Under the deafening roar of the busy Ontario Airport flight path, 200 acres of open lands have been the nesting grounds of scrappy and adaptable burrowing owls…but not for long. Hungry for space east of Los Angeles, warehouse developers push out the owls and working class Latine communities, alike. Operation Owl documents the clash between land developers and conservationists as they fight to win the City of Ontario’s favor. The Inland Empire has the largest concentration of warehouses in the world, staging goods from Los Angeles and Long Beach ports. This impacts owls and humans with caustic diesel fumes and paralyzing traffic. Currently, there is a petition under review to list the western burrowing owl under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA). The owls face shrinking habitat and are a symbol of this dramatic fight for land and nature. In this heist movie-meets-nature doc, are the owls or the land being stolen? 

In collaboration with the Redford Conservancy, the Inland Valley Advocates for the Environment and the Pomona Valley Audubon Society.