Sign up to Volunteer with Us 🌱 Oct 27th, 9-11am
When we last had a full-time biologist at this time of year the count was 22 owls‼️
Howdy! I'm Aisha 世平 Thiessen, organizer of The Guardian Project, which I launched in January 2017, while working as a UX Design Producer on Gmail, to save the burrowing owl by creating "Guardians," local volunteers who are intrinsically motivated and evidently committed to enhancing and protecting the burrowing owls' habitat in Shoreline Park, Mountain View, California to increase their population.
is to increase and support the population of burrowing owls in Shoreline Park.
is to increase the populations of the burrowing owls' diet by fundraising for and recruiting volunteers to plant species-appropriate California native plants in the owls' habitat that better support and attract the bugs and rodents the owls consume. Invasive non-natives can outcompete natives so we must also weed and maintain the area.
From 2017-2024 I collaborated with the biologist, Phil Higgins, who worked for the city of Mountain View as its full-time biologist, conducting various projects to save the owls and other threatened species. Burrowing Owl Billows is on the city's property, within Shoreline Park, and is a protected migratory bird habitat.
Here's the latest update on my project, but check out the Updates page if you'd like to look over the history of my project and how it's evolved:
What is a "burrowing owl" you ask? Why... let me explain... in a fun way!
So we have more of these!
Their populations are dwindling because of our (human) impact!
In the 1980s, we had 500 adult burrowing owls at 250 locations in Santa Clara County.
Last year, 2020, we only had 33 adult burrowing owls at 4 locations.
But Shoreline Park, which includes Burrowing Owl Billows, had a record high of 35 chicks that summer (2020), the most out of any of Santa Clara County's burrowing owl habitats.
This project has fundraised $13,018.85 and has added 748 native plants and 4 lbs of native seeds (as of 2/2021--note 2026 Aisha will update these stats soon!) to Burrowing Owl Billows since The First Planting in February 2017, when there were 0 owls present.