April-June 2013

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BayNature

APRIL –J U N E 2013

A N E X P LO R AT I O N O F N AT U R E I N T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O B AY A R E A

The Wild Side of Clear Lake

Tune in to Nature Sounds The Art and Science of Tracking Kids Help Study Climate Change Pedro Point Transformed

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april–june 2013

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CLIMATE CHANGE

THE P H E N O LO G Y P ROJE C T G et t i ng Pe o p l e Invo lved i n Cl im ate S c ie nc e The California Phenology Project has mobilized a small army of citizen scientists — from fifth-graders to retirees — to study changes in plant life cycles (such as bloom times) in several nearby national parks. The goal: to gain a better understanding of how climate change is impacting our natural habitats.

by Jacoba Charles

John W. Wall

Courtesy NatureBridge

Stephen Joseph, stephenjosephphoto.com

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T HE SOUNDS OF SILENCE Tu ni ng in to the Natur a l So u nd s cape

SI GNS OF LIFE The Art a nd Scien ce of Tr ack ing

For people like Dan Dugan and Sharon Perry, appreciation of the natural world is not just about what you can see. Along with pioneers like Bernie Kraus, these nature audiophiles are bent on helping us all hear — and protect — the rich soundscapes of redwood forests, marshes, and our own backyards.

by Jonah Raskin

From skunks and raccoons to coyotes and mountain lions, plenty of wildlife roam the Bay Area’s million acres of protected open space. But how often do you actually see those critters? With help from expert naturalists, we can learn to read the messages they leave behind in their tracks and signs.

by Victoria Schlesinger

Departments 4 Bay View

On the Trail

Letter from the Publisher

5 Letters from our Readers 6 Ear to the Ground News from the conservation community and the natural world

8 Conservation in Action Pedro Point’s impressive transformation

by Heather Mack

10 Signs of the Season Get to know the spears of springtime

by Ron Sullivan

12 In the Clear Taking a Dip in Clear Lake Clear Lake, perhaps North America’s oldest lake, is known mostly for fishing and waterskiing. But these days, it’s also a great destination for hikers, birders, and kayakers.

by Terry Knight 16 Elsewhere . . .

Rancho Cañada del Oro, Sycamore Grove, Starr King

33 Local Hero Awards Environmental Education: Mia Monroe Interview by Jacoba Charles

Conservation Action: Seth Adams Interview by Daniel McGlynn Youth Engagement: Cindy Moreno Interview by David Loeb

44 Families Afield: Exploring Nature with Kids The Green Dragon’s wild garden at Green Gulch

by Barbara Corff and Damien Raffa

45 Ask the Naturalist How do barnacles do it?

by Michael Ellis

46 Naturalist’s Notebook Ain’t nothin’ but a hound’s tongue

by John Muir Laws

visit us online at www.BayNature.org

bay v iew letter from the publisher

Y

ou could say I’ve been a bird watcher most of my life. Not an obsessive birder with a life list, but someone who enjoys looking for birds wherever I might be. It all started when I was five years old and found my father’s copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern & Central North America. I was just learning to read, so I would pore over the color plates and sound out birds’ names, particularly the colorful species.

My goal in life was to see an American goldfinch. That opportunity came when I visited my grandparents on Martha’s Vineyard, where flocks of those brightly colored birds passed through in late summer.

I’ve seen plenty of goldfinches since, but I still like to keep an eye out for birds, even outside the Bay Nature office in industrial West Berkeley, where the most common birds are crows and house sparrows. But last winter I noticed a different bird in the bare branches of the London plane trees outside the office. Eventually it flew low enough for me to see the diagnostic yellow patch above its tail: yellow-rumped warbler. Not an uncommon bird, yet not one I would expect to see next to a cement plant.

That warbler stuck around through winter and early spring. And then it was gone. But this past November, it (or one just like it) returned, and I now often see it perched on the fence around the tire shop down the street, apparently unconcerned with its gritty industrial environs.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, looking up in the trees for “my” warbler, I noticed contr ibutors

Santa Rosa–based Michael Ellis (p. 45) leads nature trips with Footloose Forays (footlooseforays.com).

Jacoba Charles (p. 33) is a freelance journalist based in the North Bay. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Point Reyes Light, and Bay Nature and on Salon.com.

Barbara Corff and Damien Raffa (p. 44) are cofounders of Urbia (urbikids.com), a San Francisco–based group that produces and promotes nature quest guides for kids.

Daniel McGlynn (p. 34) is an independent journalist who covers science and the environment.

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Diane Poslosky

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by david loeb

a much larger bird — clearly a raptor — sitting stock-still in the upper branches.

After consulting the Sibley guide, I was pretty sure I’d seen a merlin, a fine sighting for West Berkeley (or anywhere). But what was it doing there? Was it stalking “my” warbler? Perhaps, but I’m happy to report that the warbler was back the next day.

Thinking about birds both in and out of their usual habitats, I can’t help but think of Rich Stallcup, the amazing ornithologist and cofounder of Point Reyes Bird Observatory who passed away, much too soon, this past January at the age of 65. (See p. 6.)

I’m chagrined that I went on only one field trip with Rich — a memorable day at Abbotts Lagoon. What was so remarkable about Rich was that he got you to look first at the habitat, through a bird’s eyes. What was there to eat? Where were the roosting spots? Birding became much more than looking for a particular critter; it became a way of diving into and understanding the landscape.

I signed up to join Rich for an outing at Point Reyes last spring, but it was postponed due to high winds. When I lamented to him about not being available on the new date, he told me to name a day and he’d take me out. I had no idea he was already battling leukemia and assumed we’d get around to it eventually.

So I’ve lost the chance to join him for a day in the field, but the conservation community has lost a giant. He was one of those people who had a passion, followed it, and turned the lights on for countless others as a result. I hope he won’t mind if I dedicate the next sighting of that hardy West Berkeley warbler to his memory.

Ron Sullivan (p. 10) is a nature fiend who lives in Berkeley and, with her spouse Joe Eaton, writes “The Dirt,” a garden column appearing irregularly in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Jessica Hahn-Taylor (p. 16) lives in San Francisco, where she writes the blog Hill Babies (hillbabiessf.blogspot.com), about hiking with a child in the Bay Area.

Kristen Martz (pp. 16 and 38) is a San Francisco State University student pursuing a B.A. in journalism with a minor in biology.

Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 46) is the author of The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada and the new Laws Guide to Drawing Birds. Info: johnmuirlaws.com.

BayNature Exploring, celebrating, and understanding the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area

Volume 13, Issue 2 april–june 2013 Publisher David Loeb Editorial Director Dan Rademacher Development Director Judith Katz Online Editor Alison Hawkes Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Office Manager Jenny Stampp Advertising Director Ellen Weis Design & Production David Bullen Contributing Editor Sue Rosenthal Copy Editors Cynthia Rubin, Marianne Dresser Board of Directors Larry Orman (President), Malcolm Margolin (Emeritus), Carol Baird, Christopher Dann, Catherine Fox, Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, David Loeb, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Volunteers/Interns Harriette Atkins, Paul Epstein, Kirk Hansen, Jackson Karlenzig, Heather Mack, Kristen Martz, Ann Sieck, Constance Taylor, Maegan Tingling, Kimberly Teruya, Christina Vallianos, David Wichner Bay Nature is published quarterly by the Bay Nature Institute, 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 Subscriptions: $53.95/three years; $39.95/two years; $21.95/one year; (888)422-9628, baynature.org P.O. Box 92408, Long Beach, CA 90809 Advertising: (510)528-8550 x202/advertising@baynature.org Editorial & Business Office: 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 (510)528-8550; (510)528-8117 (fax) baynature@baynature.org baynature.org issn 1531-5193 No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bay Nature and its contributors. © 2013 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.

FPO UNION BUG

Front cover: Clark’s grebe with newborn chick on its back.

(Red patch on chick’s forehead is bare skin that may flush red when the chick is hungry.) Both Clark’s and similarlooking western grebes breed in great numbers at Clear Lake. Kayaking Clear Lake’s water trails is a great way to observe these and many other birds. [© Steve Zamek, FeatherLightPhoto.com] Heather Mack (p. 8) is a freelance journalist who lives in San Francisco.

Ann Sieck (p. 16) wants to make sure people with disabilities, including those who use wheelchairs, can find parks and trails they can enjoy, so for years she’s been reporting what she finds at WheelchairTrails.net.

Steve Zamek (cover), a former software engineer, has been birding and enjoying wildlife for several decades.

He lives near some productive wetlands along the San Francisco Bay with his wife, Jane. More at featherlightphoto.com.

le tter s To the Editor, I appreciated the article in the January– March 2013 issue about the invasive species D. vex, which has been connected to the Drakes Bay Oyster Company over the years; on p. 38, the author states, “The hard substrate of wooden oyster racks, as well as boats, hulls, docks, pilings, and the oysters themselves, are ideal habitat for the gelatinous goop.”

In November 2012, the oyster company’s lease was not renewed. Yet the company’s full-page ad appeared on page 33. I know the owners are fighting termination and that money talks, but I’d think that you’d hesitate to accept an ad linked to such a damaging invasive.

Ruth Britton, Greenbrae We aim not to be influenced by any advertiser and therefore included the D. vex story along with the ad. The oyster debate has bitterly divided the environmental and food movements. We’ve aimed

to balance celebrating Point Reyes, covering the controversy, and respecting local food advocates.

To the Editor, Thank you for the wonderful article

by David Rains Wallace (“Land of the Salamander,” Jan–Mar 2013). When pruning London plane trees as a UC Berkeley gardener, I used to find arboreal salamanders, which indeed live “in water soaked cavities.” Habitat is where you find it. Old trees are a good place to look.

John Sutake, Berkeley To the Editor, I recently asked newt expert Edmund Brodie about the source of newts’ toxin.

He answered, “We think the newts produce their own, but we do not yet have proof.” The toxin is passed to larval newts through the eggs from which they hatched, and the most toxic newt ever tested (a rough-skinned newt) could have killed 2,000 humans if ground up and administered by injection.

Kate Marianchild, Ukiah Contact us at letters@baynature.org.

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e ar to t he g ro u nd n e w s f r o m t h e c o m m u n i t y a n d t h e n at u r a l w o r l d Remembering Rich Stallcup

In December 2012, the Bay Area, and the world, lost one of its most eloquent spokespeople for and about birds. Rich Stallcup, a cofounder of the Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now PRBO Conservation Science), was an unrivaled birder and teacher. Here are two of the dozens of remembrances posted on PRBO’s online guestbook [bit.ly/stallcup]: More than anyone else, Rich was the person who made me more aware of the amazing world of birds, most inspired me to be a naturalist, and made me aware of the diversity of the natural world.

I met Rich only a few months after moving to California in 1980. The state’s rich bird diversity captivated me, and I associated Rich’s extraordinary expertise with that feeling. When I did my first prbo Birdathon, Rich was kind enough

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[David Wimpfheimer, professional Bay Area naturalist]

With Rich, birding was a nearly mystical experience and he approached it from that perspective, consciously or unconsciously, I am not sure which. I think I favor the latter description, though. He had the soul of a poet, the mind of a scientist, and the spirituality of a shaman. This is not a combination of talents often found in a birder. Rich’s influence went well beyond just identifying birds. He has become a part of the flow of life itself, part of the essence of what animates the natural world. He crawled around inside the mind of a bird and saw it as a shaman would see it.

Placed in that context, the ability to identify birds isn’t really very important; it is all rather clinical. To those of us fortunate enough to have known him, Rich led you to a higher purpose through birding; an understanding of your spirit. [ Jon Winter, wildlife biologist and birder]

Juliet Grable

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mon to discover, yet there is discovery and wonder even in the common things.”

The Exploratorium’s New Eyes on the Bay

to invite me to join him, but we had to do it on a day when Rich was teaching a class in Monterey. I met him in the predawn gloom of Robinson Canyon, where we managed to find pygmy and other owls. Then we dragged several cars of birders along for the whole day and still managed to find 150 species!

We had a nickname for Rich, Mr. Magic, as he was always finding rare birds. Yet after years of hearing about Rich’s birds I realized that he wasn’t just lucky. His years of experience allowed him to know what weather conditions and other factors would put birds at the Point or in any small patch of trees and how to find them. And he reminded us that “there is always something uncom-

The Bay Area’s premier interactive science museum, the Exploratorium, is reopening April 17 with a new focus on the world right outside its doors: San Francisco Bay. With its move from a windowless warehouse at the Palace of Fine Arts to the waterfront at Pier 15, the museum has added the Bay Observatory, a 6,000square-foot space with wraparound views of the Bay and shoreline.

Museum staff saw public interest in having the Exploratorium’s take on the here-and-now of San Francisco Bay, but, says senior curator Susan Schwartzberg, the museum’s former home made that difficult. “We were isolated in a black (continued on page 38) box. There were no

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April 11: Plant ID Workshop, SFSU, Hensill Hall, San Francisco, 2nd Thursday of each month April 13: Spring Plant Sale, Novato April 13-14: Native Plant Sale and Wild�lower Show, Napa April 13: San Bruno Mt. Ridge Trail, �ield trip, San Mateo County April 20-21: Going Native Garden Tour, Santa Clara & San Mateo April 27-28: Wild�lower Show, Santa Clara April 28: Garden Tour 11am- 3pm, San Francisco May 4: Sign Hill Butter�lies, �ield trip, South San Francisco May 4: Native Plant Sale, Los Altos Hills May 5: Bringing Back the Natives Garden Tour, East Bay May 5: Bay Friendly Garden Tour, Napa May 31- June 2: Chapter Council Meeting, Marin County

Experience the beauty and diversity of California’s native plants by attending wild�lower shows, garden tours, native plant sales, and �ield trips.

Wildflowers in Spring

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SAVE THE DATE! Gallery of California Natural Sciences Opening Celebrations May 31 – June 2, 2013

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by heather mack

co n s er vat ion in a c t i o n

Dave Rauenbuehler

Pedro Point’s Great Transformation

Volunteers for a San Francisco State revegetation project

Devil’s Slide, the precarious stretch of Highway 1 just south of Pacifica that’s as famous for landslides as it is for breathtaking views, has undergone a monumental transformation over the years. A pair of sleek, straight tunnels has been bored through San Pedro Mountain and will be opened to motorists this spring, replacing a white-knuckle stretch of unstable highway, which will be turned over to hikers and bicyclists, who can better enjoy the views without risking catastrophe.

But above and beyond the obvious structural improvements, the windswept bluffs of Pedro Point overlooking Devil’s Slide are enjoying a transformation of their own. The 246-acre park hosts a habitat now rare along the California coast — coastal prairie and shrubland home to dozens of species of native plants and wildlife. Spillover funds from the Devil’s Slide tunnel project will bring parking and improved trail access, but the habitat restoration here has come largely thanks to a dedicated, grassroots group of stewards.

“This place is pretty undiscovered, and it’s pretty wild,” says Lynn Adams, who heads the Pedro Point Headlands stewardship project, which was formed in 2009. “Over the past three years, we’ve b ay n at u r e

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plant native plants on eroded slopes at Pedro Point.

become little watchdogs, and we’ve really started to get a handle on changing the [vegetation] back to how it’s supposed to be.”

In the 1960s and ’70s, Pedro Point Headlands served as the stomping grounds of a motorcycle club. Entire hillsides, weakened and scarred from tire tracks, crumbled away with the rains. To stabilize the hills, the motorcycle club planted Monterey pines, which, while native to other parts of the Central Coast, are an invasive species in Pacifica. It wasn’t long before the nonnative pine and eucalyptus trees began to dominate the area.

The Pacifica Land Trust took over the land in 1995. “It was great when the area first became a park, but we realized that without stewardship, it’s useless to people,” says Adams. “Now, as it becomes more accessible, it’s getting a much higher profile and people want to protect it.”

More than 500 people have participated in restoration efforts over the past three years. In addition to dedicated workdays to remove invasive plants, spread soil, and plant natives, volunteers host guided hikes and local experts lead bird walks.

Considerable work has been done

since the land trust acquired the park, especially in curtailing the spread of the prevalent Monterey pines and eucalyptus. Outright removal of established groves can have adverse consequences, since they’ve come to support a variety of songbirds over the years, but smaller, sparsely distributed trees will be nipped in the bud.

“It’s all about understanding the area,” says Mike Vasey, a San Francisco State University lecturer and chief botanist with the project. He says the goal is a healthy mosaic of native dune scrub alongside existing groves. “Nature doesn’t care what was here before,” he adds. “As long as we work alongside what’s made a home here, control the erosion and the invasives, [the land] can support native species.”

Vasey points out different parts of the headlands: Some are completely washed out “slides” where major erosion has occurred. Others are rehabilitated hillsides sporting a dozen pastel colors of healthy native plants, the product of years of restoration efforts.

The current work is facilitated through an unusual marriage of long-term scientific research and everyday volunteerism.

San Francisco State ecologist Tom Parker and graduate student Brian Peterson have designed the erosion control and revegetation methods, experimenting with a mix of adaptive management strategies to see which works best. Different sites have been chosen to test out different methods, from laying down straw and installing erosion-control fabric to seeing which native plants are most likely to establish a foothold in the soil.

“This is a really special place in that you have the ocean on three sides,” says Peterson. “Because of that relative isolation, it has its own specific climate and plant life, and we need to make people aware of that.”

That will be all the more important, he adds, when crowds of hikers start showing up. “This is going to be the hot spot of the Peninsula within the next couple of years,” says Peterson.

“It’s important we get this healing process down first.”

Learn more at pedropointheadlands.org.

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roots, and others. Native Americans ate the corms, called them “grass nuts,” and cultivated them by burning and dividing: “After they [the Yurok] got done collecting [bulbs and corms], they would go through and take all the little ones off and replant them . . . so there would be A piece of the sky had fallen, was floating a foot above the hill by the road. Distracting, infuri- a continual supply,” said Kathy Heffner, of the Wailaki tribe, as quoted in M. Kat ating in 50-mile-an-hour traffic and no shoulder, no pull-off, no way to stop. Naming what Anderson’s book Tending the Wild. we’d seen took a backseat to staying on the road, but Oh yes! — a field of Ithuriel’s spear (Triteleia Blue dicks, Dichelostemma capitatum, with a smaller bloom than Ithuriel’s laxa), its mass of blooms waving on invisibly thin stalks above the short-grazed grass. spear’s, does quite well under this kind They’re named for the angel some of roadsides. They start as soft, naked green of cultivation, even if it’s accidental. us first met in the bowels of Milton’s stalks, most standing straight, some speLook for them along roadsides and Paradise Lost: cies twining onto the nearest support. other disturbed places, bravely popping Him, thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Then, in ones and twos and great multiup through the gravel in early spring.

Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure ples, sometimes after their leaves wither, Ookow, D. congestum, looks very like blue Touch of celestial temper, but returns they burst their various fireworks: bright dicks but shies away from the road and Of force to its own likeness. blue, purple, or yellow flowers, seeming blooms later.

“Him” was Lucifer, Satan, the devil to explode from those grasslike stems.

Ithuriel’s spear has a look-alike cousin who’d squatted at Eve’s ear in toadish They’re all geophytes; they make too: Brodiaea elegans (harvest or elegant costume, his disbrodiaea), with guise undone by the similar big blue-totouch of that spear. violet floral heads Like the magical that appear in simirule of true names, lar grassland habiit reveals the nature tat. B. elegans generof what it touches. ally takes the late In short, it’s the shift, blooming instrument of when the grasses Getting It Right. around it are A good double golden-dry, but handful of Ithuriel’s they can overlap. choir — the family Like all Brodiaeas, Themidaceae, it has “waxy” flowincluding the ers; triteleias and brodiaeas, triteleias, dichelostemmas dichelostemmas, don’t, and there and their cousins — are differences in live on the West stamen numbers.

Coast, some only They have a in California, some blushing white rela(above) A meadow of Ithuriel’s spear blooms on a hillside at Simon Newman Ranch, a Nature Conservancy property east of Henry W. Coe only in very small areas tive, T. hyacinthina, State Park. (right) A yellow crab spider on blue dicks. of California. Lacking that likes seasonally miraculous weapons, we wet meadows; and need a field guide and maybe a hand lens bulblike corms underground, an adaptaa yellow one, T. ixioidies, boringly called to sort them out — some are hard to tell tion for long dry periods like our sum“pretty face,” that favors the heights apart from their close relatives, and taxmers and some places’ winters. Geophytes from here all the way up to Sierran onomists change their minds and reclasstore nutrition to get a head start in the meadows. Dichelostemma ida-maia sparks sify them now and then. growing season, and that compact food shady woodlands with red and yellow, However it might be sorted, Ithuriel’s source gets exploited by burrowing and shyly drooping. spear is part of a lovely complex of flowdigging animals, including us. The family Enjoy them as you meet them and ers that salutes our springs and summers, gets lumped as “Indian potatoes,” along name them if you can; the time it takes from shade to open meadow to gravelly with mariposa tulips, yampahs, soapis well spent in their company.

s ign s o f t h e se aso n

Spears of Springtime

Jef Poskanzer

Judy Kramer

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by ron sullivan

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Nightfall with Owls

Saturday, April 20

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Photo by Karen Phillips

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madesonphotography.com

on the trail

ta kin g a d ip i n cl ea r la ke

IN THE CLEAR The Birds

by Terry Knight

We’ve thought about doing a piece on Clear Lake for a long time: It’s a wildlife magnet just over two hours from our office in Berkeley, and yet relatively few Bay Area nature lovers ever visit.

You might imagine that Clear Lake was named for the clarity of its water. Not so. It turns out that early European settlers named this lake for the clarity of the region’s air, which today remains some of the best around. Before the Europeans named the lake, the local Pomo people called it Lypoyomi, or Big Water. And so it is: Clear Lake covers 44,000 acres and its shoreline stretches 110 miles. That makes it the largest freshwater lake entirely inside California.

And that’s not the lake’s only superlative. It’s also the oldest lake in the state and possibly the oldest in North America. The region sits at the edge of a large volcanic field, and constant tectonic movement has kept Clear Lake from filling in with sediment for two million years.

Terry Knight is an outdoor adventure enthusiast who’s lived on the lake for 25 years and writes an outdoors column and feature stories on the area’s environment for the Lake County Record-Bee. He sent us a few vignettes that capture several of his favorite places around the lake, though he makes it clear there are many more to be explored.

Dan Rademacher, Editorial Director

april–june 2013

Greg Giusti University of California scientist

Clear Lake is home to more than 300 species of birds, from eagles and osprey overhead to grebes and mergansers on the water and egrets and herons along the shore. At one time it was estimated that the lake’s population of western grebes exceeded 50,000. You can spot them from just about anwhere on the lake, but the best place to see these elegantMount Konocti rises behind old pilings on a misty morning at Clear Lake. The mountain, which tops

madesonphotography.com

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“Every day on the lake is an adventure. One day I will see a flight of white pelicans gliding over the water and the next day there will be grebes doing their mating dance along with an osprey grabbing a fish. In my opinion it is one of the most dynamic lakes in the world.”

out at 4,305 feet, is a dormant volcano.

on th e tr ail

The Water Trails “Things have changed a lot up at Clear Lake.

I’ve noticed things about kayaking, wildlife areas. None of that existed when I was there before.” (above) Clear Lake at dawn, from Lakeside County Park in Lakeport. Mount Konocti is on the right, and the mountains beyond mark Mendocino National Forest’s southern end. (below) Mating grebes engage in the “weed dance,” where they present each other with nest-building materials. (below right) Ospreys nest at several locations along the shores of the lake and can often be seen diving for fish near rafts of grebes.

Julie Donnelly-Nolan

looking birds is on the water from Long Tule Point to Adobe Creek, where several thousand of them nest in spring and early summer. A great way to observe them is from a kayak or other small, quiet boat launched at the Lakeside County Park, only a short paddle away from the nesting area.

Western grebes are known for their spectacular springtime courtship dance. The male approaches the female and does a series of dips with his head.

She responds with like dips and then they run across the surface of the water with their necks arched in perfect unison, finally diving underwater at exactly the same moment. During this maneuver, called “rushing,” the birds race across the water so fast they appear to be hydroplaning.

usgs geologist who mapped the area in the 1970s and 80s

Clear Lake’s network of seven water trails is the brainchild of Holly Harris and Charles Lamb, a husband-and-wife team who moved to Lake County in 2000 and founded Konocti Regional Trails in 2007. Harris says Clear Lake is ideal for water trails because there are 11 madesonphotography.com

While you’re watching the grebes, keep an eye out for osprey and bald eagles. The eagles prey on grebes and other waterbirds, so watch for them perched in the trees in the grebe nesting areas, looking for an easy meal. Ospreys don’t prey on birds, but they’ve learned that where there are grebes, there are abundant fish. At the county park, look for the huge osprey nest, where you can often see a pair tending to their young.

A family of river otters also lives nearby, and white pelicans are a common sight on the lake at the mouth of Adobe Creek.

madesonphotography.com

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on

This water trail covers the Soda Bay area, where volcanic gases still bubble to the surface, evidence of the region’s restless geology. Though Clear Lake is quite shallow, averaging 15 feet in the north end and 25 feet in the south end, Soda Bay has several vent holes that are reportedly more than 100 feet deep. The water temperature near these vents is often more than 20 degrees warmer than the surrounding bay. Geologists theorize that the warm water is coming from beneath nearby Mount Konocti, a dormant volcano.

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Courtesy Konocti Regional Trails

The Mountain “We envision a trail from Clear Lake State Park to the top of Mount Konocti.”

Kayakers on Rodman Slough (Water Trail 7). Clear Lake has become a kayaking destination since the creation of a network of water trails, from Rodman Slough in the north to Anderson Marsh in the south.

free public boat ramps (find maps at konoctitrails.com/water-trail-loops).

“We created the water trails primarily for kayakers because kayaks have a low impact on the environment and allow people to approach many of the waterbirds without disturbing them.”

Harris says. “The trails have become so popular that we plan to expand them to cover the entire lake.”

Note that wildlife biologists say you should stay at least 200 feet from nesting birds so they won‘t be disturbed.

One popular boating route is the Rodman Slough Water Trail (Clear Lake

Water Loop 7). The trail, located at the north end of the lake, is about eight miles round trip from the launching area at the bridge that crosses the mouth of the slough. The entire water trail is protected from the lake’s often-strong winds and showcases a wide variety of birds and wildlife, including a large blue heron rookery. The Lake County Land Trust operates a nature center here that offers weekly nature walks.

Clear Lake Water Loop 5 (known as the Soda Bay Trail) starts at Clear Lake State Park on the southwest side of the lake, which is also a great place for seeing wildlife from shore. Park superintendent Bill Salata says he’s spotted bobcats, deer, river otters, bald eagles, and even an occasional mountain lion on his daily patrols.

Charles Lamb Konocti Regional Trails

Overlooking Clear Lake is majestic 4,300-foot Mount Konocti, whose name is derived from the Pomo words kno, for mountain, and htai, for woman. The summit, privately owned since the 1800s, was mostly inaccessible to the public until 2011, when the county purchased

(left) A white pelican takes off. Though spring is the time to see breeding grebes, fall and winter are the best times to see white pelicans at Clear Lake. (right) At dusk, a hiker looks down on the lake from a bench at Mount Konocti County Park, which opened to the public in fall 2012.

madesonphotography.com

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madesonphotography.com

Visitor Center

Clear Lake State Park

CLEAR

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h a m Pe n i n s u l a

Terry Knight writes about fishing and the outdoors for the Lake County Record Bee, and he also serves on the Lake County Fish and Wildlife Advisory Committee and the Clear Lake Invasive Species Council.

Clear Lake and Vicinity

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Mendocino National Forest

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From the Bay Area take Highway 101 north to Ukiah and go east on Highway 20 to Clear Lake, or turn on 175 at Hopland for a shorter, curvier ride. From Sacramento, take Interstate 5 north to Williams and Highway 20 west to Clear

th e

Lake. Mount Konocti is accessed off Konocti Road in Kelseyville. Download maps of the water trails and Mount Konocti atkonoctitrails.com. For Clear Lake State Park, call (707)279-4293 or visit clearlakestatepark.org. For information on kayak rentals and accommodations, call the Lake County Visitor Information Center at (800)525-3743.

Getting There:

to Ukiah

on

Mount Konocti’s five peaks. The summit offers an excellent view of Clear Lake, and on clear days you can see Snow Mountain to the north, Mount St. Helena to the south, and even all the way northeast to Mount Lassen.

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Wright Peak

4,286'

Howard Peak

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South Peak

Mt Konocti County Park

1 Kilometer

Library Park

Main St

Lakeside Park

to Hopland

Ado

Kelseyville

4 Kilometers

Mt Konocti

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Borax Lake

Mt Konocti County Park

Konocti Bay

Clearlake Park

53

Clearlake Redbud Park

Ca

Middle

Main

St

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Upper Lake

29

to Middletown

20

Ben Pease, PeasePress.com

Cache

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Anderson Marsh State Historic Park

Lower Lake

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1 Mile

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Clearlake Oaks

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Clear Lake State Park

Park Dr

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1,500 acres and turned it into Mount Konocti County Park.

Though it’s quiet now, eruptions started here about 350,000 years ago and happened as recently as 10,000 years ago.

Konocti’s five peaks are the cones that resulted from a series of nonexplosive eruptions and lava flows.

The four-mile hike to the summit starts at a parking lot halfway up the mountain. The trail is a dirt road used by technicians to access the cell phone towers that dot the peak. But there’s some wildness here, including a grove of canyon oaks, some believed to be more than 500 years old. And some more recent history as well: In the middle of the grove of oaks, turn down a dirt road to see the cabin built in 1903 by a homesteading widow who used a mirror to signal a greeting to her daughter in Lakeport, 10 miles away.

Retired park ranger Tom Nixon, now a volunteer hike docent, likes to demonstrate the process, flashing a mirror and receiving a reply from another volunteer in town.

Traveling back on the main road you hike another two miles to Wright Peak.

At 4,286 feet, Wright is the tallest of

Rd

Hiking Trail Planned Trail

to Calistoga

Water Trail Water Trail Access

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elsewhere . . . s o uth bay

2

e ast bay

Rancho Cañada del Oro Open Space Preserve This fine 3,000-acre swath of the Santa Cruz Mountains’ east slope has over eight miles of lightly used trails and provides a back door to the remote areas of Calero County Park, which also has a large reservoir. We took three-mile-long Mayfair Ranch Trail, which was completed in 2007 and is admirably designed for both walkers and riders. From the valley floor it switchbacks easily up through chaparral and under giant manzanitas to the ridgetop and follows it west, meeting moss and ferns on the shaded north flank, grand valley oaks clotted with mistletoe in open meadows, and native bunchgrasses clinging to serpentine outcrops. Frequent long views across surrounding canyons also take in nearby peaks like 3,800-foot Loma Prieta and Lick Observatory atop 4,196-foot Mount Hamilton.

This is a fine place to see wildflowers.

In midwinter, fallen manzanita blossoms drifted on the trail. Early milkmaids nodded in the oak woods, and the green buds on plants and shrubs were swelling, promising a fine spring. A mat of Indian warrior was already in profuse red flower.

Mayfair Ranch Trail ends at Baldy Ryan Creek, and trails down that canyon make a four-mile loop back to the trailhead. Other longer — very long! — loops are possible.

Getting there: From 101, go west on Bailey, left on McKean Road, and right on Casa Loma to staging area. Horses permitted; no pets; no bikes in Calero County Park. Drinking water not available but wading may be necessary at Baldy Ryan Creek. [Ann Sieck]

3

san francisco

Margo Bors

Vincent Zammit

Karen W. Meyer

1

Sycamore Grove Park

Starr King Open Space

Though the paved trail, traffic noise, and high-tension power lines don’t promise “wilderness,” rolling hills ripe with springtime wildflowers make up for these reminders of civilization. The park is named for a large stand of sycamores, which the Livermore parks department bills as one of the state’s biggest. The creek and wildlife make it a great destination for hiking with kids and dogs.

With 12 trails within the 750-acre park, there’s plenty to explore in this suburban open space gem.

Your best bet is to avoid the Arroyo Del Valle Regional Trail and hike a combination of the other 11 trails.

Winery Loop Trail leads past the park residence, gorgeous ruins of the old Olivina Winery (founded in the 1880s as one of the Livermore Valley’s first commercial wineries), a couple of ponds and creeks, and an almond orchard. In spring, the trees are full of fragrant almond blossoms, surrounded by lush green grass and wildflowers. (For this trail, park as far to the right as possible.) If you have time and energy, take the Wagon Road and Valley View trails to the right to get breath3 taking views of the rolling hills.

Getting there: From Interstate 680, take 84 east, turn right on Vallecitos Road, then right on Wetmore Road.

From i-580, take 84 west, turn left on East Vineyard Avenue, left on Vallecitos Road, then right on Wetmore Road.

Parking: $5 at payment machine, $1 and $5 bills only. [Kristen Martz]

When I was a kid growing up on Potrero Hill, I called this place “the field” and it was my haven. Officially it’s the Starr King Open Space, and it’s a place of sublimity in the midst of the city. It’s also a fine example of serpentine grassland, a rare habitat that in these parts was largely displaced by wartime housing and general development.

The bluffs offer panoramic western views of sunsets and advection fog.

Gray-green serpentine outcroppings make the soil especially suited to native plants: Despite the park’s small size (3.5 acres), at least 55 native species, including serpentine endemics, grow here.

The “high holies” are the western outcroppings where native flowers thrive — lomatium, checkerbloom, yarrow, and buckwheat bloom early.

Come April and May, look for mariposa lilies (the last San Francisco population), goldfields, and dozens more. Elsewhere, lupines love the south field, buckeyes the north, and oaks and purple needlegrass grow throughout.

The neighborhood has maintained this property since 1984, and volunteers have removed fennel, yellow star thistle, radish, and more.

2 Guided wildfower walks are planned for April 14, May 4, 1 and June 16, 2013 (info: starrkingopenspace.org).

Getting there: Take Muni 48 Quintara from 24th Street bart, or 19 Polk from Civic Center. By car, exit 101 at Cesar Chavez, right on Potrero, right on 23rd Street, uphill to Carolina. No facilities. [ Jessica Hahn-Taylor]

d i s c o v e r m a n y m o r e t r a i l s at b ay n at u r e . o r g /t r a i l f i n d e r b ay n at u r e

april–june 2013

Los Vaqueros Interpretive Center and Marina For the latest activity schedule, email goltman@ccwater.com.

Come visit us!

Los Vaqueros Marina Open 7 days a week, dawn to dusk 925-371-2628 Directions: From Vasco Road, turn north onto Los Vaqueros Road and drive to the end.

John Muir Interpretive Center Saturdays and Sundays 9:00 am–4:00 pm 925-240-2440 Directions: Drive to 100 Walnut Blvd., Byron, then drive about a mile to the southern end of Walnut Blvd.

For more information, visit www.ccwater.com/losvaqueros/ or call

925-688-8010

Like us on Facebook at “Los Vaqueros Interpretive Center.”

Tomales Bay Resort

35 Rooms Recently Renovated Economical or Deluxe Rooms Available Fireplaces • Kitchenettes • TV Kayaking • Restaurant • Conference Room 12938 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Inverness (415) 669-1389 www.tomalesbayresort.com

april–june 2013

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The Phenology Project: Getting Kids Involved in Climate Science

by Jacoba Charles

Courtesy NatureBridge

18

climate Change: Dispatches from the Home Front

“Dispatches From the Home Front” is a series of articles highlighting groundbreaking efforts by Bay Area institutions, agencies, and nonprofits to understand and adapt to the impact of climate change on Bay Area ecosystems.

The series is produced in partnership with the Bay Area Ecosystem Climate Change Consortium (baeccc.org).

O

n a windswept bluff above the Pacific Ocean, a dozen fourth- and fifth-graders are scattered among monkey flower and coyote bush shrubs. Teams of kids debate questions like how many leaves? How many flowers?

By the end of their walk they have filled out a detailed questionnaire for each of 16 plants that had been marked by a round metal tag.

These kids, from Country Club Elementary in San Ramon, have spent four days staying at Fort Cronkhite in the Marin Headlands as part of the NatureBridge environmental field science program in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Today, they are helping out with real, grown-up science.

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“What they’re doing is collecting data about how plants are changing in our park,” explains their instructor Elisa Litsky, a cheerful woman with balanced measures of authority and playfulness. “It’s like an exciting scavenger hunt.”

The kids on the bluff at Fort Cronkhite are just one facet of the California Phenology Project. The project, which is still in the pilot phase, has mobilized a small army of citizen-scientists to study differences in the timing of plant life cycles. So far, the project has hosted about 50 training sessions throughout California, involving about 600 people. And this is only the beginning. The pilot project is now active in seven parks in California but will eventually expand to 19 National Park Service sites as well as other public and private lands throughout the state.

The science of phenology studies the seasonal cycles in nature, such as when flowers bloom, insects hatch, and birds migrate.

Gardeners and naturalists have been dabbling in these details for centuries, but the science of seasonal observation has taken on new urgency and import in the era of climate change.

Jacoba Charles

b ay n at u r e

Jocelyn Knight, jocelynknight.com

april–june 2013

Courtesy NatureBridge

Since the beginning of the 20th century, winters in the collection to a huge variety of people—whether they can help lower 48 states have been getting shorter and warmer on average, for a day or for a year. All the data is funneled back to researchaccording to the Environmental Protection Agency. In the West, ers at UC Santa Barbara, where it is added to a growing database the average growing season has increased by three weeks, with managed by the National Phenology Network, cpp’s older cousin.

“One of the huge benefits of building a citizen-science promost of that change occurring within the last three decades. gram is the ability to have more eyes, ears, and hands on the This means that leaves bud, flowers bloom, and fruits ripen earground,” says Liz Matthews, a postdoctoral associate at UC lier. And plants aren’t the only things changing: Marmots in the Santa Barbara who is the sole full-time employee on the project.

Rocky Mountains are emerging earlier from hibernation and “We’re able to observe on a scale that simply wouldn’t be possisome birds have shifted their winter ranges as much as 400 miles ble otherwise.” to the north since the 1960s. Biologists speculate that the migrations of other species — from the localized journeys of amphibians to the long-distance flights of monarch butterflies — will be Researchers already know that the same species of plant will bud affected by climate change. and bloom at different times in different parts of California.

These changes lead scientists to worry about Changes in elevation, latitude, and even microclimate — whether NatureBridge instructor a plant is in a shaded ravine versus on the sunny hill a few yards what they call “phenological mismatches” among Elisa Litsky shows away — can all affect phenology. And these regional differences species. Species and entire ecosystems depend on students from Country Club Elementary School complex, intricately interlocked patterns of timcan be seen right away in a project as big as this one. But observin San Ramon what to ing the response to climate change will take time. ing — many of which are poorly understood. look for in the plants Examples include songbirds that have evolved to they’re monitoring in migrate when the seeds or insects that they feed the Marin Headlands on are available — but what happens if the birds above Fort Cronkhite. arrive and the seeds have already dried up? Or if an insect hatches but the flowers it pollinates haven’t bloomed yet? If every species were affected by climatic changes in exactly the same way, there wouldn’t be a problem. But they’re not: Some species might be responding to fixed signals, like the hours of daylight, while others may react to temperature or rainfall — cues that historically were linked but may no longer remain so. What happens when these go out of sync is the kind of question the project seeks to answer. By gathering long-term data sets at multiple sites across the state, scientists can test their models and confirm observed patterns of change.

But gathering information on such a large scale isn’t feasible using traditional methods. No one scientist, agency, or even group of researchers can provide the sheer number of people needed to collect the data needed to (top right) NatureBridge instructor Pahoua Lee points out changes in the create a big-picture phevegetation around Rodeo Lagoon in the Marin Headlands. (right) For pollinology database; espenators like this common buckeye nectaring on coyote bush, timing is cially not in an era of everything. (above) Phenology Project volunteer Corny Foster monitors shrinking public funding. seasonal changes in coyote bush at Crissy Field.

This is where the citiEventually, cpp aims to document how changes in timing are zen-scientists of the California Phenology Project (cpp) come in. The project is a collaboration between the National Park related to environmental variation across both space and time — and to climate change. Researchers hope to correlate documented Service, the University of California Santa Barbara, and the plant responses with specific climatic parameters such as temperNational Phenology Network, which connects the people-power ature and rainfall, which have not been studied much in the that can be channeled through the parks with the research needs western U.S. They will also examine clues as to whether species of scientists. By creating a simple checklist that can be comare at risk because they aren’t adapting well to the changing pleted without specialized training, the project opens up data

19

(far left and left) On Mount Wanda, new student interns Isaac Ramos and Jenisse Persauld are being trained by Phenology Project intern Cheyanna Washburn to recognize and document the seasonal changes in several tree and plant species. (below) A snipe fly gets nectar from the flower of a bay laurel, one of the five species being monitored at John Muir

Jacoba Charles

National Historic Site.

climate. But those results are several years, or even a decade, away.

In these early stages, the results are less dramatic but still valuable. Greenleaf manzanita in the Sierra foothills forms its flower buds a full year before they open, for example. And coyote bush can put out new leaves all year long — and especially after rainstorms. “It’s not at all what we expected to see,” says Matthews, adding that this type of phenological detail is not well known, even among ecologists, and has yet to be scientifically documented. “It really makes you get to know your local plants and the idiosyncratic patterns they show.”

A lot of the work that went into creating the cpp happened in the planning phase, which began in 2010. This involved developing tools for monitoring, such as data sheets and instructions.

And because most phenology research up until now has been done on the East Coast with its distinct seasons, researchers also had to find methods to capture the more subtle phenological changes that happen in California’s mild climate.

One of the most formidable challenges was narrowing the state’s 5,000 plants down to a manageable list of candidates for monitoring. These had to be scientifically relevant, fairly common — and also reasonably straightforward for non-botanists to evaluate. Eventually the list was whittled down to 30 plants statewide, seven of which (coyote bush, coast live oak, blue oak, bay laurel, California buckeye, sticky monkey flower, California poppy) are currently being monitored at the Bay Area sites.

Another challenge is dealing with the errors that can crop up when you’re working with such a large and diverse volunteer labor force. For instance, bulbous green insect galls can look a lot like flower buds, and with tiny coyote bush leaves it’s hard to

tell which ones are young and which are mature. Mistakes are bound to creep in, particularly with young kids or one-time volunteers.

But, Matthews explains, one of the benefits of having a large amount of data is that a handful of mistakes won’t affect the results.

“With every citizen science program you understand that you probably have a higher rate of error,” says Matthews. “For student groups in particular, you’ve just got a ton of teachable moments. In our citizen science projects it’s always a balance between our science goals and our education goals.”

In the end, it’s worth spending a little more time analyzing the data to inspire a new generation of researchers and help people reconnect with the world around them, Matthews says.

And it doesn’t hurt if they take home a lesson about climate change at the same time. “People get to see that the flora in their backyard reacts to climate,” she notes. “Then climate change is no longer a story about polar bears in the north—instead it’s, ‘What is the coyote bush doing in my backyard, and why does that matter?’”

Sally Rae Kimmel

20

Jacoba Charles

At the John Muir National Historic Site in Martinez, three teenagers hike slowly up a muddy trail through mixed oak woodland on Mount Wanda. They are the park’s new interns and this is their first day on the job. For the next nine months, they will hike this trail twice each week, gathering phenology data on five different species: California buckeye, coyote bush, bay laurel, coast live oak, and blue oak.

Natural resource specialist Fernando Villalba and Phenology Project intern Rosemary Gutierrez examine a coyote bush for new leaf growth at Mount Wanda.

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Sally Rae Kimmel

Today, the three newcomers — Jenisse, Isaac, and Sierra — are being trained by one of their predecessors, Cheyanna, and park natural resource specialist Fernando Villalba. The group’s enthusiasm seems boundless. The two-mile-long hike takes nearly two hours because they stop to examine endless details: the moss at the base of a tree, a mushroom emerging from the soil, the tooth marks on a bay laurel nut that has been half-eaten by a squirrel. Cheyanna has a story to pass on to the new interns about one oak sapling that got trampled by a wayward horse; last year’s interns trimmed its broken branches and nursed it back to health. Now she regards its new green shoots with pride.

This is exactly the sort of relationship with nature that the phenology project hopes to encourage. Many people have never looked closely at a plant before, and even for avid outdoorspeople, data collection is often a new way of looking at nature.

“It’s a lot of fun to see the changes,” says Corny Foster, a spry retiree who is beginning her second year of collecting data on coyote bush at Crissy Field in San Francisco. Foster has been tending the site for over a decade, but now she can describe the quirks of the six bushes that she monitors as if they are old friends. One puts out more new leaves on one side than the other; a second is the prostrate form of the bush that had two flushes of flowers last year. A third lost most of its leaves during big winter storms.

“There was a time when there were still fruit dropping — and

www.montereybaywhalewatch.com 831-375-4658

new leaves were popping out,” she adds with a laugh. “Things were pretty exciting for a while back in December.”

Whether learning the idiosyncrasies of single plants or just helping out for a day, hundreds of people participating in the cpp are getting to experience the thrill of watching — and recording — the small changes in their local ecosystems. Taken altogether, their work will help tell the story of larger ecological changes around the globe.

If you want to become a citizen scientist with the California Phenology Project, go to www.usanpn.org/cpp/participate. Volunteers can work with a national park nearby or do a project on their own.

Jacoba Charles is a freelance journalist based in the North Bay whose work has appeared in the New York Times, the Point Reyes Light, Bay Nature, and on Salon.com.

Funding for “Dispatches From the Home Front” is provided by the State Coastal Conservancy and Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

Springtime blooms on Mount Wanda

Saturday, May 18, 2013, 9:30 a.m.–12 noon Join Bay Nature and the National Park Service for an interpretive walk at the John Muir National Historic Site with park naturalist Fernando Villalba. Sign up at hikes@baynature.org.

The District has protected almost 85,000 acres of agricultural land and open space in Sonoma County.

See Gray Whales, Killer Whales, Humpback Whales, Dolphins, Sea Otters, Seabirds, and more!

Year-round whale watches Marine biologists on all trips Ample time to �ind and view marine animals Experienced and knowledgeable captains Large, fully equipped boats Highest sighting success for whales and dolphins

http://www.sonomaopenspace.org

april–june 2013

b ay n at u r e

21

The Sounds of Silence

Tuning into the

By Jonah Raskin

S

haron Perry and her husband, Dan Dugan, inhabit a converted warehouse with double walls to keep out the racket from a neighborhood wedged between Interstate 280 and Highway 101 in San Francisco. Today, on the pavement outside their living and work space, I don’t hear a bird chirp or tweet, but inside it’s another world. Perry pigeon and Dugan have a vast digital library of birdsong they’ve recorded across Northern California. At any time of day or night they can press a button and transform their stark urban environment into a rich auditory habitat.

Right now they’re higher than kites. They’ve just returned from an expedition to a marsh in the Sierra Nevada where coyote they taped cranes, ibises, pelicans, and snipes. Perry and Dugan didn’t spy a single snipe — a bird that usually perches invisibly among reeds — but they heard them. “The snipe makes an amazing winnowing sound,” Dugan tells me. “It came out of nowhere. We heard a snipe solo and then a whole orchestra of birds.” Dugan pressed a button and turned up the volume; instantly, I felt transported to a wild marsh.

Tried-and-true members of the Nature Sounds Society, Perry and Dugan are near the heart of the fast-growing field of acoustic ecology which studies the relationships between sounds, species, and geographical spaces. Acoustic ecologists listen to the “geophony”— the rumblings and pigeon grumblings of the earth itself including wind and rain — and the “biophony,” the cries and whispers made by living creatures, from whales and wolves to crickets and birds. A coyote

Lorcan Keating

ravens

ravens

Stephen Joseph, stephenjosephphoto.com

Matt Knoth, mattknoth.com

Photo Credit

Natural Soundscape

(left) Redwood Creek in Muir Woods National Monument, one of the National Park Service’s pilot sites for its Natural Sounds Program. (above right) Dan Dugan and Sharon Perry recording sounds at Muir Woods. The couple worked with the park service to create a library of sounds from Muir Woods. (below) That library includes sounds made by (from left) coyotes, ravens, great horned owls, band-tailed pigeons, and marsh wrens.

third key term, “anthrophony,” refers to the sounds made by human beings and their machines such as airplanes, refrigerators, and air conditioners. Naturalists who study the geophony and the biophony — acoustic Sally Rae Kimmel ecologists — draw “acoustic maps,” charting and measuring local and global “soundscapes.” They rely, of course, on ears, an organ that has played second fiddle to human eyes for too long, especially when it comes to the environment. So Nature Sounds Society members insist.

R. Murray Schafer, a Canadian musician and the father of acoustic ecology, conducted the first soundscape studies in the late 1960s, though earlier scientific recordings of nature were made by the British in the 1930s and released on Gramophone Records. For decades, Schafer has called for the preservation of “soundmarks,” the aural equivalent of landmarks. With his colleagues at the World Soundscape Project he has systematically taped the sounds of the planet, starting in British Columbia and moving farther afield.

Like many members of the Nature Sounds Society, Perry and Dugan come to acoustic ecology from different, though not antithetical, ways of operating in the world. Dugan is an engineer, inventor, and technological wiz who designed the microphones used on tv by David Letterman and by professional sports broadcasters. Perry is a naturalist and environmental educator. For years, she led workshops to show kids and adults how to listen to nature and be aware of the sounds they heard. Perry enjoyed the work. She also found it challenging to persuade the young and the old alike to sit still and tune in.

“The Nature Sounds Society reaches out to artists and scientists,” Perry tells me. “We’re creating a nexus where artists can appreciate the science of sound and scientists can appreciate the art of sound. We want birders with binoculars and sharp eyes to share their lore and skills with engineers equipped with recording devices and trained ears, and vice versa.”

During their weekend in the Sierra, Perry, Dugan, and their colleagues attended a talk by Bernie Krause, whose book The Great Animal Orchestra (2012) sums up a lifetime of global soundscape exploration. Perhaps more than anyone else in the country, Krause popularizes the seminal ideas at the heart of acoustic ecology: that

Listen online!

baynature.org/nature-sounds

pigeon

pigeon

coyote

John W. Wall

Jack Sutton, wildbayarea.com

coyote

Larry Selman, MostlyBirds.com

pigeon

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Stephen Joseph, stephenjosephphoto.com

animals communicate, through sounds, with one another; that they’re largely cooperative rather than competitive — after all, they harmonize; and that the animal orchestra has fewer members now than it once had because of environmental degradation and habitat loss. Moreover, Krause insists on recording a whole ecosystem, not just one species of bird or frog. He wants all of us to understand how all the sonic pieces fit together to create an entire soundscape, which is more than just an array of random noises.

A keen listener — whether at Mono Lake, in the Amazon, or in his own backyard — Krause has recorded birds and beasts howling, hooting, humming, bleating, cackling, and more.

His passion for sounds is infectious and he has turned inventors like Dan Dugan into naturalists. “I was a techie,” Dugan told me. “I’ve become a birder.”

For years, I’ve played over and over again the cd Krause recorded in Borneo that includes the pitter-patter of rain that seems to be falling on my roof, especially when I listen in the dark. I also enjoy his cd of the more familiar but no less intriguing sounds of the early morning bird chorus — tweets, chirps, and warblings — at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park near his home in Sonoma County. On a recent visit I made to interview Krause and view his recording studio, we lounged on the deck. I couldn’t see a single bird, but he was able to identify all the birds by their songs and calls: “That’s a hungry crow. That’s a robin looking for a mate and that’s a pileated woodpecker.”

Born in Detroit in 1938, Krause fell in love with the sounds of frogs, crickets, and birds when he was a boy. A folksinger and a skilled guitar player, he joined the Weavers and toured with the group after Pete Seeger departed. Krause went on to study electronic music at Mills College in Oakland. In the 1960s, he

Robert Stronck, stronckphoto.com

teamed up with Paul Beaver to create electronic music for well-known rock musicians such as the Byrds and George Harrison and to make soundscapes for movies such as Rosemary’s Baby and Apocalypse Now. These days, Krause still enjoys the Beatles and the symphonies of American composer Charles Ives, though the melodies he longs to hear most come from nature itself. If everyone turned off cell phones and went into the woods to listen acutely he’d be in heaven.

On his deck, with birds chirping and tweeting in the background, he tells me that the trouble began in the Middle Ages when “they built churches to keep out the sounds of nature, and later with the Renaissance that elevated the visual and downgraded the auditory.”

Krause has a message for almost everyone he meets: Buy a recording device and tape the sounds of the earth and its creatures, especially at sunrise when birds perform the dawn Bernie Krause, one of the nation’s foremost acoustic ecologists, pioneered the field in the 1970s and in 2012 published The Great Animal Orchestra, summing up a lifetime of soundscape exploration.

Tim Chapman

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© Alice Abela

These days, when he looks back at his career, he’s especially proud of the digital recordings he began to make decades ago that provide clear evidence of the environmental devastation caused by the industrial harvesting of timber. In 1988, a logging (left) Sunlight through the company gave him permission to record the sounds at Lincoln redwoods at Muir Woods.

Meadow in Yuba Pass both before and after tracts of forest were (below, from left) Great cleared. Krause’s first recordings captured a rich biophony: woodhorned owl, white-crowned peckers, quail, sparrows, and insects, along with the gurgling of sparrow, and camel cricket. a nearby stream. A year later, at the completion of the logging Bioacoustician Michael operation, he returned to Lincoln Meadow and set up his Stocker believes crickets equipment again. Those recordings, made with fully functioning, may be declining due to climate change. top-of-the line digital equipment, captured only the sounds of a lone woodpecker and the stream.

Over the next 20 years. Krause returned to Lincoln Meadow to record a dozen times. Using standards set by researchers at Michigan State University, he analyzed and interpreted the data he gathered and found that the total numbers of vocal organisms at the site dropped by about 80 percent. The total number of species declined by 40 percent. Logging at Lincoln Meadow had led to a soundscape that was far less diverse and far too quiet.

Krause has inspired a generation of ecologists and naturalists, though he hasn’t been the only one to play a significant role. Others include Dick Hingson, Paul Matzner, and Gordon Hempton. The Sierra Club has also called for quiet on a national level. All around the country, activists have worked for decades to protect the sounds of nature. In 1972, in response to lobbying © Dan Suzio, dansuzio.com by environmentalists, Congress passed the Noise chorus, or after sunset when crickets in a healthy environment Control Act, which required the federal government to regulate can create a symphony of sound. “A camera is a device that sounds — including those from noxious snowmobiles and airplane overflights — in national parks. That bill lost its funding in 1981, teaches you to see,” he explains. “A recorder is a device that but in response to scientific evidence and citizens’ groups, the teaches you to hear.”

National Park Service formulated its own rules and, in 2002, He and Beaver made their first recordings of nature at Muir created the Natural Sounds Program. World Listening Day, Woods. For their 1970 album In a Wild Sanctuary, they synthesized which the nps endorsed, took place for the first time in 2010. the sounds of the woods with the rhythms of jazz orchestras Like trees, streams, and mountains, soundscapes were now and the melodies of electronic music to produce a cultural offically recognized as entities to be protected, nurtured, and hybrid that wasn’t purely natural or entirely man-made either. revered.

Increasingly, Krause became aware of the gaps and the silences in the soundscapes when he listened to them with earphones.

The NPS selected Muir Woods as one of the pilot sites “Hearing with earphones is similar to seeing the world for the for its soundscape studies. Paul Matzner at the Oakland Museum first time through really awesome binoculars,” he tells me.

Library of Natural Sounds recommended Dan Dugan and “Earphones both amplify and level out the sources of sounds.” april–june 2013

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Sharon Perry for the job. Once a month for a whole year, they traveled from San Francisco to the park at the end of the day with equipment in tow. They spent the night in the library at the education center at Muir and rose before sunrise to record the dawn chorus. They also recorded in the dark and captured the hoots, and more, of four different kinds of owls: barred, saw-whet, great horned, and northern spotted (which are endangered). Dugan and Perry also learned there were more birds — including band-tailed pigeons and winter wrens — to be heard in the nearby mixed oak, madrone, and Douglas fir forest than in the stands of old-growth redwoods, which tend to muffle sounds and don’t offer as diverse a food supply.

Furthermore, Dugan and Perry enlisted volunteers to wander about the park during the day and keep lists of human-made noises: blaring radios, the clicking of cameras, and the rings of cell phones. The data and analysis led the Park Service to adopt significant noise-reduction measures, such as moving the parking lot away from the forest itself, eliminating the clanging of cash drawers, and effacing the noise of ice machines. Thanks to these changes, visitors can now hear, without interference, the silence of Muir Woods — one of its primary attractions. Signs at the entrance and at Cathedral Grove, the park’s “spiritual heart”— in Dugan’s words — call for quiet: no talking, no snapping of photos, and no ringing cell phones.

Last December during the solstice, Dugan set up a table where visitors could wear headphones and listen to Muir Wood’s Dan Dugan sets up his gear to record at dusk in Muir Woods. Dawn and dusk are often the most interesting times to capture, or just listen to, nature sounds.

sounds are songs: During courtship, an Anna’s hummingbird makes a distinctive chirp that’s created by air moving across its tail feathers as it dives at high speeds. (below) California quail often hide in dense undergrowth, so their calls are the best way to detect them. (opposite) Plugged-in hiker at Round Valley Regional Preserve near Brentwood.

soundscapes. They could also see on display a recording vest with microphones on the shoulders and a recorder in the pocket; it made acoustic technology seem fun. “It was raining hard,” Dugan tells me. “But Muir has fierce fans and the rain didn’t stop anyone from showing up and putting on the headphones. My wife Sharon calls it ‘listening with bionic ears.’ ” Dugan pauses and tells me about a sign he recently saw in Hawaii that he’d like to see in Muir. It read: “Quiet, Trees at Work.”

Probably no one knows the soundscapes of Muir Woods more intimately than Mia Monroe, the renowned park ranger and site supervisor who has worked there for 35 years. Monroe led the charge to help create an environment in which the endangered spotted owls can sleep and mate without interference from loud noises, and in which visitors from all over the world can actually hear the redwood forest. A graduate of the forestry program at UC Berkeley and a naturalist who has learned from Krause, Dugan, and Perry, Monroe describes Muir Woods as “a habitat where humans hear the creaking of trees, the whispering of the wind, the babbling of Redwood Creek, and the very heartbeat of Earth itself.”

“Muir Woods provides a haven from the racket of civilization,” Monroe tells me. “The fact that it’s so close to a boisterous urban environment makes it all the more special. After 35 years, it still moves me in wonderful ways.”

Michael Stocker has been listening to the wonders of nature nearly all his life. A bioacoustician and a jazz musician Sally Rae Kimmel

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© Dan Suzio, dansuzio.com

(right) Not all bird

Chris James

who worked on the movie Koyaanisqatsi (the 1982 visual tone poem scored by Philip Glass), he’s spent much of his career studying ocean sounds, though he also monitors ecological niches on land, including his own niche in Marin County’s San Geronimo Valley, not far from the protected soundscape at Muir Woods.

The founder, in 2007, of Ocean Conservation Research, Stocker has long insisted that if we want to save the earth we must also save the seas. When the U.S. Navy announced plans to conduct tests of low-frequency sonar in the name of national security, he complained as politely though as passionately as he could that the tests would disrupt the sonic environment in which whales and other marine mammals communicate across vast distances. “Ensonifying the seas,” he tells me, “was bound to disrupt the underwater life of blue and gray whales. It wasn’t fair to them and I don’t think it did much to improve the security of the nation, either.”

Now, close to home, he worries about the life and death of crickets, a creature that has a long history of coevolution with human beings. A hearth with a chirping cricket is said to be a sign of a healthy home — ask the Japanese, read Emily Dickinson and Charles Dickens, or talk to Michael Stocker. According to scientists, the number of chirps per second can help provide an accurate reading of air temperature. Once upon a time, Stocker’s own backyard throbbed with crickets. Now it’s silent. “On summer nights over the last five years,” he explains, “I’ve noticed

there’s not a single cricket chirping in the whole of the San Geronimo Valley. It’s not just one species, but all the many different kinds of crickets. I know. I’ve traveled the length and breadth of the valley on bicycle and listened carefully. A world without crickets gives me the creeps.”

He believes that the absence of chirping crickets — and other “holes in the acoustic niche”— are the result of colder winters and hotter summers. Unable to adapt to these climatic changes, the San Geronimo Valley crickets may have become largely extinct.

After meeting with Stocker, I did additional research and learned that citizens in dozens of locations around the country have made the same or very similar observations, reporting “silent summers” when no crickets chirped.

In his forthcoming book, Hear Where We Are, which is part sociology and part natural science, Stocker explores the ways animals communicate with one another and with members of other species. Hear Where We Are offers compelling facts and figures. It also appeals to basic human emotions. In one of the book’s most evocative sections, Stocker writes about a woman in Borneo who says, “We yearn for the sounds of the forest.

We have always heard these sounds. And now it’s harder for us because we hear the sounds of the bulldozers.”

Like her, Stocker yearns for the sounds of his own ecosphere beyond the roar of cars and the blasts of machines. “Today, the challenge for acoustic environmentalists is to remain optimistic in the midst of unprecedented noise and clutter and in the wake of devastating weather systems that are almost certainly the result of humans messing with the earth,” he tells me.

Along with Bernie Krause, Dan Dugan, Sharon Perry, and Mia Monroe, Stocker persuaded me in his own subtle way to listen to nature more carefully than I’ve ever listened before.

Meeting members of the dedicated tribe of acoustic ecologists has prompted me to slow down and listen to all the many diverse voices of the natural world around me. Now, in my own backyard, I tune into the songs of robins, the rhythmic beating of the wings of hawks, and the croaking — rok-rok — of herons. I hear the meandering creek, the wind in the oak trees, and the scampering of ground squirrels. Thanks to groups like the Nature Sounds Society and Dugan’s and Perry’s research at Muir Woods, the slogan “Quiet, Trees at Work” will perhaps become an environmental rallying cry around the world. I’d like to see — and hear — that day.

Jonah Raskin is the author of Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating, and Drinking Wine in California and a professor emeritus at Sonoma State University, where he taught law and writing for 30 years. nature as john muir might have heard it

Sunday, April 21, 6–8 p.m.

Visit Muir Woods to tune in to the sounds of an ancient redwood forest and learn about the National Park Service’s efforts to protect natural soundscapes. Attendance limited.

Learn more and RSVP at baynature.org/inthefield or (510)528-8550 x205.

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habitats of

the East Bay Regiona l Parks This story is part of a series exploring significant natural habitats and resources of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), many of which are encountered in other parts of the Bay Area as well. The series is sponsored by EBRPD, which manages 65 parks, reserves, and trails covering more than 100,000 acres in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (ebparks.org).

by Victoria Schlesinger

S

The Art and Science of Tracking

igns of

The waning gibbous moon looked like a bright thumbprint stamped on the morning sky as I walked along a frosty stretch of trail in Morgan Territory Regional Preserve, in the hills just north of Livermore. Veteran East Bay Regional Park District Naturalist Cat Taylor had agreed to help me learn to identify tracks and signs left by wildlife. We were going to look for the prints, scat, and other markings of creatures who generally keep out of sight—gray fox, bobcats, and wood rats, to name a few.

Life

Chris Cochems, FoundBeauty.com

I’ve always been enchanted by the idea of tracking, but daunted by how much I would need to know to do it myself.

According to Taylor, who has been studying animal prints and signs for as long as she can remember and teaching them to the public for more than 22 years, tracking is like learning to read nature’s newspaper. And once you can pick out a few words, a whole narrative begins to unfold.

That morning, surrounded by mature coast live oaks and a velveteen fuzz of green shoots spurred by recent heavy rains, Taylor moved carefully, straddling the thin, muddy trail to preserve a string of deer tracks. Each print looked like an inverted heart cracked open down the middle, and they extended in a staggered line for 15 feet. She asked me whether we were looking at the markings of a doe or a buck. I raised a single brow in her direction — I’d been rather pleased that I knew it was a deer.

“Think of how females are built versus males,” (above) A black-tailed deer buck at Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont. (left) Bobcats are fairly common in the Bay Area, but you don’t often get this good a view of them. (right) Deer and raccoon tracks are two of the most commonly seen in our local parks.

she said. “Males have broad shoulders and narrow hips. Females have narrower shoulders and wider hips.” She bent over to demonstrate how a female deer with narrow shoulders walking on four feet would put down her front foot and then with her wider hips naturally place her back foot further to the side when walking. Taylor straightened herself and continued, “Now, if you were a buck, with the big shoulders and narrow hips, you put your front foot down and your back foot would go inside.”

Since the back feet of ungulates tend to be smaller than the front, it wasn’t hard to determine which foot made which print.

When I reexamined the trail, it now seemed obvious that we were looking at the tracks of a buck.

“The other really cool thing to look for is size and whether one track is directly on top of the other,” Taylor said. If the tracks are small and right on top of each other, then a young deer may not have matured enough to display male or female characteristics. Does about to give birth are also easy to pick out, she continued. “Her front feet will point forward and her back feet will start to angle outwards because she’s waddling from carrying one or two fawns.” I asked whether this was true for all

© Najib Joe Hakim

John W. Wall

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back feet — radiating from the scat. “I’m 90 percent sure this is bobcat,” she said with a smile. “This is our find of the morning.”

I asked Taylor to explain the difference between identifying tracks and signs, as we had been doing that morning, and actually trailing an animal to find it.

“When I’m tracking, I’m on my hands and knees a lot and taking measurements of the track dimension, stride length. If there’s a stretch of tracks, I might mark the front and back feet with different colors of checkers so that I can glance along the trail and identify whether the animal is walking, trotting, stalking, or bounding. It’s very intense and focused right here,” she said, pointing to the ground. By comparison, when she’s trailing, her focus is outward. “Your awareness is about ten feet ahead of you. You find a good fresh trail and then you (above) Native gray foxes like this one are still the most common foxes in the Bay Area, though nonnative red foxes can also be found here.

Courtesy EBRPD

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Randall Finley, wildlifist.com

(right) East Bay Regional Park District Naturalist Anthony Fisher leads a nature walk at Sunol Regional Park. Fisher often teaches tracking workshops. (bottom) A striped skunk in pickleweed along the bay shore near Hayward.

animals and Taylor said she’d only seen it in hoofed animals. “It seems like hocus-pocus and magic,” she said, as I expressed my delight with these new insights, “but really it’s not when you stop to think that they’re not too different from us. It’s a lot of fun to read the story.”

Our human story has hinged — more than we might think — on our ability to decipher these tracks and signs of the species around us: When your survival depends on finding and capturing food, reading animal tracks is much more than a hobby. While tracking is still an important part of survival for some, it has also become an indispensible tool for scientists and is increasingly a way for the rest of us to strengthen our connection to the natural world. For decades, East Bay Regional Park District naturalists have taught tracking classes to people of all ages. Tracking and the ability to trail and find animals have also been fundamental to wildlife surveys in the regional parks.

Taylor’s tracking experience spans both education and science. Today, she runs school programs for the parks that incorporate aspects of what naturalists call “tracks and signs,” but earlier in her career, at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, she helped out with research work by trailing black bears and analyzing bobcat scat.

That particular expertise came in handy when we passed a small pile of grayish droppings just off the trail. Taylor slipped on latex gloves and picked up a two-inch-long piece of what to me resembled molded felt. She broke it open and pointed out squirrel hairs and a tiny piece of bone. From this, she judged that the animal had feasted on a ground squirrel and not much else — a telltale sign of a cat. She then pointed to a series of scrapes — the superficial troughs left by an animal kicking its

try to figure out which way it’s heading, and you’re looking for other cues.” Screeching and stamping squirrels are a good indicator that a threat is moving into their territory; a flock of birds that suddenly takes flight could mean the same thing.

“You’re very aware of everything that’s going on while making sure you’re still on the trail of that animal.”

Those sorts of traditional tracking and trailing skills have long played, and will continue to play, a role in park district wildlife research, says Steven Bobzien, an Hank Christensen, hankchristensen.com

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Wes Gibbs

(top right) These tracks on the

drag themselves across the sand. (middle right) Even reading dog tracks is good tracking practice: The claw marks here suggest the animal was running. (middle left and bottom) Raccoon

Bruce Finocchio, dreamcatcherimages.net

tracks in sand and mud.

© Najib Joe Hakim

Most of Taylor’s job, and that of her two dozen fellow district naturalists, involves getting kids excited about nature in the parks.

For some kids, visits through school programs are the only times they experience unmanicured nature.

Anthony Fisher, a naturalist at Tilden Park, says tracks are an “opportunity for the kids to focus and start to see what’s around them.” He will often ask the kids to check out a track during their walk together and will begin with a simple question like how many toes do you see? “They’ll yell out ‘eight!’ ‘15!’ or something random,” Fisher says, “and that’s when I can get them to stop and count and really look.” Scat is also, of course, a good attention grabber for kids.

Fisher tries to supply kids and adults alike with different approaches for interacting with nature and wildlife. “One way people have traditionally engaged with nature is through collections of all sorts of specimens, including bird eggs, insects, and even scat. But that’s not necessarily a good thing, and you’re not allowed to take anything out of the park.” To give people alternative items to collect, Fisher offers classes on creating plaster impressions of tracks and

beach speak volumes about how enormous elephant seals

Jolynn Lacasse, Cabin Fever Photography

ecologist with the district. He recalls efforts to determine the density of San Joaquin kit foxes in the parks in the 1990s by setting out soot track plates. The technique is a little like fingerprinting an animal. The critter walks over an aluminum plate covered in soot and then onto a strip of sticky contact paper, leaving its blacked prints for identification. But even that technology appears antiquated now in the face of new wildlife documentation techniques, such as remote cameras, thermal imaging technology, and night vision scopes.

Nonetheless, good old-fashioned tracking will play a meaningful role in the new East Bay Puma Project. Ecologists led by the Felidae Conservation Fund hope to radio-collar pumas in the region this year. To get collars on the cats, researchers will need to track, capture, and tranquilize them. Once the collared cats are released, the researchers hope to monitor the density of pumas in the region, document their response to encroaching urbanization, and identify important corridors the animals use to move between habitats.

“Tracks and signs are still fundamental to knowing what’s on the landscape,” Bobzien says. “The first thing we’re doing with the puma project is looking for puma tracks or signs.” On a dayto-day basis he relies on the identification of prints, scat, scrapes, and hair left by the cats to check the veracity of sightings reported by the public.

Some of those reports come from park district trail patrol volunteers who regularly hike, bike, and horseback-ride the 1,150 miles of trails within the district’s 65 parks. Taylor has trained some of the volunteers in basic tracking and will focus on puma ecology, track, and signs with them this year. Using their new skills, the volunteers will help document the presence of pumas in the parks even without seeing live cats.

using soot boxes, like the researchers do. “You can scan the soot track onto your computer and examine it at a very detailed level,” Fisher explains. He also experiments with remote video cameras and has gathered footage of many kinds of wildlife in the park, from mischievous raccoons and industrious dusky-footed wood rats to curious gray foxes and hungry coyotes.

Another way Fisher helps people learn to track is by having them examine the marks they themselves leave behind. I was walking with Fisher along a soggy fire road one morning in Tilden Park when he demonstrated the difference between his shoe-print while walking, running, or walking while beginning to turn. “A track can also tell you a lot about what an animal is doing.” The running print left a deep, elongated impression that lacked the detail of the walking track, while the turning print showed dirt pushing up in the direction opposite to the pivot.

“You can practice this in a wet sandbox or at the beach,” he says.

Other good learning terrain includes areas with fine dust and open spaces where a set of tracks can continue for a long way.

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Mammal Tracks by john muir laws

mountain lion, 3.5 inches wide

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coyote, 2.25 inches wide

bobcat, 2 inches wide

deer, 2.5 inches wide

otter, 4 inches wide

raccoon, 2.5 inches wide

skunk, 1.25 inches wide

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of an animal — how the placement of the four feet changes depending on how fast the animal is moving. As we walked, I jokingly pointed to a circular, dime-size hole in the mud: “This could be the rare track of an elusive human walking with a trekking pole.”

Fisher grinned and asked, “Which way was the person going?”

We knelt down to examine the hole, and the more I looked the less circular and more ellipse-shaped it appeared, with soil pushed down on one side and kicked up slightly on the other. I felt like I was back in high school physics trying to imagine the force exerted by a body in motion and the physical traces it would leave. We deduced we were hot on the heels of the hiker.

“It’s a lot like being a detective,” Fisher says, but getting good at the investigative work requires what many trackers call dirt time. “You just have to spend time doing it. A teacher can tell you things, but ultimately you have to teach yourself — and have the desire to learn.”

Many people who have become adept trackers, including Taylor and Fisher, will quickly point to two titans in the field as sources of inspiration and information. A Ph.D. candidate in ecology at the University of California–Davis, Mark Elbroch has churned out a stack of definitive scientific tomes and field guides on tracking and animal skulls. Tracker and spiritualist Tom Brown has been writing books on the subject for more than 30 years and runs a New Jersey wilderness survival school that has introduced tens of thousands of people to tracking.

Among them was Ch’ien Lee, who grew up collecting bugs in Tilden Park under the guidance of former district naturalist Alan Kaplan. Lee’s early dreams of becoming an entomologist were forever changed in the late 1980s after he read Tom Brown’s now seminal book The Tracker. “What touched me the most was the intimacy with nature, and how you can really glean so much information,” Lee says. “Most of us pass by so much on a hike, but if you get down in the dirt, there’s so much there. You can spend hours on one patch of ground and lose yourself.

I really identified with that.”

At the suggestion of his neighbor, now-retired Tilden naturalist Tim Gordon, Lee became an interpretive student aide at Tilden Park after he graduated from high school. When he advanced to naturalist’s aide, he started a group called the Tilden Trackers, leading monthly hikes and teaching people how to make casts of tracks and use soot boxes. Since then, his method of choice for studying nature has shifted from tracking to photography. Today he lives april–june 2013

in Borneo and has traveled all over the world working as a photographer and guide. “But for me it’s never just been about the photographs,” Lee says, “It’s more about being outside examining and enjoying nature.”

That’s what it’s about for me too, I realized. I didn’t need to know everything about tracking to get started — I just needed to start. So I decided to build a soot box and set it out in my Berkeley hills backyard. Lacking the kerosene lamp or acetylene torch that most trackers use to soot the plates in their track boxes, I got out some partially burned Christmas candles and began blackening a rectangular sheet of aluminum. I laid a strip of contact paper in the middle of the plate, covered it with a small aluminum hood to protect the delicate soot from the elements, and set it in a quiet part of the backyard.

About 48 hours later I went to investigate the box, only to find that the hood had blown off and the contact paper was covered in a fine spray of soot.

Flustered, I reassembled the cover and figured I just needed more time. I began checking quickly before heading to work every morning, but there were no new signs of activity, so I decided I should resoot.

However, as I removed the contact paper, I noticed what looked like a smudge. And there was another.

And clearly that smudge consisted of four dots hovering above a fifth. Could it be . . . ?

Hurrying inside, I placed the contact paper under a bright light and pulled out my ruler and tracking guide. I turned to the section on squirrels, since I had recently seen some in the yard. But the four smudges formed a spade shape, not at all like a squirrel, whose middle toes are roughly the same length. I flipped through track pictures and spotted the gray fox — the toes fell in an arch and the size seemed about right, although small. Several months ago, I had seen a little pile of scat sitting on our rock wall. Based on tips from Taylor, it seemed plausible that it might have been fox poop. Could these be the footprints of a gray fox? Or was it our new puppy?

Clearly, I would need more information to make the distinction, so I dug out the Christmas candles and started sooting my aluminum plate again, strategizing where to place my box next.

Victoria Schlesinger is an environment and science journalist whose work has been published by numerous outlets, including Harper’s Magazine, Audubon, and the New York Times. She’s also the author of Animals and Plants of the Ancient Maya, published by University of Texas Press.

Environmental Education Award: Mia Monroe Interview by Jacoba Charles Mia Monroe’s official title is Site Supervisor of Muir Woods/Interpretive Supervisor of Marin Lands, Golden Gate National Recreation Area. But what she really does is serve as a passionate ambassador for nature, something she was doing even before she started working as a national park ranger in 1978. Her office at Muir Woods is decorated with butterfly mobiles, redwood branches, and pictures of flowers and insects. It’s a scene of fertile chaos, with old growth redwoods visible through the window. This is Mia’s platform for introducing countless Bay Area residents and visitors to the wonders of a rich and unique natural ecosystem just minutes from downtown San Francisco.

BN: Where did you grow up and how did you interact with nature as a child?

MM: I grew up in San Carlos, just south of San Francisco, and came from a family that respected and loved and sought out natural connections. We often went to the beach for tidepooling. And we went for picnics and camping in the redwoods. Even when we were at home, my parents sometimes got me up in the middle of the night to see shooting stars or migrating geese.

When there was a field of wildflowers by the road, my parents would pull over and have us lie in the flowers and breathe in the perfume and hear the buzzing of the bees.

At home, my mother had a garden and my grandmother would take us on little tours of it to appreciate everything from the slugs to the squirrels.

BN: What led you to become a park ranger?

MM: As a young person I had many role models. My parents were involved in all the issues of the time, from civil rights to prisoners’ rights. I was also in the Girl Scouts and was part of an active troop that went on hikes and had day camps in the redwood forest.

But my family also believed that doing community service was right up there with learning how to build a campfire.

Of course, the timing was perfect.

The Bay Area was very exciting in the ’60s for a child who was interested in nature. I organized the first Earth Day at my high school, and my mom let me set up the first recycling center in San Carlos in our basement.

In college I needed to do an internship so I went to the Sierra Club and

Bay Nature’s annual Local Hero Awards recognize individuals in our community whose efforts foster understanding and preservation of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area.

The 2013 awards were presented at Bay Nature’s Annual Awards Dinner in Oakland on Sunday, March 24.

major public park in an urban area, lands that belonged to everybody, that anyone could have access to. Not only to recreate — take a hike, ride your bike — but also to re-create, to see a better future, be healthier, take a break from the cares of urban life.

BN: How did you start working with the GGNRA? MM: I had been working for the San Francisco School District helping kids learn science through outdoor experiences, including at these new national park sites. When Proposition 13 put an end to that program, someone at the park service said, “Where’s that girl who brought the kids? Let’s call her.” So that’s why the [park service] thought I’d make a good ranger and sought me out. Part of it was my eco-literacy but part of it was that passion I had for sharing parks with other people, which was what they were trying to do. My first supervisor would have me wear my uniform on the city buses so kids would realize that if I could go to their neighborhood, they could come to mine and I’d be there to greet them.

My first assignment was as a ranger at Fort Point at the Golden Gate, where I coordinated the environmental education programs for young people. But my supervisor knew of my forestry background and interest in nature, and there was a ranger at Muir Woods who loved military history, so they suggested that we trade for a while. And the fit was so good for both of us that we made the trade permanent and I was formally stationed at Muir Woods in 1982.

I was very idealistic when I first came here and I was sort of shocked by all the paths and the concession. But then I (continued on page 36) realized that Muir Jacoba Charles

First Person

said, “Put me to work!” And they sent me to Amy Meyer, a citizen turned visionary activist who was working out of her dining room on the campaign to protect the land around the Golden Gate by making it a national park. And she did indeed “put me to work”! That was in the early 1970s. Shortly thereafter, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area was created, and it was great to have this

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First Person Conservation Action Award: Seth Adams Interview by Daniel McGlynn Seth Adams is a big-picture guy, but he also revels in the details: the details of wildflowers, the details of maps, the details of building a trail or building a coalition. Perhaps that’s why he’s so effective as land programs director at Save Mount Diablo (SMD). In his 25 years on the job, Seth has helped SMD grow into a major force for conservation in the East Bay: Since 1988, the organization has aided in the preservation of more than 100,000 acres of open space in eastern Alameda and Contra Costa counties, through advocacy, direct purchase, stewardship, and education. An avid hiker, cyclist, natural historian, and weight lifter, Seth is quick to credit his colleagues at SMD, and particularly Executive Director Ron Brown, for the organization’s success.

BN: Where did you grow up, and how did you relate to nature as a kid?

SA: I’m an army brat, so I moved around a lot — Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Italy, Germany. But my dad did four tours in Vietnam so we got to stay in North Carolina for a while. North Carolina is incredibly rich — shoreline, mountains, and lots of habitats in between — and I was in the thick of it, collecting everything that moved and even things that didn’t. I guess I’m making up for that karmically with the rest of my life!

In my family it was basically “Get out of here, go play,” and we had woods with all kinds of bogs and creeks outside our back door, and a couple of miles up the road from us were ponds with carnivorous plants and more bogs. I was a collector of animals practically from birth and when I was eight my family gave me the garage to get my animals out of the house — I had aquariums and terrariums and Styrofoam coolers with glass plates on top. We went to the shoreline every summer for a few weeks where I decimated tidepools by collecting every living creature and bringing them back to my house.

And I was stuck on endangered species and helping nature from an early age. I was all about drawing maps of islands I popu-

lated with endangered animals and plants, which is kind of ironic because if you look at what I do now, it is all about putting together puzzle pieces of individual parcels to protect large habitats — not that much different from what I did as a six-year-old, just a little more effective. I knew at a very early age that I was going to come to Berkeley and work with David Brower, and I did both those things!

Courtesy Save Mount Diablo

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BN: How did you get to work with David Brower?

SA: I was really drawn to his work and to California, even though I had never been here. And so I came out to Berkeley in December 1981, sort of against the wishes of my parents, with $400 in my pocket. The first week I was here, I started working on the campaign against the Peripheral Canal in the Delta. I just walked into the Friends of the Earth office and said I wanted to volunteer. It was nothing formal. But I’ve just always had tremendous confidence that I could do whatever I wanted to and I would just bull my way into things.

BN: How did you become involved with Save Mount Diablo?

SA: One of my best friends was photographer Bob Walker and he was on the board of Save Mount Diablo, and in 1988 they were getting ready to hire their first staff person. I applied and luckily I was hired. The board president at the time was Bob Doyle, who’s now General Manager of the East Bay Regional Park District, so we still get to work together. It was the perfect fit because it was kind of virgin territory and I could start all kinds of new efforts.

My Berkeley friends told me flat out that Contra Costa was a lost cause. But I actually thought there was far more potential out here than on the Bay side, where people were fighting over tiny things, while out here it was thousands of acres and reservoirs and landfills and things like that. Save Mount Diablo was a good fit for me because it was an organization that was interested in acquiring and saving land but they had started as an advocacy organization. And right away in my first year I was in the middle of a whole bunch of big development fights. Save Mount Diablo has been able to preserve more land through advocacy and (continued on page 36)

Youth Engagement Award: Cindy Moreno Interview by David Loeb It’s not easy to catch up with Cindy Moreno. The daughter of immigrant farmworkers from the Central Valley and a recent graduate in environmental studies from San Jose State, Cindy is doing more than her share for the environment. She works three days a week as an outreach specialist at WattzOn, a Silicon Valley start-up that develops online tools to help homeowners reduce their energy consumption. And two days a week she’s a garden-based educator at Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale. And on weekends, she leads tours for the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy in San Jose. We caught up with her during a break at WattzOn. BN: Where did you grow up?

CM: I grew up in Arvin, a small agricultural community about 15 miles from Bakersfield. It’s about 19,000 people, predominantly Latino. Almost all the people there speak Spanish, so it was an easy transition for my parents migrating over from Mexico when they were pretty young. I was born in the U.S., and so were my siblings.

BN: Did your parents work in the fields?

CM: They did. First they went through a variety of different crops. That’s kind of the way it works in the Central Valley; you go where the crops take you. But my dad apparently had a knack for grapes, and it was one of the more consistent jobs, so he stuck with that and eventually worked his way up to management. I’m really proud of him.

BN: And did you work in the fields too?

CM: When I was in high school, my parents encouraged me to go out and experience it. It was really hot — long hours, tough work; you had to get up really early and at the end of the day you just wanted to take a shower and go to sleep. I think they wanted us to experience it so we wouldn’t end up

where they were, that we’d want to pursue higher education.

BN: What motivated you to leave home and go to San Jose State?

CM: In Arvin, a lot of people are very like-minded, and they just kind of get sucked into the community and stay there; they graduate from high school and then they start a family. I wanted to get out of that and see other opportuni-

What I really loved about environmental studies is that they do a lot of fieldwork. We did a lot of learning in the classroom, too, but it makes sense to go out into the field to see it for yourself, so for instance, in my restoration class, we visited a lot of restoration sites around the area. One of my favorites was Elkhorn Slough near Monterey.

BN: Tell us about your internship at the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

CM: During my senior year I was looking for part-time work and found the listing for a bilingual environmental education and outreach intern, so it sounded like something I could do. I was in charge of the visitor center, greeting guests, answering phones and visitors’ questions. For the other component, Latino outreach, I was trying to target the local community of Alviso by going to local libraries and doing bilingual workshops. Two programs that were really popular were about local owls. I would lecture about owls and then we would dissect these owl pellets I brought and get the kids to figure out what these owls had eaten; they really loved doing that.

I also created a program about wildlife careers, geared more for high school or college students. I got some people from Fish and Wildlife to talk about their experiences working there, the kind of work they did, and the kind of education they had. It was a really good program, great turnout. Those programs were bilingual, but I would gauge the crowd and see — sometimes do it mostly in Spanish, other times mostly in English with some Spanish mixed in.

BN: What’s your sense of how the Latino community in Alviso views the refuge? (continued on page 37) Ralph W. Schardt, Photography

First Person

ties. I chose San Jose State because I was going to do nursing and San Jose has a good nursing program. But I took an environmental studies class that was part of the general education requirement, and it really opened my eyes and I just got hooked.

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Woods has a special role because it’s not very far from San Francisco or Oakland, so it‘s very easy to get to and yet it feels like a world apart. You were stepping into a very beautiful place that smelled wonderful and took your breath away and was safe.

And thanks to the way the park was laid out, anybody could visit: Families felt comfortable bringing their elderly grandparents or children in strollers. But all was not right in paradise. There were nonnative plants, weeds. The salmon population was declining. So even though it looked really beautiful, everything was not whole — inadvertently, along the way, some of the pieces had been thrown out or overlooked. So that’s really been my work for these many years — to be part of the teams that re-weave the ecosystem here and to help actively engage citizens in that process. It’s been a dawning awareness that we have to take care of not just the individual redwoods but also the forest and the watershed.

BN: What do you love most about your job?

MM: I feel so fortunate to work in a place that’s so beautiful and so nurturing and makes my sprit soar. I’m a little unusual in that I’m a career ranger and I’m still working in the field. My office has green walls. I breathe in the fresh air, I see the cycles of nature, I greet the first spring flowers and the nesting birds.

I’ve been here when redwoods have fallen. To contemplate something that’s been standing for hundreds of years taking a new position in the forest — the smell and how soon afterwards the birds and butterflies find the new sunny spot, and seeing all the redwoods grow to that new light — there’s something about the change in a forest that’s truly awesome.

I’ve been here when the salmon are spawning; it’s thrilling to see them make their way up the stream, to witness that ancient ritual of the spawning cycle.

And then, I’ve taken a lot of young people through here. I can hardly wait to introduce them to their first banana slug or show them how to find a redwood seed or show them where to go to find a flower or a butterfly, to show kids how to find those clues so they feel comfortable being their own explorers in nature.

(Monroe, continued from page 33)

mitigation for development than through direct acquisition — tens of thousands of acres.

With our allies, especially the East Bay Regional Park District, we’ve more than doubled the amount of preserved land in Contra Costa and eastern Alameda in the last 25 years.

And now we’ve begun the next effort, which is restoration and stewardship.

In the past, we acquired properties and transferred them to public agencies. But as the state has become more dysfunctional, we’ve gone from owning one or two parcels to owning 18 or 19, so we’ve had to learn a lot more about managing properties. As David Brower used to say, the next century is going to be all about restoration, and well, we’re in the next century.

BN: What’s your approach to working with landowners who have land you want to protect?

SA: People say I’m kind of stern and intimidating. But I try to be honest and credible and as straightforward as possible. This 110,000 acres that we’ve helped piece together around Mount Diablo has involved thousands of negotiations and Save Mount Diablo is famous for its unusual relationships. Relationships matter. You don’t burn bridges, even if you disagree with someone, because you’re going to be dealing with them again. I have a friend who’s a rancher — and a great naturalist, someone I’ve known for 30 years — and he doesn’t expect we’ll always agree on things, but he knows he can trust me and eventually his land will get preserved.

But that’s going to be based on a 30-year relationship.

When I started working out here, Contra Costa and eastern Alameda were in last place in terms of protected open space acres per capita and acres overall in the Bay Area, except for San Francisco, and we moved up the charts some by more than doubling the amount of preserved land out here. What we say is that we’re reassembling the Diablo wilderness — expanding parks, filling in big gaps, creating wildlife corridors; we’re creating a national-park-size wilderness within an hour’s drive of seven million people.

(Adams, continued from page 34)

CM: I think they view it in a positive light. The people in Alviso call the refuge “the Bird House” because they recognize that it’s a wildlife spot and that a lot of different birds migrate through there.

And they do use the refuge. But it’s typically after hours. So at the end of the day, I would see them coming in on their bicycles or even walking, jogging, coming to enjoy the refuge, which made a lot of sense because they had to work during the day.

Part of my senior research project was on the hindrances to Alviso’s Latino families visiting the refuge. I conducted 100 surveys where I asked people what encouraged them to come to the refuge and what types of things might prevent them from visiting. Some of those barriers were lack of time and lack of transportation, but the language barrier was one of the biggest hindrances. A lot of the signs we have up to encourage people to learn more about the refuge are in English. You see a picture of a bird that has a little description, but if all of the

(Moreno, continued from page 35)

information is in English, it’s not going to apply to you.

I think the refuge realizes that having Spanish-speaking staff is important, but they’re already really short-staffed. One of their goals is to incorporate more Spanish into their literature and their programs.

BN: You now work part-time at Full Circle Farm, even though you wanted to get away from agriculture.

CM: I had volunteered at Veggielution, an urban farm in San Jose where they teach you garden skills. And through them I got referred to Full Circle, where I was hired as a garden-based educator working mostly with sixth graders from Peterson Middle School, right behind the farm. The land is owned by the Santa Clara Unified School District and they lease it to us in return for free garden education for all the students. So the kids from Peterson get to walk right over and learn about being a farmer, to experience the whole life cycle of a plant, planting it as a seed, seeing it grow, harvesting it, then learning how to cook

with these fresh ingredients, and then seeing it die, composting it and eventually seeing it become new life.

BN: So you work at Full Circle Farm and WattzOn, and you lead tours for the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy. What ties these all together?

CM: Some people might see these as really distinct, but they all tie together in that you’re learning to conserve the environment through different means. With energy, it’s important to teach people how to conserve energy at home, to encourage more energy-efficient habits.

With agriculture it’­s important to have local and sustainable food systems, because we have this huge disconnect with the community and where they get their food from — people don’t really know — and all the harmful chemicals that go into growing so much of our food. And then nature is obviously something that has taken a lot of punches, so it’s just teaching people that it’s important to preserve it for future generations, because if we degrade it now, there’s no way we’re going to get it back.

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Estuary Institute, and other institutions.

Among the exhibits are a long-range scope for viewing the Bay, a real-time ship tracking viewer, and acrylic cutouts of six months’ daily tidal profiles — particularly intriguing are the cutouts showing wild gyrations due to the 2011 Japanese tsunami.

The observatory will also showcase historic and contemporary maps to chart the waterfront’s past and present. A wall mural will feature the transformations along the Embarcadero since 1850, while another display allows people to layer transparencies over the building’s windows to see how the landscape has changed as the city has grown.

The observatory may also someday serve as a learning center during dramatic events that happen in the Bay, such as a shipwreck or an earthquake. “We can call our circle of scientists and do an event, talk with the public, and answer questions,” says content developer Sebastian Martin.

But just standing in the Bay Observatory and watching the undulating waves or a pelican drift by may remain the best attraction of them all. [Alison Hawkes] New Habitat Plan for Santa Clara

In January, the San Jose City Council approved the new Santa Clara Valley Habitat Conservation Plan with a 10-1 vote, a victory for a range of environ-

the swim

mental groups that had been campaigning for the plan’s passage. The plan, in the works for more than a decade, will facilitate the protection of more than 46,000 acres of open space and 18 endangered species. The lone “no” vote came from District 1 councilman Pete Constant.

Such habitat conservation plans are not always welcomed by local conservationists — the nation’s first such plan, on San Bruno Mountain, has been controversial for decades. The plans work by allowing a certain amount of habitat loss to development in exchange for funding for habitat protection and restoration.

In Santa Clara County, a coalition of eight environmental groups has backed the Santa Clara plan, including the California Native Plant Society, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society.

The plan includes special measures to protect serpentine grassland, a habitat with unusual soil chemistry that supports many native plants and is home to some imperiled species, including the bay checkerspot butterfly. One of the biggest threats to serpentine grasslands is nitrogen deposition, a complex process in which certain nitrogen compounds (from car exhaust and other sources) function as fertilizer and enable the rampant spread of exotic weeds.

According to findings in the habitat KQED Quest, Creative Commons

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windows, no use of the park outside,” she says during a tour of the new space.

For its new digs, the Exploratorium developed a range of Bay-focused exhibits with help from experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, UC Berkeley, the San Francisco

(continued from page 6)

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plan, nitrogen deposition is the largest indirect impact of urban development on the serpentine grassland ecosystem.

“What’s unique [about this plan] is it’s the first habitat plan that has really addressed nitrogen atmospheric deposition,” says ecologist Stuart Weiss, a regional expert on serpentine soils and nitrogen. “It’s a big issue for biodiversity; it’s more acute than climate changes, and we’re seeing effects in all different ecosystems.”

The Santa Clara County Board of

Supervisors, Santa Clara Valley Water District, City of Gilroy, City of Morgan Hill, and Valley Transportation Authority also approved the plan, and the City of San Jose was the last partner to vote.

“The biggest change will be that more people will likely find us, especially foreign visitors,” says Nicole Andler, Pinnacles’ chief of interpretation. “When planning their vacations, they tend to look at the highlights and now that we have ‘national park’ in the name, we will be a highlight.”

[Kristen Martz]

Emerging from the chaparral-covered Gabilan Range south of Gilroy is the nation’s newest national park.

Pinnacles, upgraded from the status of “national monument,” may be best known for the rock formations that give the park its name and a small but growing population of California condors, first reintroduced in 2003.

As of January, when President Barack Obama signed off on the change, the 27,000-acre expanse of inner Coast Range wildlands featuring dramatic outcrops of volcanic rock is officially part of the national park circuit.

What does being the 59th national park mean? Apparently, no additional protections or funding, but probably a lot more visitors.

Michael Geminder, Creative Commons

Pinnacles Now a Park

While there are no estimates on projected attedance growth (250,000 people visited in 2012), other national monuments that have become national parks, such as Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado, have seen a 10 to 20 percent uptick in visitors, according to Andler.

To minimize the tourist footprint,

park staff are directing visitors to places beyond the ever-popular caves and high peaks, to trails through the valley bottom and to a grassland savanna with impressive valley oaks.

Congressman Sam Farr (D-Salinas) led the effort in Congress to change the status to national park, partly to bolster the local economy, says Farr spokesperson Adam Russell. “For every dollar you invest in national parks, you get a $4 return to the local community,” he notes.

April is typically the park’s high season, when visitors are drawn by the plentiful wildflowers and milder temperatures. Let’s just hope that however many come to this newest national park, they will tread lightly.

[Alison Hawkes] Gates Open at Taylor Mountain

In February, the new Taylor Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve opened to the public, and this thousandacre parcel just outside Santa Rosa com(continued on page 4 3 ) pleted its multiyear

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Dolphin Charters (510) 527 9622 dolphincharters.com

Construction & Design Neil Collier

Berkeley, CA

510-527-9445

www.mrsdalloways.com

 College Ave, Berkeley

.. SUN 12-5PM / M–W 10AM-6PM / TH–SAT 10AM-8PM

Point Reyes Schoolhouse Lodging

PointReyesSchoolhouse.com (415)663-1166 | prschool@sonic.net

Hedgerow Farms

Offering California Native Grassland and Wetland Seed, Transplants, and Straw

Kings Court Center 792 Blossom Hill Rd. (corner of Los Gatos Blvd.)

Mon.-Sat. 10-6, Sun. 12-5

Your General Store for Nature Lovers

Los Gatos, CA 95032 408/358-9453 www.losgatosbirdwatcher.com

AVOCET RESEARCH ASSOCIATES wildlife biology

• habitat assesment • wetland monitoring • threatened & endangered species

P.O. Box 839 Point Reyes Station CA 95956

www.hedgerowfarms.com info@hedgerowfarms.com of�ice: 530-662-6847 b ay n at u r e

april–june 2013

(415) 663-8032

avocetra@gmail.com USWF PERMIT: TE786728-3 CDFG SSC #801092-04

www.parksconservancy.org

m a r k e t p l a c e

Mostly Natives Nursery

Discover your Regional Parks

27235 Highway One Tomales, Ca 94971 (707) 878-2009

A Free self-guided hiking program.

Growers of Coastal Natives

and Drought-Tolerant Plants

Sign-up online at www.ebparks.org

(continued from page 39) evolution from offlimits ranchland to accessible public park.

Rising 1,400 feet just east of Highway 101, Taylor Mountain is home to a mix of grasslands, oak woodlands, wet meadows and seeps, and creek corridors.

Thanks to that variety, plant and animal life is surprisingly diverse for a longgrazed parcel in plain view of so much suburban development.

“It’s now the largest regional park close to Santa Rosa,” says Mark Cleveland, senior park planner with Sonoma County Regional Parks. “There are a few big meadow areas that are spectacular for wildflowers and some native grass areas as well.”

For now, hiking opportunities on the 1,100-acre park are limited to just a few trails covering four miles, all starting from one trailhead off Kawana Springs Road.

Eventually, says Cleveland, the park will feature about 20 miles of trails and five access points, including a transit-

www.mostlynatives.com Open February thru November

accessible trailhead just off Petaluma Hill Road. That trailhead, paid for with state grant money from Proposition 84, will be the first new one built, slated for completion by summer 2014.

The park’s proximity to Santa Rosa inspired an unusual planning process.

Just across Petaluma Hill Road is a census tract that includes Roseland, a mostly Latino neighborhood where many residents speak Spanish, incomes are lower than elsewhere in the county, and, traditionally, involvement in open space planning has not been the rule.

That last rule changed with Taylor Mountain, which involved what was likely “the first fully bilingual planning process at the regional park level,” according to Jonathan Glass, field programs director for the Santa Rosa–based nonprofit LandPaths, which led the outreach effort.

Jonathan Bravo, coordinator of LandPaths’s Bayer Farm in Roseland, helped lead the Spanish-language outreach effort

at Taylor Mountain. “At some bilingual events, I had more than 50 percent of the people speaking Spanish,” he says.

“One time, when we needed people to go to Taylor, I went to esl [English as a second language] classes, and that time we had more than 120 people show up for a hike. On Fourth of July last year, we had more than 300 people up there.”

At the existing Kawana Terrace trailhead, parking will be free for regional park members and $7 for nonmembers. Trails are currently open only to foot traffic during the winter, and one or both routes may be temporarily closed because of wet conditions.

Note: As we were going to press, we were deeply saddened to learn of Jonathan Glass’s untimely death at age 36. For a decade, Glass has been a vibrant presence and effective force in the outdoors community of the North Bay and the region.

Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family, friends, and LandPaths colleagues.

[Dan Rademacher]

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FamiliesAfield

with URBIA Adventure League

concept and design by Barbara Corff & Damien Raffa

WHERE tHE GREEN DRAGON GROWS

This adventure explores Green Gulch Farm at Green Dragon Zen Temple near Muir Beach (less than 30 minutes from San Francisco). Plan for at least an hour to explore fruits and flowers growing in gardens, farms producing crops of greens, and wild nature thriving in neighboring national park land! Print the Activity Page at www.baynature.org/families-afield and head out.

Nature neighbors: At home in the dragon-shaped valley

This “Green Dragon� is a valley that is alive. Its head is in the mountain mists, and its green body twists down the valley, dipping its tail into the sea. Dragons are symbols of wisdom and transformation, and Green Gulch has learned how to be a good neighbor to nature by farming sustainably, restoring the creek, and planting native plants. That means creatures who visit from nearby park lands, or migrate along the coast, can find healthy habitat here. Gardeners, farmers, and visitors enjoy sharing this special place with California quail and songbirds, butterflies and bees, chorus frogs and newts!

SE

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= activity stop (see the activity page)

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A SENSE Of PLAcE: YEStERDAY & tODAY garden altar

ANCIENT TIMES This valley was created over thousands of years by a meandering creek that fed a wetland lagoon where Native Coast Miwok hunted ducks and feasted on salmon and local shellfish at the beach.

RANCHO DAYS In the 1830s dairy ranching began. Later ranchers ranching 1950s planted grasses and drained pasture land. Water was important for irrigation, but diverted water prevented the return of Salmon to their historic spawning homes in the creeks.

TODAY The endangered Coho salmon, steelhead trout, and California red-legged frogs find a home here. Restoring a healthy watershed from Muir Woods to the farm and all the way to the ocean requires ongoing work. Visitors to Green Gulch are often restoration volunteers!

m i c h a e l

For information and to RSVP, visit baynature.org/families-afield.

When you have completed this adventure, look for a hidden box near the dock at the pond!

Stamp Space

Special thanks to Sukey Parmalee and the staff of Green Dragon Temple.

For more outdoor adventure fun visit www.urbikids.com!

f

LIF

ORNIA B

OT A L GA R D E N

When: Sunday May 5th drop in 1 p.m.–3 p.m.

Where: Green Gulch Main Garden What: A family event with Bay Nature, Green Gulch staff, and the URBIA team. Exploratory tools provided!

CA

CA

Fun Family event

Questions? baynature.org/ask-the-naturalist

Yo

—Wendy Johnson, author/gardener Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate

E RS I T

“I am convinced that each particular place where we garden and set down roots has its own distinct scent and taste. When I come home from a long journey away from Muir Beach, I like to go down to the garden and smell a handful of moist soil to get the real news of what’s been happening while I was away.... This soil has grown the food I eat and has supported my life for decades, so it is no surprise that we recognize and pay heed to each other.”

time!). The young are hatched, brooded for about a month inside the adult, and then exuded out the mouth as freeswimming planktonic larvae. These do not resemble adult barnacles in any way.

Swimming allows the juveniles to expand the population’s range. When it’s time to settle down, the larva secretes a powerful glue out of its antennae to anchor firmly to the substrate (rock, ship bottom, back of a whale). Then the larvae grow a calcium carbonate shell, and the “feet” they used to paddle through the ocean become the appendages used to filter the ocean for food.

Mussels and other mollusks don’t have quite as much fun: They just release eggs and sperm into the water and hope for the best. Mixing currents do the rest, and their larvae float on ocean currents to a new resting place.

UNIV

the trail from muir beach to the farm

Q: How do immobile animals, like barnacles, reproduce?

A: One of the characteristics of animals is motility: They can move. Moving affords organisms the opportunity to avoid predators, get a bite to eat, and reproduce. However, what if you had food delivered to you once or twice a day? Then what’s the point of moving?

You just wait for the pizza guy to come.

So you could be attached permanently to a fixed point, like say your Barcalounger in front of the tv.

And indeed, this is the case for many marine invertebrates found in the intertidal zone. The classic examples are anemones (which are nothing more than mouths on rocks), mussels, and barnacles. All three, incidentally, belong to entirely different phyla: anemones are Cnidaria, mussels are mollusks, and barnacles, believe it or not, are arthropods. None of these animals need to move to get something to eat; the ocean delivers food (plankton mostly) into their vicinity once or twice a day. So at least the food source is mobile. But to reproduce, well, you have to get together with a mate and if s/he is also a stick-inthe-mud (or a stuck-on-a-rock), then what are you going to do?

Let’s take barnacles. Barnacles are hermaphroditic — they contain both male and female sex organs. What’s the advantage of this arrangement? You’re thinking, “Well, they always have a date on Saturday night.” No, it’s a really bad idea to self-fertilize: Inbreeding results in little genetic diversity. Worms, slugs, snails — slow-moving animals with low rates of encounter — are all hermaphroditic. And you could not get any slower than an adult barnacle!

The biological claim to fame of some kinds of barnacle is they have the longest penis-to-body-size ratio in the world — four to seven times! Which means they can inseminate all the barnacles clustered within four to seven body lengths, and in turn be inseminated by them (party

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Ask the Naturalist

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KELEY

Cornus florida var. urbiniana | Photo by Janet Williams

2013

spring plant sale Members’ Sale & Silent Auction Friday, April 26 | 5 - 7:30 pm

Public Sale

Saturday, April 27 | 10 am - 2 pm

botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu | 510-643-2755 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA 94720

april–june 2013

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n a t u r a l i s t ’s

b y b ay n at u r e

april–june 2013

j o h n

n o t e b o o k

m u i r

l a w s

on Pier 96 in San Francisco

april–june 2013

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BayNature

NON-PROFIT ORG U.S. POSTAGE

1328 Sixth Street, #2 Berkeley, California 94710

1

PAID CPS

E AYUDAR A PROTEGER A IHSS DE TES EN EL FUTURO?

se en nuestra Campaña de “Saludable en Casa”

NT

E ID PA SEM I T ER

V

AD

2484 Natomas Park Drive #101 Sacramento, CA 95833

Address Service Requested

LA VERSIÓN DE LA CONVENCIÓN

Why Bother Recycling?

Noticias de CUHW

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de

los

Trabajadores

Unidos

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Cas a

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es y a nuestro personal político, y asegure de que se nos haya dañado o se haya uidado en los servicios de los individuos que abusado de nosotros mentalmente. un mundo viven y respiran la política durante este atrapados tiempo critico en la historia del cuidado •Merecemos el derecho de que e, nuestra del hogar a nivel Federal y Estatal. se nos pague bajo el esquema del os a otros CUHW, al salir de la burbuja, Seguro Social por una vida de trabajo dor, usted emerge con nuevas ideas ahora que por un miembro de la familia. manda que estamos en período electoral este sted es un agosto. Nuestras elecciones estatales •Merecemos vacaciones pagadas, ed vive en incluirán dos semanas en las que merecemos el derecho de que se nos u relación puede votar en línea o llamando trate con compasión y respeto por las veedor de a un número sin costo, usando su familiar, número de celular o un teléfono fijo. diferente.

Una vez más nos salimos de nuestra años y burbuja, hemos lanzado un Programa proveedor de Voluntariado de Incentivos de marcar un hasta aquí, de nuevo, ar, pero para ofrecer descuentos a nuestros sobre el rompiendo la burbuja del pasado, miembros en los negocios al mostrar ador de siempre avanzando acercándonos, sus tarjetas del Sindicatolo cual emas que representa un ganar-ganar para todos.

Let the Earth turn. Watch the methane clouds lap the poles at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a001000/a001020/ endientes Hemos establecido oficinas Landfilling is the largest human-generated source methane clouds at the melting poles. Don’t extraño. en más de 9 dethe nuestros condados. of methane, a greenhouse gas 17–100 times more waste discards.

UHW, ha La mayoría de las oficinas tienenThey’re resources that were cut or ya durante bancos the de llamadas capacidadmade into something, and shipped potent than CO2. The shorter the timespan, mined,y refined, ención de de difusión de web y cuentan con Nearly all materials can be higher the number. Much more is produced and around the world. gidosescapes por grandes pantallas.

Contamos into the air while filling the landfill than recovered andcon reused, recycled, or composted a Loretta otra acción que es también otra well. Reuse and recycle at home can beconforme captured after equipment is in place.

Watch today – if handled continuamos construyendo burbuja que se rompe, y estas son las campaña NASA’s 1999 animation the Futuro” Earth; green shows and at work. Talk about it to your friends. el “Puente Hacia un of Mejor ndado de actualizaciones por email y mensajes dificultades que enfrentamos en nuestros Estamos reventando la dico yUrban los Ore salvages texto que alertan a los miembros de for reuse at Berkeley’s transferde station.

People burbuja cuando nuestro Comité los últimos acontecimientos de IHSS. trabajos por una paga justa, beneficios dores.also Enbring us things and call for pickups. We conserve about médicos y oportunidades de educación, de Constitución sugiere un cambio un grupo 7,000 tons a year and sell the reusable goods in retail sales.Yo personalmente quiero al igual que las otras fuerzas de trabajo. que combine el espacio de nuestro salirme de la burbuja To en End Age of Waste sidoWe’re los open la the que se until 7:00PM (receiving closes at 5:00) 360 days a year h t t p : //u r b Secretario Tesorero y que cree una nueva uecidoatsus considera la reforma de IHSS ena n o r e . c o m 900 Murray, near Ashby @ 7th, Berkeley. ¡No solamente lo merecemos, posición, Vicepresidente segundo.

El plan para California y sugiero que empecemos con

“CUHW está rompiendo todos los mitos al enfocarse en los miembros.”

URBAN RE