{"id":182709,"date":"2026-04-01T21:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182709\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T21:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T21:34:08","slug":"flaco-is-honored-by-the-world-owl-hall-of-fame-and-gets-an-uws-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/182709\/","title":{"rendered":"Flaco is Honored by the World Owl Hall of Fame and Gets an UWS Memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Wildlife photographers David Lei and Jacqueline Emery in front of the Flaco memorial at UWS\u2019s Wild Bird Fund. Photo by David Lei<\/p>\n

By Bonnie Eissner<\/p>\n

Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who captured worldwide attention as he lived his final year as a free bird in New York City, now has a memorial on the Upper West Side, where he spent his last days.<\/p>\n

Last month, Flaco made history as the first New York City owl inducted into the World Owl Hall of Fame. His award was accepted by Jacqueline Emery and her partner David Lei, authors of \u201cFinding Flaco: Our Year with New York City\u2019s Beloved Owl<\/a>\u201d. They nominated Flaco for the honor, along with two other people, and arranged for the wooden plaque and six of their photos to be placed in the window of the Wild Bird Fund on Columbus Avenue, between West 87th and 88th streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of the Wild Bird Fund to offer to house and display the award,\u201d Lei said, \u201cin part because people really wanted a memorial to Flaco, and that never happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three petitions for a Flaco statue in Central Park have garnered over 8,000 signatures. But such memorials are only considered 20 years after the individual\u2019s death, the New York City Parks Department told Our Town<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be what those people wanted,\u201d Lei said.<\/p>\n

People will get to have \u201ca quiet moment with Flaco,\u201d Emery said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Flaco memorial at UWS\u2019s Wild Bird Fund. Photo by Jacqueline Emery<\/p>\n

Emery and Lei also hope to draw attention to the work of the Wild Bird Fund, New York City\u2019s only wildlife rehabilitation and education center. It treats over 13,000 sick, injured, and orphaned birds and other animals a year and was called when Flaco crashed into a building<\/a> on West 89th Street in February 2024. The center\u2019s staff confirmed his death.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no organization doing more to help birds in the city,\u201d Lei said. Beyond rehabilitating birds, the organization educates people about the perils birds face, including anticoagulant rodenticides, which pose a particular danger to raptors and contributed to Flaco\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Emery and Lei, who photographed Flaco throughout his year of freedom, have started a grassroots campaign to ban rodenticides in Central Park and at buildings near the park.<\/p>\n

Rodenticide use is halted in city parks during nesting season, from February through August, or when a breeding pair of birds of prey is in or near a park area, the Parks Department told The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut raptors and other wildlife that could be susceptible to secondary rodenticide poisoning live in the park year-round,\u201d Lei said. \u201cSo it doesn\u2019t really make sense to us to only stop using rodenticides part of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rat poisons, he observed, address the symptom of too many rats, but not the cause, which is trash.<\/p>\n

Recently, he and Emery noticed that the Central Park Conservancy started using secured containers, rather than trash bags, at trash pickup sites along Park Drive. \u201cIt\u2019s better than rodenticides,\u201d Lei said of the measure.<\/p>\n

Flaco\u2019s widely mourned<\/a> death spurred legislation to make New York safer for fellow birds of prey, including a law that established a pilot program to study the use of rat contraceptives as an alternative to rodenticides. Other pending laws would require private buildings to turn off unnecessary lights at night and replace reflective glass windows by 2030.<\/p>\n

The impact Flaco had, and may still have, on the lives of birds of prey, in addition to his popularity, qualified him for the World Owl Hall of Fame, which stipulates that owl inductees must make the world a better place for their kind.<\/p>\n

While people have been inducted into the World Owl Hall of Fame every year since its start in 2006, Flaco is the first owl since 2016 to make the cut.<\/p>\n

Inspiring legislation that will protect owls was key to his induction, said Karla Bloem, executive director of the International Owl Center in Houston, Minn., which hosts the hall of fame. His celebrity, she said, \u201chas the power to make a really big difference for all the owls that are living today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flaco is restored to full-color splendor in the six photos that flank his hall of fame award in the memorial, which fills one of the Wild Bird Fund\u2019s large picture windows. In the images, he perches regally in Central Park, on a balcony railing, and next to an Upper West Side water tower.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re honored to have the memorial to Flaco,\u201d said Rita McMahon<\/a>, executive director of the Wild Bird Fund. He died just two blocks away, and Wild Bird Fund staff brought him to the clinic immediately after, before he went into rigor mortis, she recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlaco was a magnificent creature who we all enjoyed watching as he explored and created his own life in New York City,\u201d McMahon said. \u201cBut what he did for New York City\u2019s precious wildlife was probably much greater, as he made people care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wildlife photographers David Lei and Jacqueline Emery in front of the Flaco memorial at UWS\u2019s Wild Bird Fund.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[40995,9,11,10,38506],"class_list":{"0":"post-182709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-flaco","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-wild-bird-fund"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}