Powerful Owl and the ANBG

["Overs, Anthony (REPS)" <>]

Hello everyone

I recently had a discussion with representatives of the ANBG. It has been a challenge for the ANBG to deal with the high level of ongoing interest in the Powerful Owl.

The ANBG is primarily concerned for the welfare of the bird, and in fact staff have a legislative duty to ensure that it is protected appropriately (the ANBG is a reserve under the Commonwealth EPBC Act). Staff are obviously also concerned to ensure that the gardens are not impacted upon unduly.

Concerns that visitors were impacting on the bird’s health have been allayed, particularly given recent observations of the bird eating. However in the general context of the need to treat a wild bird with respect, staff are keen to ensure that we can work together to keep disturbance to a reasonable minimum. And so the question was asked: “do people need to keep visiting the bird?”, particularly if they have seen it before.

I would suggest that some people are indeed still interested in seeing the bird, however I would make the following (common sense) recommendations to visitors:

- please keep your visits to the owl roost site to a minimum (note that ANBG staff and various others are observing and collecting information which will be made available to everyone)

- please keep the number of visitors at any one time at the roost site to a minimum; preferably groups should be small enough so that they are unobtrusive

- please be as quiet as possible

- please adhere to the ANBG Visitor Code*

The ANBG and COG need to work together - we all have the best interest of the bird at heart. Of course we want to take advantage of the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the bird too. In this spirit, and assuming the bird is going to be around for a while, ANBG have suggested that Rangers, other staff and interested COG members could get together and work out an observation and reporting arrangement which would minimise any potential impact on the bird. Some feedback on this suggestion through me to ANBG would be appreciated.

In the meantime anyone interested in studying the owl for any particular reasons should liaise with the ANBG Director, Anne Duncan, on m("environment.gov.au","Anne.Duncan");"> or 6250 9500.

Cheers

Anthony

* The key points of the Visitor Code are:

 - walk on the paths, not on the garden beds

 - don't climb on rocks or trees

The full Code is at: http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/visitor-code.html