i have been sitting with the thought of flaco the owl and the passionate responses to his captivity, his release, his city life, and his death for a few days now. and i think… well… i think i want to blog about it.
for me, it’s been hard to weigh the overarching expert sentiment, “flaco’s death was wholly preventable,” against the opposite public sentiment, “better to die free than live in chains.” what do you do as someone interested both in urban ecology and in communicating science to the public? well, i thought a lot. and i hope, at the very least, i can get across that urban ecology issues are never in black-and-white—that flaco’s case is a lot more complex than “he should have been free” or “he should not have been free”—because his story wraps too many animal-related ethical dilemmas into one enormously fluffy and wide-eyed creature.
but ultimately, i do hope that flaco’s death further inspires coordinated efforts to make the city more hospitable to wildlife.
i’m sure you’ve heard the flaco story. but if not: flaco was a eurasian eagle-owl, one of the largest owl species in the world, native to eurasia and not nyc. he was born to captive-raised parents at a “bird park” in north carolina in 2010, and then sent to the central park zoo, where he inhabited a bus stop-sized enclosure. then, in february 2023, he was cut from that enclosure by (a) vandal(s).
the wildlife conservation society attempted to recapture the bird, but failed. in at least one case, they were thwarted by people sent to his location by the manhattan bird alert twitter account run by david barrett. barrett is a quirky central park fixture who uses his twitter to turn birds into celebrities, and uses celebrity birds to raise his own profile. he is a frequent talking head on nyc bird related matters, with his main bona fide being that he has seen a lot of birds in manhattan—like me, he is a birder, not an ornithologist. it’s generally acknowledged that, counter to the american birding association’s code of ethics, he is willing to publicize the locations of sensitive birds like owls. i assume he would say that this is because the value of people seeing a bird is higher than the value of protecting it from the potential threats of a crowd. he used his account to convince his large following and the public that flaco should be allowed to fly free in nyc.
the wcs stopped trying to catch flaco after two weeks, frustrated by many failed attempts and no doubt by public opinion, plus the fact that the bird seemed to be feeding on its own. that, of course, propelled the bird into social media stardom. no longer was flaco just an escaped zoo animal. now, he was a free bird, unshackled from the chains of his enclosure, who overcame the adversity of zookeeper nets to live on his own. he became a permanent character in nyc media stories, a local celebrity with a fan club of daily visitors, and a symbol of freedom who inspired people in the city and beyond. experts warned that the bird probably wouldn’t survive long, but he made it a year feeding on rats in central park and the lower east side before eventually taking up residence on the upper west side.
flaco died a year later on friday, february 23, found unresponsive beneath his upper west side roost. a collision was the suggested cause, but it’ll take a few weeks before we know whether anything else contributed. reports suggest that he fell, which is weird for a flying animal—it’s possible the bird had consumed poisoned rats or lead from pigeons, altering his behavior. barry the barred owl, also propelled to stardom by barrett, died similarly by blunt-force trauma after flying into a maintenance vehicle, a toxicology report later revealing that her body was full of rat poison.
so, that’s the story. flaco was an animal born in captivity who lived his whole life in a small enclosure without many threats at all, and was then pushed into a world with many more threats, which ultimately killed him. and they killed him quickly by eurasian eagle owl standards—eurasian eagle owls live around 20 years in the wild and 60 years in captivity—flaco died at 14.
however, looking at twitter and the media’s reaction to the bird’s death, that’s not the public’s takeaway. because as the public refrain seems to go, “better to die free than live in chains.” flaco was a folk hero, the future subject of children’s books, and a metaphor for new yorkers—people living in tiny apartments who had just come off several years stuck inside like owls forced to live in bus stop-sized boxes. flaco is just an owl. the flaco in our heads is us.
so maybe a better question to ask is whether flaco was happier living as a symbol of hope for new yorkers or whether that was causing him undue stress beyond zoo life. and honestly, i don’t know. flaco is not a person, and he certainly did not have deep symbolic feelings about being freed. but we do know that many zoo animals display stereotypic behaviors—repetitive movements, for example—in response to the stress of being in captivity. the fact that flaco evaded capture means that a larger space was preferable to a smaller space. maybe he got stomachaches from eating poisoned rats. it probably felt bad to be ogled by people all the time, and it probably felt better that he could fly away when there were too many oglers.
and should flaco have been free? i don’t know. what’s free? who determines “should?” he shouldn’t have been allowed to fly free in nyc because he wasn’t native to here or accustomed to the threats the city poses. or maybe he should have been allowed to fly free in nyc because people wanted him to be free in nyc and he brought them more joy that way. personally, i wish they would have brought him someplace bigger and nicer where he could fly around without the potential to harm himself or our native wildlife.
but ultimately, flaco discourse is based on three things. the first is whether or not we should be keeping animals in captivity. the second is how we reckon with wildlife trying to survive in our built spaces, and the third is that there are societal forces that cause us to relate deeply to the story of a sad owl escaping his small house.
now, for the first point: i don’t actually want to do a deep-dive into zoos. they are a weird way to do conservation: you pay to watch an animal in an enclosure, and the zoo would then use your money to help protect species in the wild. you can go read a blog post on zoo discourse here which goes over the salient points, in summary saying that zoos can be a good conservation tool but are not a panacaea and that you have to consider whether each individual zoo is actually providing a benefit or not, and whether they’re treating their animals well or not. but it is a never-ending debate. i would hope that if you’re vehemently anti-zoo that you also are doing things to support wildlife conservation. or if you’re vehemently pro-zoo, that you support the welfare of the individual animals in captivity.
the second point is most interesting to me. flaco died, in part, because he was not capable of withstanding the threats that nyc throws at our native birds. and if we really wanted to honor his legacy, i think we should work to alleviate those threats. bird societies around the country run lights out initiatives that reduce artificial light at night which can harm insects and birds. they’re also lobbying for regulations that require new building constructions to include bird-safe glass, glass with markings that make it visible to the bird. in december 2019, the nyc council passed local law 15 requiring new constructions to use bird-friendly materials—a pretty amazing victory for conservation organizations and for birds. and finally, organizations advocate for reducing the use of rodenticides, which likely had a hand in flaco’s death. given the fact that our urban raptors consume a lot of rats, lobbying your apartment building, nyc parks, and local politicians to find alternatives to rodenticides is a great way to safeguard future raptors trying to make it in nyc.
as for the third point—what makes some of us relate to the free owl—well, i’d consider organizing or joining one of many organizations working to fix or dismantle the power structures that make our lives shit. in the mean time, if you really think of yourself as an owl forced to live in a zoo yearning to be free and take offense at any suggestion that flaco’s post-zoo life was less than ideal, it’s probably also worth seeing a therapist (i do, and it helps—let me know if you need recommendations).
anyway, writing this essay was the first time i really tried to consider the full scope of this bird and what he meant to people. like other humans, my gut reaction isn’t the full picture. we really want a zoo bird to be free, but don’t consider the impact of that freedom on the bird. or we really want the bird to be captured, but don’t consider the symbolic importance of the bird to the general public. or we focus all of our energy on advocating against captive animals but don’t take actions that protect animals in their native habitats.
and i think taking the pause to consider the broader scope has been helpful for me. the people who wanted the zoo to recapture flaco honestly cared about flaco. the people who wanted the zoo to let flaco fly free honestly cared about flaco. twitter users posting constantly about flaco honestly cared about flaco. if we’d have listened to each other, rather than assumed the worst intentions in each other, maybe we could have come to a solution that would have kept flaco alive longer *and* free, somehow. or not. but maybe now we could use the opportunity to band together and make the city better for our wildlife.
anyway. flaco is dead. long live flaco.
postscript: between me drafting this and me publishing this, barry petchesky wrote this awesome take that i think is the objective best one yet. you should read it!