Burrowing owls nesting on solar farms are showing that clean energy and wildlife habitat can share the same land.
Burrowing owls nesting on solar farms are turning a renewable energy site into an unlikely nursery. More than a dozen owlets hatched this summer inside plastic tunnels at a 10,000-acre solar complex near Phoenix, Arizona. The project suggests clean energy and vulnerable wildlife can thrive side by side.
Longroad Energy, the solar company that runs the site, teamed up with Wild at Heart, a raptor rehabilitation center. Together they set out to test whether burrowing owls nesting on solar farms could raise families long-term. In March, workers moved nine owl pairs and one single male about 50 miles to the site, since their old burrows were about to be destroyed by new housing.
Burrowing owls are small, ground-dwelling birds of prey roughly the size of a loaf of bread, perched on long, stilt-like legs. They typically nest in tunnels dug by animals like ground squirrels and prairie dogs. Since the 1960s, their numbers have dropped by more than a third across the United States.
Housing and farmland development keep shrinking that habitat. Conservation groups often relocate colonies before bulldozers arrive, moving them to farmland where they can hunt. But as farmland gets bought up too, safe new sites are harder to find.
The Wild at Heart’s Burrowing Owl team had nearly run out of nearby options. They used to drive displaced owls about 50 miles to open farmland. Now some trips stretch 60 to 100 miles, which is too costly to sustain, even though the owls need very little space to settle in.
Solar farms offered a new possibility for relocation. Utility-scale solar energy, meaning large power plants built to serve the electric grid, has expanded quickly across Arizona. That growth can squeeze desert wildlife, but it also helps slow climate change, a threat already putting many U.S. bird species at risk.
State law required Longroad to survey wildlife before building its Sun Streams project. That survey found eight burrowing owls already living on the land. The discovery connected the company with Wild at Heart, which was running low on relocation space, sparking a larger experiment in burrowing owls nesting on solar farms.
Burrowing owls nesting on solar farms emerged as a conservation solution when Longroad Energy’s pre-construction wildlife survey found eight owls already living on the land, connecting the company with Wild at Heart at a moment when the raptor center was running out of relocation space for displaced desert birds. Photo by Greg Clark courtesy of Wild at Heart.
After construction finished, Longroad offered Wild at Heart around 250 acres between two Sun Streams projects. Workers installed 40 artificial burrows and placed a breeding pair in each, at first surrounded by netting so the birds would not fly back home. They also set up lights to attract insects and delivered mice daily while the owls adjusted.
The company funded feeding and monitoring through the entire breeding season, support Wild at Heart normally cannot afford beyond 30 days. Within one month, every female had laid eggs, an early sign that burrowing owls nesting on solar farms might actually work. By late June, 36 chicks had hatched.
Within three months, 29 young owls had fledged and left the nest, and staff slowly stopped feeding them so the birds would learn to hunt on their own. The team began spotting insect remains in their droppings, an encouraging sign. By the end of August, Wild at Heart stopped feedings altogether.
Researchers are now studying how to expand this kind of coexistence. A 2025 Arizona State University study found that prime solar sites overlap with burrowing owl habitat by about 13% across seven Western states. The nonprofit Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute is building a database to help solar companies weigh biodiversity when choosing where to build.
Arizona is also drafting guidelines to help future solar projects support wildlife instead of displacing it. Wild at Heart hopes to grow vegetation on solar sites to attract insects and rodents for owls to eat, turning relocation sites into lasting habitat.
Longroad is even discussing solar panel designs that could capture water from humid air to help plants grow nearby. Small changes like that could make future sites more welcoming for burrowing owls nesting on solar farms from day one. The raptor conservation group hopes to bring more solar companies on board.
Burrowing owls nesting on solar farms may soon become less of an experiment and more of a model other developers can copy. If more companies adopt the practice, displaced owl colonies could find lasting homes on the very land built to power their neighbors. For a bird that has lost so much ground, that shift offers a real reason for hope.
