I am a licensed falconer in…

I am a licensed falconer in Ontario and I support this proposal for the following reasons:

1) The proposal specifies that any birds taken, must be under 1 year old. This protects the adult breeding population, and potentially saves the lives of many young hawks. Approximately 70-90% of young birds DO NOT survive their first year. There are many reasons for this, such as competition for food, diseases, parasites, collisions with vehicles, electrocutions and simply poor hunting ability. When a falconer takes one from the wild and trains it to hunt, they have potentially saved that bird and left a space in that territory for one of its siblings to survive and thrive.

2) Falconry birds have a very good quality of life. They receive excellent veterinary care and are well loved by their owners. They are taken out into the bush and allowed to fly free and practice their natural behaviours on a regular basis. At the end of the day, they are provided with a good meal, regardless if they actually caught anything on that outing or not. (Unlike in the wild, where they can go hungry for days at a time if they fail to catch anything.) They also have a safe, enclosed place to sleep at night, free from nocturnal predators such as owls. This is why the hawk chooses to come home with the falconer everyday. They could choose to fly away at any time, and the falconer can track them all over the place with radio telemetry, but if they don’t want to come down they don’t have to come down!

3) Wild Red Tailed hawks actually have much friendlier temperaments than captive bred birds. This is because captive bred birds can become imprinted or partially imprinted on humans. This can create a lot of behaviour problems. Wild hawks know that they are hawks, and this reduces aggressive behaviour and excessive vocalization. This makes wild (passage) red tailed hawks excellent birds for apprentices to train! In my opinion, every apprentice (you have to complete a two year apprenticeship to become a falconer) should start with a wild red tailed hawk.

4) If a falconer’s situation changes, and they can no longer practice Falconry, the bird can be returned to the wild! In fact many falconers return their bird to the wild each spring. This enables the bird, who has learned to hunt successfully, to join the breeding population!

5) Hunting with a wild raptor is the traditional way of practicing the art of Falconry. Many other provinces already allow unlimited wild take, as does the US, with no ill effects to the wild population.