Alex Wilson is dedicating his time to make surviving in Havasu a lot easier for one priority species.

Alex Wilson clears out the trench for the electrical conduit and buckets that will form tunnels and homes for burrowing owls in Lake Havasu City. Nathan Bruttell/News-Herald Photo.

The 15-year-old Boy Scout is volunteering more than 100 hours to building augmented homes for the burrowing owls that are attracted to the unique environment in Lake Havasu City. The burrowing owl, which once thrived in Arizona, is now on the brink of becoming an endangered species. When looking for an Eagle Scout project, Wilson said it was important that he find something that benefited not only the city, but the surrounding areas in Havasu as well.

“This is the only place in most of Arizona where they’re really abundant, and for some reason, they like Havasu even though it’s nothing like their typical habitat,” Wilson said. “To create a better habitat to sustain a species that is having a lot of difficulty surviving, I think is a really helpful thing to do. It’s something that’s going to help them and I think if we can do something like this, it would be great.”

But Wilson isn’t going it alone. He recently enlisted the help of fellow Troop 55 Boy Scouts, animal rescue group Wild At Heart, Arizona Fish and Wildlife Service and a few other volunteers in the city.

“It’s been a great experience learning how to work with other people and organizing a large project like this and having so many of them help out,” Wilson said. “Getting something done and doing physical labor and everything coming together for a project like this … it’s a really satisfying feeling.”

The group worked on the augmented habitats in a city wash earlier this week, constructing artificial burrows using materials as basic as buckets, PVC pipes and electrical conduit. The City Council recently approved the project and agreed to a 10-year commitment to maintain the habitats. Wilson first approached Wild At Heart about the project a year ago and Burrowing Habitat Coordinator Greg Clark said he was excited to be able to do the project in Havasu.

“We’ve built similar constructions around Arizona, but Lake Havasu (City) is completely different for the habitat for a burrowing owl than any other place in North America,” Clark said. “For some reason the burrowing owls really like these giant washes and don’t mind living next to all of the people and the activity. That’s very unusual because everywhere else they live it is flat, open grassland. We don’t know why, but they love Lake Havasu, which is the opposite of what they typically like.”

The nine-inch tall burrowing owls do not build their own homes and instead borrow others, Clark said. The owls used to number in the hundreds of thousands, but construction forced out a majority of the species that created their homes and led to a severely dwindling population.

“Once the burrow is gone, the owl is gone as well,” Clark said. “Right now, the only remedy we have for the short-term is putting these artificial burrows in to restore the habitat.”

While Lake Havasu is not the natural habitat for the burrowing owl, the species is “very helpful” to the ecosystem in the city as the birds help keep insect and poisonous snake species population down.

“There are more in Lake Havasu (City) than in most places, but they still only number somewhere between 100 to 500 in ballpark numbers,” Clark said. “Using habitat augmentation, we’re able to increase their survival prospects tremendously and finally give this species a chance to survive here. It’s a bridge toward a better day when we stop killing the animals that dig their holes and the ecosystem is restored.”

Wilson said the more research he did on the benefits of the burrowing owls in the city, the greater his desire to help the species became.

“It’s been a lot of work but after realizing how helpful the owls are to the environment and to the ecosystem, I really got interested in doing this,” he said. “It was a lot more than I was expecting but now that it’s coming together, it’s really great and it’s something I don’t think many people get to feel too often.”

You can contact the reporter at nbruttell@havasunews.com