Central Park's Flaco had a family. Conservationists fear other owls will become targets for release.

To many New Yorkers, Flaco the Eurasian eagle-owl was a singular symbol of freedom. A lone hunter who prowled the rooftops of the Upper West Side after a still-unidentified vandal – or vigilante, depending on your point of view – released him from his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo last year.

But his death on Friday is the realization of many conservationists’ fears about his safety in an urban environment – and about the safety of other birds at sanctuaries and zoos across the country.

That includes Flaco’s dozen-plus brothers and sisters spread out at facilities across the country.He and his family are the product of a quiet, decades-long “species survival plan” to maintain the captive Eurasian eagle-owl population as wild owls face existential threats in their native territories in Europe and Asia.

Now, some conservationists are concerned their owls may become the target of a copycat avian activist who wants to see the creatures fly free. Even prior to Flaco’s death, conservationists and zoos alike were reluctant to share many details about their feathered charges for fear of drawing the attention of those hoping to “free” them.

One zoo spokesperson refused to confirm an owl’s location. An aviculturist at a bird sanctuary with its own Eurasian eagle owl asked to be removed from the story after receiving comments on social media about releasing their owl.

Their fears are hardly unfounded. Flaco’s release itself may have been a copycat, patterned on a series of thefts from the Dallas Zoo, biologist Jeff Corwin told CNN anchor Laura Coates shortly after Flaco escaped.

And just days after Flaco broke free, keepers at the Houston Zoo discovered that someone had sliced through the mesh enclosing the pelican exhibit.

“It disrupts a coordinated conservation effort across the United States,” said Daniel Cone, assistant director of the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis, Missouri.

Even before Flaco’s death, Cone had expressed concerns about Flaco’s safety as a free bird in the city, where he faced the dangers of rodenticide by ingesting poisoned rats, being hit by a car or other dangers. Preliminary results from Flaco’s necropsy showed trauma to his body, possibly from striking a building.

“As cool as it [was] for people to see him flying around Central Park, that’s a far more dangerous existence than it is for him under the care of professionals to help save the species,” Cone said.

That belief puts conservationists and raptor experts at odds with many members of the public who were happier to see Flaco spreading his wings above the city or perched on water towers and window air conditioners on the Upper West side.

Shortly after Flaco’s escape, zoo patrons told Gothamist they felt he’d have a better quality of life as a free bird than at the zoo where he lived for nearly 12 years. His enclosure there has been variously described as “modest,” the size of a small bathroom or a bus stop. Eurasian eagle owls have an average wingspan of roughly 6 feet.

More than 1,600 Flaco fans even signed a petition in support of Flaco’s continued liberty in 2023.

“If Flaco is captured, he will return to a TINY, sad looking excuse for an owl habitat,” the petition reads. “He deserves better.”

Aviculturists interviewed by Gothamist were reluctant or even outright refused to comment on Flaco’s conditions in captivity at the Central Park Zoo. But they say that the captive owls are a means to an end.

Eurasian eagle-owls aren’t currently considered endangered, but hunting and industrialization drove the wild population dangerously low in the first half of the 20th century, according to the Peregrine Foundation. Legal protections, trade restrictions and reintroduction have helped the species recover, but the birds still face existential threats from habitat destruction, rodenticide and vehicle strikes.

“It’s not the ideal to have them in human care,” said Daniel Cone, assistant director of the World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis, Missouri. “But the goal is to help the species so they eventually don’t need it.”

Traversing Flaco’s family tree

Stateside, zoos and collectors have kept captive eagle-owls since the 1960s. Their enormous orange eyes and adorable ear tufts make them popular among zoo patrons and collectors alike. But with just a handful of North American breeding pairs in captivity, zoos have had to be strategic about which owls mated in order to avoid inbreeding.

Enter the Eurasian eagle-owl studbook, a detailed genealogy of captive owls lovingly compiled by members of the Raptor Taxon Advisory Group and first surfaced by journalist Josh Nathan-Kazis. Simply put, its primary goal is to help keep blood-related owls from hooking up.

“It’s a dating service,” Cone said. “We make sure that the genetics stay as diverse as possible.”

The document allows us to trace Flaco’s family history back to his last wild relatives, albeit without information about how those initial birds came to be in captivity. His great-grandparents were either found in the wild or imported from Europe, according to their line items. His grandparents raised their families in Knoxville, Tennessee and St. Louis, Missouri.

Cone spoke fondly of Flaco’s European-born late maternal grandparents, Martina and Sinbad, whose lifelong union produced at least eight owlets, including Flaco’s mother Xena.

“Martina had the brightest, most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” Cone said. “I think about that all the time. She was such a beautiful eagle owl.”

Martina was also “sassy,” Cone said, while Sinbad was shy and retiring. Neither owl interacted much with humans, though, he said. They lived, mated and died behind the scenes, away from human eyes so they could focus on propagating the species.

Flaco’s parents, too, have been extraordinarily productive. From their cozy nest at Sylvan Heights Bird Park in Scotland Neck, North Carolina, Xena and her partner Watson have hatched more than a dozen baby owls, including Flaco.

Those birds are now spread out across a half a dozen states, including Texas, Indiana and Florida. Their lives and livelihoods range just as widely.

Flaco’s sister Gertrude, a massive female who is two years younger than Flaco, is an “ambassador” at the Dallas Zoo, said Robin Ryan, who manages the zoo’s outreach program. Gertrude appears regularly in educational presentations at the zoo, while her uncle Kruger roams North Texas with the animal outreach team.

When she’s not onstage, she enjoys a varied diet of “rat, mice, quail, chicken, rabbit, and even rib bones,” Ryan added.

Then there’s Camo, four years Flaco’s junior, a “defiant teenager” of an owl, according to one of Camo’s keepers, who asked not to be named out of concern for the owl’s safety. Many of the conservationists Gothamist spoke with are concerned about copycat bird releases.

Unlike Flaco’s confined enclosure in Central Park, Camo lives at a nature preserve in Connecticut and, under the watchful eye of staff, enjoys free flight and occasional hunts, something Flaco only experienced in the final, unsupervised year of his life.

“Camo’s a very good hunter,” said the owl’s keeper. “Occasionally a little mouse or chipmunk will run through [his habitat]. It doesn’t end well for them.”

Not all Flaco’s siblings had happy endings. Khan, a male who is Flaco’s junior by about a year, died in May of 2018, a spokesperson from the Carolina Raptor Center told Gothamist.

The studbook shows another of Flaco’s kid brothers, Thatcher, was born in North Carolina and moved to the Bronx Zoo in 2015. The owl was not on public display during a visit to the zoo last week. Mary Dixon, a spokesperson for the Bronx and Central Park Zoos, declined to answer questions about Thatcher’s location, but did issue statements to the public in the aftermath of Flaco’s passing.

“The vandal who damaged Flaco’s exhibit jeopardized the safety of the bird and is ultimately responsible for his death,” one statement read. “We are still hopeful that the NYPD, which is investigating the vandalism, will ultimately make an arrest.”

Fear of freedom

Experts warned that “freeing” captive birds could mean condemning them to a grisly death, particularly if they’re released into an environment very different from their natural habitat. Eurasian eagle-owls favor woodlands and steppes, according to the Raptor Taxon Advisory Group.

New York City recently lost another prominent raptor, albeit one that had always been wild. Rover, a well-known bald eagle who frequented Central Park in 2022, was struck and killed by a driver on the Henry Hudson Parkway, Gothamist reported last week.

Cone and other experts had long feared for Flaco’s safety, even as the public enjoyed his urban escapades. Cone was especially concerned about poisoning from rodenticide, which played a role in the 2021 death of Central Park barred owl Barry.

Poisoning may also have contributed to Flaco’s death, weakening and disorienting him, though we won’t know for sure until his necropsy results are released. Flaco’s nightly followers said they hadn’t heard Flaco’s customary hooting routine in the days leading up to the discovery of his body in an Upper West Side courtyard.

“That’s a really slow, painful death for the animal that consumes it,” Cone said.

Cone said he felt “devastation” upon hearing the news of Flaco’s death.

"People who thought that they were doing the right thing really didn't understand what they were doing and the dangers that they were exposing him to,” he said. “When Flaco flies into a building and lies listless on the ground and is found and dies shortly after, that's clearly contrary to the stated goals of whoever released him back into the wild.”