For the first time in a decade, an owl will be among the inductees into the World Owl Hall of Fame. Flaco, a brief sensation who educated the world on the plight of urban owls, will be joining two researchers in the annual recognition.

The International Owl Center in Houston, Minn., coordinates the program, with awards presented during its International Festival of Owls that opened March 6 and runs through March 8.

The awards program was started 20 years ago as a way to spotlight the work by owl researchers around the globe, and to highlight owls who make a difference.

“So many people have dedicated their lives to owls but receive little recognition for it,” said Karla Bloem, the executive director of the Owl Center.

“The awards are a great way to tell their inspiring stories and share them with the public.”

Flaco will be this year’s recipient of the Lady Gray’l Award.

The Eurasian eagle owl gained worldwide attention in 2023 after vandals cut open his cage at the Central Park Zoo. For a year he roamed New York City.

Eurasian eagle owls are even larger than this country’s great horned owls, and bird watchers all over New York City easily kept tabs on him. Before he died of urban ills, including ingesting poison from the rats he ate, Flaco raised awareness of threats to urban birds and inspired legislation to make the city safer for its feathered residents.

The last time the Owl Center awarded the Lady Gray’l Award was in 2016, when it inducted both Nemo the Long-eared Owl and Dudley the Great Horned Owl into the Hall of Fame.

The award is named for a great gray owl saved as a nestling by Canadian researcher Bob Nero. She spent 21 years with him educating the public about her species and owls in general. Nero wrote a book about her, “Lady Grayl: Owl with a Mission.”

David Lei and Jacqueline Emery, who tracked Flaco nearly every day in the city and wrote the book “Finding Flaco,” will accept the award on the owl’s behalf. They will give a presentation about him and bring his award back to New York City.

A panel of five owl experts from around the world review nominations each year to select award winners.

Joining Flaco in the Hall will be Alan Sieradzki, a British naturalist who is being honored with the Champion of Owls award for his 50 years of studying and assisting owls. He has made prodigious contributions to owl research while also working to raise public awareness of owls.

Sieradzki led a project to erect nest boxes for barn owls on British farms, operated a raptor rehabilitation center and led the enormous undertaking to describe every owl species in the world, living as well as extinct.

Dutch researcher Marjon Savelsberg will receive a special achievement award for her work on owl vocalizations. She has become the world’s leading authority on the sounds made by Flaco’s species.

Working in the field from her mobility scooter, Savelsberg learned to identify individual owls by their voices. She is now sought out to train others to use bioacoustics in research.

Savelsberg is planning to attend the festival, but Sieradzki is unable to.

Past human Hall of Famers include Denver Holt of the Owl Research Institute in Montana; Tony Warburton, founder of the World Owl Trust; and Raju Acharya, a Nepali educator and researcher who works to prevent the illegal trade in owls and created the Nepal Owl Festival.

“The awards now accomplish more than I even hoped,” said Bloem, who founded the Hall of Fame. “Winners may get more publicity, funding and support for their work and often increased respect from their peers. The awards also bring more awareness to the challenges that owls face around the world.”

The award will be presented at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at Houston High School.

The International Festival of Owls takes place at various venues in the small town of Houston, about 145 miles southeast of the Twin Cities. Activities include pancake breakfasts, owl nestbox building, owl prowls, book signings and an owl-calling contest.

The owl center’s live owls will be on display, and the Illinois Raptor Center will show snowy, barred, barn and eastern screech-owls. The festival schedule is at festivalofowls.com.

Attendance varies with the weather, but a good year could see 2,500 people visiting Houston, whose population is just under 1,000. The registration fee for Saturday and Sunday is $12 for adults, $8 for those between 4 and 17, free for kids 3 and under. Members of the International Owl Center are admitted for free.

St. Paul resident Val Cunningham, who has been writing about birds for the Minnesota Star Tribune for 21 years, can be reached at valwrites@comcast.net