Hi there !

If you are a member of the World Owl Trust, you most probably know me, as I am one of the keepers who presents 'Meet The Birds' during the visitor season at Muncaster Castle, Near Ravenglass, Cumbria. It may be that you became a member after being in the audience at 'MTB'.

Every year since 2003 I have done a sponsored walk on behalf of the World Owl Trust. With the exception of the 2007 walk, every one had been in the Lake District. Last year's walk was 'Pillar and the Mosedale Horse Shoe via the High Level Traverse and was the most successfull ever, raising over £2700.- which financed the office's new computers.

This year's sponsored walk is in aid of The White Breasted Barn owl in the UK. A recent survey suggests that around 70% of the wild population of Barn owls in the UK relies on artificial man made nest boxes for roosting and breeding. Whilst this proves the effectiveness of nestbox erection schemes, it also shows how precarious the status of the Barn owl is in this country.Nest boxes are an easy effective substitute for their traditional site selection of old fashioned barns which are rapidly disappearing and old hollow trees which due to health and safety have been managed out of existance. The down side is that nestboxes have a limited lifespan, on average 4 to 5 years, before needing replacing again.

Depending on which survey you believe, there are in the region of 3000 to 6000 breeding pairs of Barn owls in the UK. If 70% of these birds need humans to erect nestboxes, then the upper figure suggests that 4200 nestboxes need replacing nationwide every 4 to 5 years. The average cost of a nestbox plus installation on a suitable site is £50.-. This means that up to £210,000.- has to be spent on maintaining these sites every 5 years. These figures are quite alarming to a small charity such as ourselves, and frankly, beyond our reach.

The World Owl Trust was recently featured on several local BBC radio reports,as well as national BBC Radio 4, and was exposed to around 15.5 million listeners on that day, highlighting the Barn owl's dependancy on our help.

It is with this in mind, that we wish to erect 100 Barn owl nestboxes nationwide, which means we have to raise £5000.- to fund this project.

This year's sponsored walk will be very high profile, and we aim to get some of the media involved in this, to help raise the profile of Barn owl conservation in the UK.

This year's walk will be taking place in Spain in the Alicante Mountains. Every participant, both volunteer and employee, will be paying their own expenses and doing it on their own time. This would not be possible without the support of Brian Fagg ,a World Owl Trust supporter and director of 'Mountain Walks In Spain', who are accomodating us at cost. Check out www.mountainwalks.com for more info . The walk will be the hardest yet, as as the route includes 5 peaks, all of them higher than anything in the British Isles and will be across a ridge much like 'Striding Edge' and 'Sharp Edge'. It will be 15.5 miles in length with a combined ascent of nearly 1600 meters. The walk will be over rough exposed terrain. We have scheduled the walk to take place on the last week in March 2011.

Please check out the pictures I have included. For more info, please check out 'Sponsored Walk 2011' on www.owls.org

I hope you will support us in your usual generous way. We can't do any of this without your help.

Wulf, Headkeeper, PA to the Director of Operations and general dogsbody for the World Owl Trust.