For years, Florida’s 10-inch tall burrowing owls have been fighting an uphill battle against habitat loss.The owls are now slated to lose eight burrows at the site of the roughly 220-acre Isle Casino expansion project in Pompano Park. Developers filed permit applications Wednesday to pay nearly $10,000 to fill the owls’ burrows.In the permit filing, they said they observed eight burrows, one of which is inactive, and about five owls on the property.Avoidance and minimization is not feasible to accomplish the project purpose,” the developers’ representatives wrote in the permit application to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.Cordish Companies and Caesar Entertainment will undertake a yearslong expansion of the property to make it “a city within a city.” It will be rebranded as Harrah’s Pompano Beach, and it’ll include a hotel, office campus, movie theater, shops, restaurants and thousands of apartment units.Former racetrack workers and wildlife conservationist flocked to the owls’ defense when construction was set to begin. The small birds have made their home around the Isle Casino property and the former harness racing track.Roger Goldstein, who worked at the racing track for the better part of 50 years, said it’s the developers’ responsibility to attend to the owls, since “they bought a property with an endangered species on it.”The owls have been there forever,” he added.The birds are listed as threatened by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They’re also protected at the federal level under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so anyone who plans to disturb the birds and their burrows, referred to as “take,” must file for permits to do so.The FWC has a sliding scale of fees that developers must pay depending on the scope of the project and how far they’ll go to provide the owls a new home. If developers need to close owls’ nests, they can add starter burrows or artificial burrows to a different location onsite to pay a reduced the fee and help preserve the owls’ habitat. Developers can pay the highest fee for no mitigation.Isle Casino developers are requesting permission to pay the highest fee for permission to close the burrows and move on without proposing to add new burrows on the site.“As a wildlife biologist that really understands how important some of these ... species are, it’s devastating,” said Mariangelique Diaz, the Rescue and Release Supervisor of the South Florida Wildlife CenterShe added that it wouldn’t cost developers too much “to do the right thing” compared to the relative cost of the entire project, which is expected to be completed in 2029“That’s a drop in the bucket for a corporation as big as the Isle Casino,” she said. “And I would think this is this would be a great opportunity to show the community and to show the supporters out there that they care about a species that’s so important to South Florida.”