3RBC Membership Meeting
Monday, April 5, 2010
Learn About The Decline of Pennsylvania's Barn Owls

We will learn about the plight of Pennsylvania’s declining Barn Owl population at our club’s next meeting on Monday, April 5. (Note the date, instead of Wednesday.)

The meeting will be held at the Phipps Garden Center, 1059 Shady Avenue in Shadyside. Doors will open at 6:30 PM for socializing, the business meeting begins at 7:30, and the program starts at 8.

Our speaker will be Tammy Colt, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's Wildlife Diversity Biologist for the Southwest Region. She will tell us of the progress and results of an effort by the Game Commission to improve the population.

In 2005 Game Commission wildlife diversity biologists founded the Barn Owl Conservation Initiative in the south-central and southeast regions. The purpose was to estimate the distribution and abundance of the owls, estimate survival and dispersal, evaluate habitat use and prey availability, improve nesting and foraging habitat, examine genetic diversity, and protect nest sites.

In 2006, the project was expanded to six regions of Pennsylvania. Barn Owl nests have now been found in five of those regions, though they are still concentrated east of the Appalachians. PGC biologists have banded young owls, installed nest boxes, and monitored many nest sites. The biologists are collaborating with other researchers on projects involving genetics and pellet analysis.

Tammy has a bachelor’s degree in animal biosence from Penn State and a master’s degree in biology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Before graduate school, she was an environmental educator at Powdermill Nature Reserve and wrote Pennsylvania Amphibians and Reptiles, A Curriculum Guide for the state Fish and Boat Commission.

Working for the Game Commission since 2004, she first was a Habitat Biologist working with U.S. Department of Agriculture farm bill programs. As a Diversity Biologist, she plans habitat improvements for species of special concern and assists with research involving these species.