Developers are required by the state to safely remove western burrowing owls—a federally protected subspecies—from their land. But there’s often little guidance on how to do that, and even less information on what happens to the birds in their new homes.

Despite their name, western burrowing owls—found across arid grasslands from Canada to South America—do not burrow, they borrow. The 10-inch-tall birds hole up in abandoned burrows made by prairie dogs and ground squirrels, hunting insects and small mammals during the day and nesting with up to a dozen of their chicks at night. Because they don’t dig their own homes, their owl’s adopted burrows are crucial to their survival; lose the host species who digs the hole, lose