Photograph by George Sakkestad

Frank Metzger takes a young barn owl out of its temporary quarters in his Los Gatos home. The owl, which was abandoned as a baby fuzzball, is about halfway to maturity and dines on about four mice each day.

Wildlife group stops taking Los Gatos animals

Center upset about lack of funds from town

By Jeff Kearns

Kappy Sprenger is informally known as the waterbird lady. As a volunteer for the Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley, Sprenger and her partner, Frank Metzger, help nurse wild birds back to health in their Los Gatos home. At any given time, they usually have at least two or three dozen birds. Barn owls abandoned by their mother, herons with broken legs and crows used for target practice by hunters have all found their way to her home, where Sprenger nurses them back to health or helps them grow to maturity before releasing them back to the wild.

But serving as a hospital for birds isn't cheap. Sprenger estimates it costs her about $5,000 a year to buy food and medicine for the birds.

She's one of more than 100 Wildlife Center volunteers in the South Bay who help care for injured, sick and orphaned wild animals--everything from mountain lions to baby hummingbirds. Although the center and its volunteer have been rescuing wild animals from South Bay cities for the last five years, the organization now says it needs the cities to come to its rescue financially.

Born in 1993 after the Humane Society of Silicon Valley stopped taking in wild animals, the nonprofit group depends on its volunteers and donations to help take care of about 5,000 wild animals a year. Faced with budget shortfalls, the center asked the eight primary cities it serves to help meet its projected budget. Debbie Champion, president of the center's board of directors, requested funding from the cities based on the proportion of animals they send to the center.

But since Los Gatos (along with Sunnyvale and Milpitas) hasn't come through with any funding, Champion says the center will stop taking in animals from the town for free.

Instead, the Humane Society transport volunteers who usually pick up animals will tell people with a sick or injured animal that they can't take the animal from the three cities to the Wildlife Center because those cities haven't paid their share. However, if someone wants to become a member (for $25 a year), then they can have the animal taken away.


Photograph by George Sakkestad

It's feeding time for the Caspian tern that Kappy Sprenger is nursing back to health in her home. The bird was found in a Los Gatos park with a fishhook lodged in its throat.




In all, the center hoped to fund about 60 percent of the center's $131,650 projected budget for the current fiscal year with contributions from the cities. The remaining 40 percent comes from donations and membership dues, which have so far been the center's sole revenue source.

Champion wrote a letter to the town in February asking for about $4,000 per year. She followed up with Community Services director Regina Falkner, who told her how to look for funding, but the center's request didn't fall under the three main categories for community grants: human services, arts or education.

The town's contract with the Humane Society doesn't include wild animals. Instead town policy says that those calls should be referred to the State Department of Fish and Game. When it was time to put a budget proposal together, Town Manager David Knapp didn't allocate any funding for the center. Knapp says the center's request "wasn't very persuasive." If it had been, he says, the council might have given them funding. When the Town Council's budget hearings began, nobody showed up to push for funding for the center, and the request remained unfunded.

Champion says other area wildlife groups have fatter wallets. She points to Wildlife Rescue in Palo Alto, which gets much of its funding from contracts with the cities of Palo Alto and Mountain View, even though it only takes care of about half as many animals.

The Humane Society acts as a drop-off point for sick or injured animals, which it then passes off to the Wildlife Center.

At this point, the center still may apply to the council for mid-year funding, but it hasn't made a specific request yet.

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