Top: Landowners Don and Lorraine Yeomans with the ladder they lent to us to fix the shrike release enclosures. Photo: Andrea Fried
Landowners play a vital role in the conservation of eastern loggerhead shrikes, which often goes unnoticed. They are the Robin to our Batman, and the time has come to shine the spotlight on the landowners and how they contribute to the success of the Eastern Loggerhead Shrike Recovery Program.
This year in the Napanee area of southern Ontario, all shrikes were found on private property. For the Shrike Recovery team to find the birds, find the nest, count the eggs, count the young, band the adults and assess the breeding population we need the landowners to allow us access to their property.
Now I’m sure you are thinking, ‘That sounds easy all landowners have to do is say YES’.
But, it is not so simple, because the eastern loggerhead shrike is listed as an endangered species. If a shrike nest with young is found on a property, the nest tree and the 200m surrounding it are protected from alteration for the next 5 years. Understandably, some landowners do not want to be restricted with what they can and cannot do with their land and thus do not allow us on-site access.
Yet, the majority of landowners I had the pleasure of speaking with this spring were incredibly welcoming, enthusiastic, and helpful. For example, Scott and Julia Boese always stopped by to chat about if we had seen any shrikes around and would let us know where they had seen a shrike. One of Scott’s shrike sightings ended up being one of the new pairs we found this year that successfully raised young.
During July and August when we switched to releasing captive birds, Don and Lorraine Yeomans not only let us borrow their ladder but brought it to the release enclosures, allowing us to repair the enclosures before the birds arrived. The Napanee release enclosures housed 21 captive-raised young this summer that were successfully released into the wild on August 20th, 2024. These are a few examples of landowners and how they have played crucial roles in saving loggerhead shrikes and other grassland birds. There are so many reasons to be grateful to landowners for all they do for this recovery project and we simply could not do it without them.
Thank you to all landowners past and present for your contributions to eastern loggerhead shrike conservation!
