BACKGROUND

Kestrels Across America has two equally important goals: Education and Conservation. To fully understand this project, please read the background information below.

EDUCATION

Kestrels Across America is a project of the Radin Raptor Center, which is located at Woodleaf Outdoor School in California's northern Sierra Nevada Mountains. Started in 1966, Woodleaf has evolved into an outstanding outdoor school. Two hundred new students arrive each Monday to spend five days fully involved in the study of nature. They hike in an old growth forest, visit the raptor center, increase awareness and observation skills, go on night hikes, and much more as they make new friends and learn about themselves.

The primary focus of Woodleaf's staff is not simply to teach information, but to foster an enthusiasm for learning, encouraging students to become life-long learners. Equally important, knowledge must be coupled with an increased sense of caring. Working together, knowledge and caring will create informed and concerned citizens willing to make positive contributions to their environment and society.

Awareness, Knowledge, Caring, and Action: these are the four components of quality environmental education. It is essential to provide student's with age appropriate action projects where they can put their newly acquired knowledge and caring to use. Initially, these projects should be fairly simple. Building and putting up a nest box is in itself a nice project. If kestrels, or even other birds, use the nest box the feeling of success and knowledge that you are making a positive contribution is very powerful.

CONSERVATION

An added plus to the Kestrels Across America project is that it will surely have a positive conservation effect on American Kestrel populations. Although kestrels are not an endangered species, their numbers have declined. Habitat loss, and in particular, the loss of nesting sites, is a primary cause. Kestrels cannot excavate their own nest holes; they depend on the holes and cavities created by woodpeckers. For years the wildlife value of dead or partially dead old trees went unrecognized. Dead trees were cut to clear land, for firewood, or simply because they were perceived as ugly or useless. Fewer dead trees meant fewer nest sites and fewer kestrels. Today, across North America, there are many areas with plenty of open space and food for kestrels, but kestrels are absent simply because there are no nest sites.

Nest boxes are an easy and inexpensive way to solve this problem. Kestrels readily use the nest boxes in place of natural cavities. Nest boxes are beginning to be put up across North America, and kestrel populations are increasing nearly everywhere the nest boxes appear. Many of these nest boxes are being put up by individuals, especially in agricultural areas, who not only care about kestrels but also have come to realize that more kestrels will mean less insects and mice to plague their crops.