to extremely dangerous situations for both people
and birds. And most baiting is done from roadsides, luring owls in to immediate
danger. Last year, one photographer actually tried luring a Boreal Owl across
busy Highway 61 so he’d have better light for photography, despite the fact
that Boreal Owls seldom fly above the height of logging trucks. Considering
that a primary cause of mortality for owls in winter is collisions with cars
and trucks, this was unconscionable.

In 1997, when a Boreal Owl turned up at the Springbrook Nature Center in Minnesota, the staff, concerned about the bird and thrilled about so many birders coming to see it, started providing daily handouts. The vast majority of the bird's pellets that winter consisted of white mice raised at the facility--it was feeding on very little naturalanother exotic species and its attendant parasites and
germs into the natural landscape.

Some photographers justify baiting owls by claiming that
their photos are valuable for conservation and environmental education, when in
reality many of these photos actually promote misinformation. One photo showing
a Great Gray Owl closing in on a mouse won awards and was conspicuously
displayed on the National Geographic and Nature Conservancy websites, even
though it was a house mouse on the surface of the snow—something that would
simply never happen in a wild situation. Over 90 percent of a Great Gray Owl’s
normal diet consists of meadow voles, which never walk on the surface of deep
snow—they construct tunnels at ground level under grass, so even when there is
no snow cover at all, voles stay out of sight. Unfortunately, by posting the
photo, these organizations