The Audubon Society functioned as a facilitator. “Dan (Bernie) wanted barn owl boxes in the Commons for gopher, rat and mouse control. Kevin (Gustafson) was looking for a project. There was wood available from construction of the new Walnut Creek Library and edge braces for the inside of the box available from a Council election campaign signs. Then lumber available from a material recycler for posts to mount the boxes on as well as help available to cut the boxes from the material recycler,” explains Murphy, “so Kevin's job was to assemble all of the resources available for his Eagle Scout project - we just brought the resources to Kevin's attention and he put them together.”
“I didn't really know that much about integrated pest management until I met Mr. Murphy and began the project,” says the Scout, but Gustafson quickly got very interested in a method that permits to deal with pests without the pesticides. “The process allows resident rodents to provide food for breeding barn owls,” explains Murphy. One couple of owls with chicks may consume as many as 1000 rodents by the time the chicks leave the nest. According to the California Council for the Wildlife Rehabilitation, approximately 26 million years ago the first Barn Owl appeared on earth; and since then Barn Owls have reigned supreme as one of the most efficient hunters on wings, and they were the farmer’s best friends when it came to rodent control.
For his project Gustafson worked cooperatively with others. “I was supplied the blueprints by the Audubon society. I then measured and cut the wood. Later my friends, many of whom are fellow boy scouts, and I assembled the boxes,” he says. The boxes will be installed in both Moraga public parks is the coming weeks. “Mr. Bernie and I specifically picked locations that we felt would discourage people from messing with the owl boxes,” says Gustafson, “also the boxes are 12 feet up in the air.”
For Bernie, the owl box project is exemplary of how IPM works. “I learnt about owls in a training session in Walnut Creek and bats in an EBMUD publication,” says the Superintendent, “and that will be one of my next project, getting bats to nest under the pedestrian bridge that connects Moraga Commons to the library.” A brown bat eats its own weight in insect in a night, and they love mosquitoes. They can catch 1,200 of them in an hour. Bats also pollinate many plants, and produce guano, a prized fertilizer.
“The Town of Moraga did the biggest jump of them all, and stand in front of all Contra Costa,” says a proud Bernie refereeing to Moraga’s IPM policy. After the bats, Bernie plans to set raptor poles in strategic places in Moraga so hawks will perch and catch gophers coming out during the day. For these projects he is hoping to enroll Scouts for the completion.
Bernie’s efforts to eliminate all chemical use in public places in Moraga include as well adding mosquitoes eating fishes in Mulholland ponds and switching all the janitorial supplies to “green” chemical free soaps and cleaning supplies. “We will never go back,” concludes the Superintendent.
