Feral cats threaten burrowing owls at Shoreline Park

Google employees have been feeding the cats near the protected owl habitat, according to conservationists

For years, conservationists worried about the increasing feral cats population at Mountain View’s Shoreline Park because of how they could threaten protected species such as the burrowing owl.

Recent data collected by the city of Mountain View shows the increase in feral cats correlates with the decrease in the burrowing owls. Scientists estimate that fewer than 15 burrowing owls, marked as a California species of special concern by the state Department of Fish and Game, currently nest in Santa Clara County.

A trail of public record requests led conservationists to the wellmeaning culprit across the street: a group of cat-loving Google employees called GCat Rescue. Environmental activists such as Johanna van de Woestijne are calling for Google to remove GCat Rescue’s feeding stations around the park.

“Google can certainly afford to enclose their campus cats in catios,” van de Woestijne said. “There are plenty of good designs available.”

A Google spokesperson told this news organization that the company is looking into the issue. The owls, which nest in ground holes and average 8.7 inches tall, are particularly vulnerable to prowling feral cats released by GCat Rescue. However, activists brought the issue to the company attention six years ago.

The Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society and environmental activist Eileen McLaughlin first asked Google to remove the cat feeding stations in 2012. Three years later, they advocated for

the city of Mountain View to stop the release of feral cats into North Bayshore.

GCat Rescue captures cats around the Google headquarters, feeds them through at least three stations supplied with cat food and water, then either puts them up for adoption or neuters and releases them. Although members have placed 148 cats up for adoption, the site does not say how many — identifiable by notched ears — they’ve released.

The group’s website asserts that “neutering and colony care also stop nuisance behaviors like fighting, screaming, spraying, roaming, hunting, etc,” but environmental activists like the Silicon Valley Audubon Society’s Shani Kleinhaus disagree.

“People who say that well-fed feral cats don’t hunt are wrong,” she said. “It would be nice to believe that but it’s their instinct. It’s their nature; they hunt.”

Last year, Mountain View’s official count reported 318 cat sightings at

Shoreline Park. And for the first time in 20 years of record-keeping, no burrowing owl fledglings were sighted in 2017. Ten were observed back in 2011.

McLaughlin, who also serves as a board member of the Citizen’s Committee to Complete the Refuge, which calls for the protection and expansion of the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, stresses the importance of preserving biodiversity.

“We lose the owls, we lose something else next, and then something else,” she told the New York Times. “We need biodiversity.”

Cats aren’t the only threat to the burrowing owls. The Shoreline golf course also endangers them. A Mountain View report noted “direct contact between golf balls and burrowing owls” have killed several.

Kleinhaus added that society needs to consider nature in sustainability plans.

“I think biodiversity and nature are an inherent need of the human spirit. There are a lot of studies that show that mental health, cognition and performance increase when people experience even a little bit of nature around them.”