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28 CLIMATE CHANGE ALBERTAS BIODIVERSITY Burrowing Owls The Burrowing Owl is listed as an Endangered species nation-wide at least partly because of the impacts of extreme weather including heavy rainfall and storms. Through their long-term field research Ryan Fisher and colleagues in review have found that extreme one-day rainfalls result in nest flooding. Consequently productivity i.e. owlet survival rate is negatively impacted by precipitation anomalies. However if owlets were provided with supplemental food by the researchers almost all survived periods of heavy rainfall. Considering the expected increase in extreme rainfall events within its breeding range as climate change progresses the long-term persistence of the Burrowing Owl is uncertain but could be alleviated by managing Burrowing Owl habitat to enhance the supply of food. Supplemental feeding while costly and time-consuming could be used as a short- term measure to improve owlet survival in emergency situations. Because Burrowing Owls like many prairie birds are migratory climate change impacts on both wintering grounds and migration routes could be as important to their persistence in Canada and Alberta as the conditions on their breeding grounds. Troy Wellicome and colleagues 2014 including Ryan Fisher and Erin Bayne from the BMCCA project found that storms during fall migration and above average precipitation on the wintering and breeding grounds were associated with reduced survival of Burrowing Owl populations. Stochastic events such as large storms during migration could pose a serious risk to the Canadian population because it is already so small. Photo TheBurrowingOwlisasmallowlthatnestsinburrowsinthe flattreelesslandscapesofAlbertasGrasslandNaturalRegion.