Program on the Environment

As predators, raptors are sensitive to changes in their environment and can be good indicators of ecosystem health. When their population is altered, it is likely that other animal populations will be impacted as well. Humans interact with raptors both directly and indirectly and it is important that we understand the weight of these interactions and the role that we play in ecosystem changes. The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a correlation between the admission and outcome data among raptors that were brought to PAWS between the years 2013-2018. This was done by comparing data from patients that were brought in from urban areas to patients brought in from suburban or rural areas. I obtained my data from RaptorMed and extracted what I needed using queries. I then sorted and completed my analysis of the raw data in Microsoft Excel and QGIS. Over the last six years PAWS experienced an increase in patient admissions; the majority of those admissions were due to human interactions in urban areas. Findings show that the natural history of the individual bird of prey may play an important role in these interactions and may explain the increase of invasive species such as the Barred Owl in Western Washington. Understanding the significance of the patterns that we see when looking at raptor rehabilitation may help centers to allocate resources more efficiently, help the public to interact responsibly and help to manage the health of our local raptor populations.