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Google Photos Album for Friday, March 20th

Google Photos Album for Tuesday, March 24th

There are currently at least 2 owls in Shoreline Park as of March 20th. Daniel, our volunteer wildlife photographer (IG: @daniel_dezordo), shot this photo of the pair who've been watching us the last few months.

23 of us spoke at City Council last week, April 14th, to plead for them to demand that Parks and Rec staff hire another full time biologist to replace the last one they terminated ASAP because our owl population has been dropping.

You can see the recording the city uploaded here.

I emailed Parks and Rec Staff (Mathew/Brady/John) on Tuesday asking for the February and March owl counts as well as letting them know their website where these numbers are usually located is down.

Here's what you see if you click "Monthly Reports" from their site.

It's been 48 hours since I asked.

They haven't replied.

I know it can be discouraging for us to try so hard and be met with such indifference,

but continuing to show up is the only path we have to save our burrowing owls.

If we don't continue putting the work in, we will lose them without knowing if we could've saved them if we just kept trying.

ssentially, Shoreline Parks & Rec Manager Brady Ruebusch, of whom I emailed to ask when we'd get another full-time biologist, is now asking the Mountain View City Council to approve additional funding to pay LSA, the contract biologists they hired to monitor our owls in Shoreline Park after they put our dedicated, full-time biologist, Phil Higgins on leave.

I've attached their "Council Report" for your convenience to review, but here's the gist:

• They've already paid LSA $240,000 for the 2025-2026 Fiscal Year and are asking for $105,000 MORE, $345,000 IN TOTAL.

• They say they need this extra money "to retain consistent biological services for monitoring and protection of the burrowing owl population at Shoreline during the time that the Wildlife Preservation Coordinator (dedicated, full-time biologist) position is vacant."

• They outline the services LSA currently provides:

  • Weekly survey of burrowing owl activity

    • This is the monthly "owl count" I've been relaying to you

  • Supervising and recommending habitat maintenance

    • This has specifically only been "mowing around the owls' burrows"

  • Performing pre-construction surveys for activities that may impact burrowing owls or their habitat

    • Such as "landfill maintenance"

• Here are the services LSA requires more funding to do:

  • Review project plans for construction projects

  • Provide on-site project supervision for construction projects

  • Begin banding the owls

Here's what their "Council Report" says about banding the owls:

"Over the first half of Fiscal Year 2025-26, LSA worked with staff to apply for a banding permit for an LSA biologist to be able to trap and band burrowing owls at Shoreline. Biologists at LSA were approved for the permit and are prepared to begin banding of burrowing owls in the 2026 nesting season. This will require the permitted biologist with LSA to be on-site and conduct banding activities in conjunction with other biologists performing the baseline surveying."

Here's the problem:

At most, our full-time biologist (Wildlife Preservation Coordinator) was paid $165,080.28 (pulled from transparentcalifornia.com) for his last year of work, of which he only performed half of before they put him on administrative leave.

He wasn't just doing the duties LSA is currently performing as their "baseline," but all of the following:

• Habitat enhancement

  • collaborating with me to organize events where volunteers plant species-specific California native plants and weed invasive nonnative plants, increasing the burrowing owls' natural prey base

• Public education

  • educating the volunteers who attended The Guardian Project events about the burrowing owls but other volunteers and on other species he was helping conserve as well

• Banding

  • trapping and banding owls to more accurately count them

• Camera monitoring

  • reviewing the various trail cameras stationed near the burrowing owls' burrow entrances to more accurately monitor them: their diet, and their threats

• Juvenile overwintering program

  • collaborating with other organizations saving the burrowing owls to care for chicks over the winter in captivity before adding them to the captive breeding program, preventing their otherwise 70% mortality rate

• Captive breeding program

  • DNA testing to pair the juvenile owls from the overwintering program for maximum genetic diversity/resilience

  • and then building artificial burrows with protective overhead structures in their natural habitat to ensure survival of each pair's clutch during the breeding season

  • these owls were all regularly fed dead mice during this period and, when Parks & Rec put Phil on leave, unexpectedly, guess what happened to these owls 

• Supplemental feeding

  • providing all known owl burrows--captive and wild--with dead mice, thrown inside their burrows

• Preventing trespassers

  • he regularly told me of birders who'd climb the fence to "get the shot" and, before the fence, people letting their dogs off leash in the restricted areas

• Saving other animals in the park

  • like trapping feral cats who threaten the owls, trapping ground squirrels from the golf courses to be released in the owl habitat so they're not intentionally killed (by poison), and conducting a multitude of other conservation projects for other threatened species 

Basically, for up to $345,000, LSA will only add banding, from the above list of projects to save the burrowing owls and other animals that Phil was only doing for $165,000.

Brady and friends from Parks & Rec want to spend over 2x as much money on contractors to get a mere fraction of the services we've received with 1 full-time biologist.

And what are they even planning on constructing? Land development is enemy #1 to burrowing owls!

What makes this even more egregious is how the mowing hasn't been done nearly as well as it used to. Here is the most recent photo of our owls that Daniel took at the end of March:

NOTICE ALL THE TALL GRASSES AROUND THEM?!

This area should be BARREN to prevent predators from sneaking up on them.

Even worse, do you even see a burrowing owl count for February or March of this year on the city's website?

We had to roll 'n' chip at the Friday event, so that's why we didn't get to planting the other 40,

which the group next week will start with.

I ordered and added the same metal tags Sarah Beaver used for the milkweed, because they are holding up well!

This way we can better track which species of plants are surviving and thriving to double down on planting them.

Here's where we planted the 20 we did get into the ground:

Mathew is watering here using the orange buckets he put 2 holes into on the bottom.

You can see I also picked up 4 bags of Cactus & Succulent Soil to backfill new plants,

but they gave me hella splinters so watch out! 😵

We also rolled 'n' chipped this area on the other side of the sunflowers.

The Googlers had a lot of guidance on how to chip around our plants from Benny, Mathew, and Heidi so don't worry!