loggers losing their jobs over spotted owls and unimpressive fish stopping the building of dams. Here in Canada, however, there is nothing to be afraid of even in a hypothetical manner. The fact is, the endangered species act in Canada is meaningless. The protection it offers does not extend to private land, and all of this land is private.
In fact, here in Canada, I am starting to suspect the act is actually being used to the benefit of developers and oil companies. Although it is true that burrowing owls are rare and declining, my other species of study, the recently listed ferruginous hawk, is not. Although considered a federally threatened species, they are shockingly common. Every tree that might hold a hawk has one, and we keep finding more. They don't even care if their home is a tree or not. They will happily nest on the ground, on manmade structures, and even on oil and gas structures. They eat ground squirrels, agricultural pests, and prefer hunting on very short, well-grazed land. They are perhaps the animals best suited to thrive on the human altered prairie.
Perhaps their threatened status is just a case of overzealously listing all of the top tier predators, and in part it probably is. However, looking at the funding of my study, I have reasons to be suspicious that there is more to it than that. Much of the money for this work comes from places like Cenovus and Husky, the oil and gas companies themselves.
By giving us a comparatively insignificant amount of money for trucks and needlessly hi-tec field gear, they get to say they are working to protect endangered species and the environment without having to sacrifice anything. They can say that it is scientifically proven that endangered species are not disturbed by their activities at all, and it will be true. They know that with an endangered species act that wields absolutely no power, they can have these status symbol birds on their land, but still do as they wish without any consequences. The ranchers, who really do have the hawks and owls at heart, should know they won’t be punished for having the birds on their land, either.
That is why I wish, standing in their yards dirty and tired, I was asking different questions. I wish I wasn’t asking them to bother their hawks and their owls on behalf of questionable motives, but that I was asking them about their own observations and knowledge of their birds. I wish the conservations were about management techniques, not about simply separating them from the birds on their property turning the hawks into a University's test animals. Any good rancher is familiar with his land and his home and nearly all of them are interested in the well being of what's on it, and with land rights and the endangered species act as it is here, they are the only ones with the power to do anything productive anyhow.
Save the planet one mile square at a time.
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