Shrike breeding program
Conservation Halton Foundation
Conservation Halton Foundation's vision is to sustain a healthy watershed with clean streams, vigorous forests, abundant green space and balanced growth that results in strong livable communities. Spanning 1000 square km of land, 17 flowing creeks, approximately 26 km of Lake Ontario shoreline, extensive forest cover and 80 kilometres of Ontario’s Niagara Escarpment, their mandate is to create avenues for sustainable synergy between the natural world we live in and the 450,000 residents that make up the Conservation Halton watershed.
The Eastern Loggerhead Shrike is a medium sized songbird, about the size of an American Robin, which is critically endangered. In 2016, only nineteen pairs existed in the wild in Ontario. One of the things that is known about this species is that captive breeding efforts play a major role in the maintenance and recovery of this bird in the wild.
The Gordon and Patricia Gray Animal Welfare Foundation helps fund the Shrike Recovery Project, a breeding facility which has successfully bred and released over 80 young shrikes into the wild. As of the 2016 breeding season, approximately 20% of all breeding birds spotted in the wild in Ontario were birds released from the conservation breeding program in previous years. These birds paired successfully with wild mates and contributed significantly to the number of young in the wild population.