I HATE to put a damper on the recent optimism about the barn owls in the Hapton area benefiting from the noise reduction on the M65 (LET, February 25 and 26), but, in reality, this could have quite the opposite effect.

Barn owls and kestrels are attracted to motorway verges because of the abundance of prey there, but, unlike kestrels, barn owls hunt at a low altitude and are frequently hit by vehicles.

Fast roads are known to be a major cause of barn owl mortality, extreme examples being eight killed in a 12-week period on the M6 just north of Penrith in 1974 and six in a few weeks just north of Carnforth in 1976.

Horrifyingly, in the USA, 35 barn owls were picked up in a single day on an interstate highway in Idaho, while they are said to "die by the hundred" this way in Spain.

If a quieter M65 will be less of a deterrent to barn owls to hunt its verges, I fear the likelihood of the local birds being killed will be greater.

D S DUNN, Walden Road, Blackburn.

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