Intervention

Sometimes we intervene with nature - sometimes we don't.  I always wonder if the ewes that I decide to assist could have delivered their lambs on their own.  I'll never know.

Sometimes we can see the success (or failure) of our interventions.  The owner of a property that we lease in Lincoln offers such an example.  When we first leased this ranch, we discovered a burrowing owl nesting in an old piece of 6" iron irrigation pipe.  We'd see the owl just about every time we walked by that part of the ranch. I reported our "discovery" to our landlord - they were as thrilled as we were.

Being ecologically-minded, our landlord decided to improve the burrowing owl habitat (and remove the old junky pipe).  They constructed new burrows - based on the latest conservation science - and hauled the old iron pipe to the landfill.  We haven't seen the owl since!

No owls here!