Here in the Southern San Francisco Bay Area, there used to be hundreds of western burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia). The bird has vanished from many counties in the Bay Area. The owl was listed as a Species of Special Concern (a pre-listing category under the Endangered Species Act) by the California Department of Fish and Game in 1979. In 2008, City of Mountain View evicted a pair of burrowing owls so that it could sell a parcel of land to Google to build a hotel at Shoreline Boulevard and Charleston Road. Eviction of the owls is controversial because suitable alternative habitat has vanished due to suburban sprawl. Development continued to encroach on the owls' habitat when, in 2010, the City of Mountain View approved Google's plan to build a 6.9-acre recreational park for its employees, so that they can play tennis, disc golf, shuffleboard and other activities on Google property that is part of the owls' foraging area. Although there were hundreds of burrowing owls in Santa Clara County when monitoring began in the 1980s, in 2011 there were only 35, with three breeding pairs raising ten eggs at Shoreline in 2011 (less than half the number of young in 2003).
It got much worse in 2016 -- there was only one successful breeding pair of nesting owls, the smallest number in the last 18 years. "That's really at the verge of extinction," Kleinhaus said. "We're seeing a lot of disturbance and we think that might be a reason for the decline." While the owls did have four chicks, there were problems. The breeding pair was a mother and son, a bad sign for the population's future.
Why did the population plummet so dramatically? In short, Kleinhaus points to the long history of office development on the bay landfills from Milpitas to Mountain View. NOTE: Google is by FAR the biggest company in that area.
