We spent a month in intense debate about feasible additional areas in which burrowing owls need help.  Finally one group member said that most people she spoke with didn't even know what burrowing owls were.  After working with them for so long, we didn't even consider that some wouldn't know much about burrowing owls, especially San Diegans.  But we remembered just how clueless we'd all been before starting this project too.  To change the law, we have to have a lot of people willing to support and speak up for burrowing owl conservation, and at that moment, there was no longer a question what our next topic would be.  We'd witnessed horrendous things as we'd rescued owls and squirrels these past few months, and it was apparent that the laws protecting burrowing owl habitats had to change.  And for that, we needed to raise awareness.  Thus, our next topic was born.

As it turns out, the process we used in the first part of our project was very similar to the steps outlined by the Future Problem Solving Program for approaching any issue.  With awareness as our focus, we set to work sketching out our method to increase it, referring occasionally to the FPS outline as well.

Our first idea was to create an interactive online game to educate people about owls' fates when they meet up with certain obstacles.  This time, we're going into our project with high hopes.
 
After another month of constant checking on our three preserves (we released a few more owls onto Daley Ranch Preserve later), our three new owl colonies have been deemed successful permanent colonies by our Zoo mentors!  This is, as mentioned in the previous post, one huge leap for the conservation of this species!  Hopefully this technique will be able to save even more owls in the future, and improved upon to be even more effective!

Today we finally got together to celebrate our successes and did research on more causes to add to the burrowing owl conservation theme!  We gathered more resources and research about the burrowing owl, consulted family and friends, and searched the internet and the library for extra information that may have been overlooked the first time.