Restoring Burrowing Owls at Weapons Depo

History of the Project 

In north-central Oregon, bordering the Columbia River in the Morrow and Umatilla counties, sits a former chemical weapons depot. Sprinkled with 1,001 half-buried storage bunkers called “igloos”, the site was opened in 1941 and served as a US Army installation that stored supplies, munitions, and about 12% of the country's chemical weapons in the 60’s. Between 2004 and 2011, the Army incinerated all chemical weapons on site and the land was subsequently divided between the Oregon Military Department and the Columbia Development Authority, including the Port of Umatilla, the Port of Morrow, Umatilla and Morrow Counties, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). 

To date, the westernmost portion of the land is operated as the Rees Training Center by the Oregon Military Department, and much of the easternmost portion of the land is in the process of being transferred back to the Tribes to be conserved as wildlife habitat. Another type of unexpected storage container lies buried underground across both sides of the former Depot: a network of artificial burrows fashioned from old plastic juice barrels, corrugated pipe, and buckets. 

These artificial burrow systems were designed and installed by David Johnson of the Global Owl Project to serve as an emergency recovery project for the diminishing population of Burrowing Owls on the land. By the early 2000’s, the former Depot’s Burrowing Owl population had dwindled to the last 3-4 breeding pairs after the local extirpation of the site’s badgers, of which the Burrowing Owls were reliant on for nesting sites. In an effort to keep the remaining Burrowing Owl population from disappearing, David Johnson designed and began installing artificial burrow systems in 2009. With the easy access to the sites, innovative design of the artificial burrows, and effective trapping techniques, the artificial burrow colony at the former Depot presented an opportunity for long-term monitoring and detailed data collection with minimal disturbance to the owls.

Over the years, the number of artificial burrow sites installed across the former Depot increased, and with them the Burrowing Owl population rebounded. Once fully established, the artificial burrow colony at the former Depot exceeded 90 sites, and most breeding seasons saw nearly 50 breeding pairs nesting in the burrows. In 2024, the Depot experienced a record year for the Burrowing Owls, with every artificial burrow site in use (some even double occupied), over 100 nest attempts monitored, and 489 chicks banded. 

Today, the project serves a multitude of purposes: a conservation success story, an important source population for Burrowing Owls in the Pacific Northwest, training grounds for biologists around the world, a platform for community outreach and education, and a long-term collaborative research and management effort. Those involved include non-profit groups, universities, the Oregon Military Department, and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, of whom renamed the tribal portion of the land Papuunmí Tanawtpamá Tičám, meaning “Home of the Burrowing Owl” in the Umatilla language.

2025 Breeding Season

2025 marks a significant moment for the long-term owl study as, after 17 years, the leadership of the Burrowing Owl work is handed off from the Global Owl Project to the Owl Research Institute to continue supporting the conservation and research of Burrowing Owls at the site. Like 2024, this breeding season saw the burrows at full capacity. While some burrow sites had to be removed over the winter and others could not be accessed for the year, the remaining accessible burrow sites were all confirmed to house owls, and the vast majority of those owls attempted nests. In total, this year we monitored 81 nest attempts from 77 breeding pairs, caught 162 adult owls (87% of which were already banded) and banded 285 new chicks; these numbers are undoubtedly higher in reality when considering the 11 burrow sites that likely had breeding owls but could not be monitored by the team. With nearly every breeding adult caught and identified, the high percentage of adults that return to the site banded, and the number of newly banded chicks joining the population each breeding season over the past 17 years, the amount of Burrowing Owl band recapture data that comes from this project is unlike any other. [Figure 1]

It is clear over the last two years of this project that the Burrowing Owl population has drastically expanded at this study site. With the recent removal of 8 burrow sites and all other sites full, adding new burrows to Papuunmí Tanawtpamá Tičám in the coming years will allow for more owls to move in and breed, further supporting this site and other nearby Burrowing Owl populations as individuals disperse to breed elsewhere.

The Burrowing Owl Project is special not only for the conservation success and immense data collection, but for the potential for education and outreach - and 2025 stands apart as a banner year. With the close access to sites, ample numbers of owls, ease of handling and banding chicks, and accessible terrain, the Burrowing Owl Project allows educational guests of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to join biologists in the field for a nearly-guaranteed close-up experience with this charismatic species. 

This year, we welcomed visitors from 5 countries and 5 states on many educational field trips, consisting of owl handing and banding, morphometric measurements, nest checks, chick aging, adult trapping, and burrow installation. Our guests ranged from students, military personnel, Tribal members and scientists, environmental consultants, filmmakers, visiting researchers, the local Audubon society, and other many other community members, providing individuals with a sense of pride and ownership over the project. In addition to one-off visits, many individuals were trained on owl handing and banding to aid their careers in wildlife research and conservation. With the project being kept on through the Owl Research Institute, these training and educational experiences can continue to be provided for the years to come.

Collaboration with the Tribes and Future 

Like so many of the Owl Research Institute’s projects across Montana and Alaska, the Burrowing Owl Project has been closely collaborative over the years with the local Tribes. Whether working on Tribal land, being assisted in the field by Tribal biologists, or learning about the cultural and historic significance of the land, flora, and fauna, this project has greatly benefitted from the support of the CTUIR. Meaningful environmental work requires one to understand the environmental system they’re working within not only through spending time within that environment, but with the people connected to it - particularly with those whose histories and cultural knowledge are tied to it.

For many members of the CTUIR, the Burrowing Owl project is a source of pride. Having recovered the population in the region from near-local extirpation, the project has served an important purpose, albeit through unnatural means. To some members of the CTUIR, the continuation of the project on Papuunmí Tanawtpamá Tičám is seen as a temporary solution to the larger issue of restoring the degraded land back to its natural and healthy state. In regard to the Burrowing Owls, this means seeing badgers return to the land in numbers great enough to sustain a colony of owls nesting in natural, badger-dug burrows and eventually removing the artificial systems from the ground. While this inevitably would mean the end of the site’s Burrowing Owl research system as we currently know it, this vision for the population is mirrored with that of David Johnson, who has long-stated his hope to eventually be “put out of the burrow-digging business”.

Though the project was never intended to last as long as it has, the loss of the site’s badgers has outlived expectations. However, miraculously without intervention or relocation efforts, the first badger on the former Depot was spotted in 2023, and the discovery of 4 natural, badger-dug Burrowing Owl nest sites in 2024 and 7 in 2025 marks the beginning of a new era for the project and opens the doors for future research at the site. The CTUIR’s support for the recovery of wildlife as a whole on the land will involve the removal of fences blocking movement, the restoration of native vegetation communities, and the collaborative efforts of the Oregon Military Department, of whom share the land that the owls, badgers, ungulates, insects, grasses, fire, and all other components of the local ecosystem freely move throughout.

— Solai Le Fay

Here is a SHORT video showing the process: