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BayNature april–june 2014
A N E X P L O R A T I O N O F N A T U R E I N T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O B A Y AREA
The Origins of the East Bay Regional Parks
Orestimba, The Wilderness Nearby Seeing the City for the Trees Living Shorelines for Rising Tides
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OIL PAINTING BY JON FRANCIS: LAZY AFTERNOON
“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed.” Wallace Stegner Founder
Image by Lilia Schwartz
Get involved. Committee for Green foothills
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Since 1962, Committee for Green Foothills has protected the open space, wildlife, farmlands, and natural resources of San Mateo and Santa Clara counties through advocacy, education, and grassroots action. This spring we release our vision for what the next 50 years has in store. Find out more and join us today
www.greenfoothills.org
c o n t e n t s
april–june 2014
Features 24
30
Paul Salemme
Nicole M. Wong
Sally Rae Kimmel
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MOMENTS OF INCEPTION The Founding Vis io n o f t he E a st Bay Re giona l Parks
T R EE C A M PI N G A B ed o f Bo u g h s i n a Cit y of L i g h t s
Who was the first person to look at the hills of the East Bay and think, “That land should be saved as parkland”? Who were the people who picked up that idea and ran with it? And what was the tenor of the times that allowed these elements to coalesce 80 years ago in the founding of the East Bay Regional Park District? The answers tell a story that ties together a dam engineer, a group of patrician Republicans from UC Berkeley, and two members of the famous Olmsted clan. by Kenneth Brower
We tend to think of the trees planted along our city streets and sidewalks as decorative amenities to soften the hard edges of our urban settings. But author Leath Tonino was on a quest to see the trees, and his city, in a different light. So he set out onto the streets of San Francisco, looking for the right trees in which to pitch his hammock and spend the night cradled in a lofted metropolis of branch and twig, high above the urban fray. by Leath Tonino
L I V I N G S H O R E L I NE Re c ru i t i ng O yst e rs fo r H a bi tat Re sto rat i o n a n d C l i m at e A da ptat i o n There’s no easy solution to climate change-caused sea level rise. There’s no easy solution to the environmental degradation of the San Francisco Bay. But the Living Shoreline Project seeks to address the two problems together, in a pilot project that recruits oysters and eelgrass to serve as “green” buffers for a threatened shoreline, and surveys the reefs for measurable habitat restoration and sea level rise protection benefits. by Sean Greene
Departments 4
Bay View
Letter from the publisher
7
Ear to the Ground
News from the conservation community and the natural world
8
Conservation in Action
the Season
The charisma of the common leopard shark by Alessandra Bergamin
On the Trail
12 The Nearby Wilderness
After a long battle, researchers restore native cordgrass to Bay Area marshes by Lexi Pandell
10 Signs of
Seeking Solitude in the Orestimba Wherever you may go in the western United States, you’re unlikely to find many places as remote as the Orestimba Wilderness, on the east side of Henry Coe State Park. A longtime park volunteer guides us to this nearby but rarely visited landscape of oak savannas, broad valleys, and open vistas. by Ron Erskine 16 Elsewhere . . . Mount Sutro, Briones Reservoir, Las Gallinas Ponds
Local Hero Awards
35 Conservation Action:
Craig Anderson Interview by Aleta George 36 Environmental Education: Liam O’Brien Interview by Eric Simons 37 Youth Engagement: Cheyanna Washburn Interview by Jacoba Charles 45 Ask the Naturalist
What’s coming back after the fire on Mount Diablo? by Michael Ellis
46 Naturalist’s Notebook
Iridescent nature by John Muir Laws
visit us online at www.Baynature.org
by david loeb
I share this longing “to goon on pilgrimages” in the spring, though my pilgrimages are not to a cathedral; my religion is rooted in in the hills and streams, and my springtime pilgrimages are to the coastal prairie, the grasslands, and the woodlands to seek epiphany in the wildflowers that have been “engendred” by the “shoures”…when there are showers. In “normal” years, there’s the thrill of anticipation as spring approaches: what will bloom where and when and in what
profusion? Hard to know in advance if it will be a “good” wildflower year. If it rains too much too early, maybe the grasses will shade out the wildflowers. If it rains too much too late, perhaps the flowers will be nipped in the bud. But there’s always the thrill of the springtime hunt, whether it’s encountering best friends in familiar places (a favorite patch of bird’s-eye gilia on the back side of Mount Diablo, a mass of tidy tips on the bluff at Chimney Rock) or finding new flowers where I’ve never seen them before. But this year, with its historic drought, I wondered if there would be any wildflowers at all to speak of. (Perhaps a more appropriate line of poetry would be Pete Seeger’s “Where have all the flowers gone?”) But then early February rains gave me hope that there would be some flowers or at least greener hills (enough with that parched gray-brown look already!). And then yesterday — it’s late February as I write this — I went for a walk at Rush Creek Open Space in Novato and was surprised and delighted to see an old friend — look at them all! — lining the trail through the oak woodland: milkmaids, harbingers of spring. So it appears that my nondenominational prayers were answered and we will have spring this year after all. By the time you read this in April, the die will have been cast and the show — of unknown quality and duration — should be on. So head on out for a springtime pilgrimage, and while you’re at it, why not share your best wildflower sightings with us and our readers? Submit them (name of flower, if you know it; where and when it was seen; and a photo) to flowers@baynature.org; we’ll post verified sightings to our website at baynature.org/flowers. Happy hunting!
Front Cover: A late spring evening along the Hardy Trail at Round Valley Regional Preserve east of Mount Diablo. Round Valley is one of 65 parks and preserves managed by the East Bay Regional Park District, which this year celebrates 80 years of protecting open space in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. [Paul Salemme, FindYourTrail.com]
contr ibuto rs Alessandra Bergamin (p. 10) is Bay Nature’s former online editor. Jacoba Charles (p. 37) is a North Bay freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Point Reyes Light, and on Salon.com. Rachel Diaz-Bastin (p. 40) is a scientific illustrator at the California Academy of Sciences and a Bay Nature editorial intern.
Michael Ellis (p. 45) is a Santa Rosa–based naturalist who leads nature-based tours with Footloose Forays (footlooseforays.com). Aleta George (p. 35) writes about nature and culture in California. Sean Greene (p. 30) is a multimedia reporter at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a Bay Nature editorial intern. Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 46) is
the author of the Laws Guide to Drawing Birds and teaches nature observation and illustration. Info at johnmuirlaws.com. Lexi Pandell (p. 8) is a freelance writer, editor, and researcher. Find her on the web at lexipandell.com. Ann Sieck (p. 16) is dedicated to helping people with disabilities, including those using wheelchairs, find parks and trails they can enjoy. See her reviews at baynature.org/asiecker.
bay v iew letter from the publisher
A
s a student in high school and college, I had to read a fair amount of poetry. But the only lines I remember by heart are the opening stanzas of the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a kind of paean to spring: Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Judith Katz
In the grip of the worst rain year in recorded California history, I’m reveling in the imagery of the showers “perc[ing] to the roote” and “bath[ing] every veyne” in the life-giving “licour” of h2o. I’m also envying Chaucer’s certainty of the proper order of things (March drought followed by April showers…which we later learned will bring May flowers — of course, he’s referring to spring in England; ours comes a few months earlier). A few lines later Chaucer continues: And smale fowles maken melodye, That slepen al the night with open ye, (So priketh hem nature in hir corages: Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...
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BayNature Exploring, celebrating, and understanding the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area
Volume 14, Issue 2 april–june 2014 Publisher David Loeb Editorial Director Eric Simons Development Director Judith Katz Associate Editor Alison Hawkes Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Office Manager Jenny Stampp Tech & Data Manager Laura Schatzkin Advertising Director Ellen Weis Design & Production Susan Scandrett Contributing Editor Sue Rosenthal Copy Editors Cynthia Rubin, Marianne Dresser, Jeannine Gendar 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 Rachel Diaz-Bastin, Elizabeth Devitt, Paul Epstein, Sean Greene, Emily Moskal, Asbery Rainey, Kimberley Teruya 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)665-5900/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. © 2014 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.
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In September 1962, 14-year-old Jim Carlton wandered away from a family picnic at Lakeside Park on Lake Merritt and hopped down the embankment at Adams Point, where he landed on a weird, small reef. Curious, he picked up one of the rocklike things and took it home. “My mother,” he says, “relegated it — and me — to the basement.” His interest piqued, Carlton returned to the lake a week later and, in the Rotary Club Nature Center, found a glass display case exhibiting the exact thing he’d found: a tube worm. The display had the species name, and a placard that said this species of tube worm hailed originally from the South Seas. Somehow, this weird rocklike thing had made its way across thousands of miles of ocean and up onto the sandy shore of Lake Merritt. “I thought that was the coolest thing,” Carlton said. The teenager went on to pore over natural history books and scientific literature. He started walking the shoreline constantly to see what else he could find. A few years later he headed off to UC Berkeley, then to UC Davis for a PhD, and into a long and distinguished career in marine biology studying invasive species and extinction. The wild side of Lake Merritt inspired Carlton’s career. In late February, a bioblitz at the lake organized by Nerds for Nature and several other local groups gave hundreds of local residents a chance to draw their own inspiration from America’s oldest wildlife refuge. (A bioblitz recruits citizen scientists to survey and count all of the visible—and audible—living things in a selected area.) Carlton, who toured the site in advance with the event organizers, provided encouragement and identifications from his home on the East Coast.
In their day on the lake, the bioblitzers tallied more than 1,240 observations of more than 220 species. The sightings ran the gamut: coots and mallards, of course, but also tiny lake denizens and muddwelling invertebrates, a tree-dwelling pseudoscorpion, manzanitas, spaghetti worms, and, perhaps most thrilling of all, a single arboreal salamander, Aneides lugubris, an elusive amphibian with a prehensile tail. The lesson: Lake Merritt may be in a large and busy urban area, but it’s teeming with life. And Oakland residents of all ages were delighted at the chance to satiate their curiosity about what Constance Taylor, who helped organize the bioblitz through the community group Wild Oakland, called their “beloved urban slough.” “I think people are very curious about
Eric Simons
Celebrating Lake Merritt’s Wild Side
what’s going on,” Taylor said. “They do want to explore, they’re just not 100 percent sure where to start. I don’t know if people necessarily know how much diversity there is, or the history, but there’s always the curiosity. Once people find out something that’s really cool, it’s like, ‘Oh, I knew it! I knew there was something cool about that place!’” Carlton revisited his old stomping grounds a few days before the bioblitz to demonstrate just how much strangeness there is hiding in plain sight. Lying on his stomach and peering into the water near the bird refuge, he scraped barnacles, clams, and mussels off the lake wall. Among the rocks in the shallow water
near Adams Point he found handfuls of tiny, hopping invertebrates, as well as several small snails. In a handful swiped from the underside of the sailboat dock he found tunicates, sea squirts, and some shrimp. Each time he peered into the water or mud, Carlton found something to be excited about. His own list from the morning’s hunt noted 29 species from 13 different taxonomic groups. The story of Lake Merritt’s life mirrors in some ways the story of the Bay Area: Most of the creatures living in the lake are non-natives, immigrants from the far-flung reaches of the globe who have found the Bay Area to their liking. Carlton calls it an “accidental zoo,” a showcase of the world’s diversity. Species arrived on the fouled hulls of wooden sailing ships, and in cargo ship ballast water. Some, like shipworms, arrived in the wood of wooden sailing ships. Peering over the edge of the lake wall, Carlton called out places of origin: the mid-Atlantic, the Indo-Pacific, the Mediterranean. “And that’s just the stuff we see here,” he said. We’ll never quite know Lake Merritt or its ecology the way it was. But adding up the life that’s present, naming the thing in front of you, still makes for an inspiring day outdoors. There’s change to be documented, particular species rising and falling, each individual observation a step in creating a bigger picture of the lake itself. Carlton returns to the edge of Lake Merritt every few years and always takes a walk to see what’s different, because there’s always something to see.[Eric Simons] Western Monarchs Hanging On in California
Monarch butterfly populations in California’s coastal overwintering sites showed a slight — and surprising — rebound in 2013 after more than a decade of dwindling numbers. The 2013 Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count tallied 211,275 monarchs at 162 sites from Sonoma County to San Diego County, up from 144,812 the year before. Sarina Jepson is endangered species coordinator for the Xerces Society, an organization that advocates for invertebrates. She says that in (continued on page 39) april–june 2014
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by lexi pandell
Drew Kerr, Invasive Spartina Project
con ser vati on i n ac tion
Turning the Corner on Invasive Spartina
Charles Kennard
On a crisp day in early January, 10 ing thick across the channel. workers and two biologists pulled sleds “When I started working, it was high loaded with young grindelia and Spartina over my head and it filled this whole area,” foliosa through tangled pickleweed to the she said, walking from a trail toward the edge of the Alameda Flood Control waterfront, gesturing toward the mudflats. Channel. The marsh seemed to be Today, after 13 years of work by the asleep, everything a muted brown and a Invasive Spartina Project and its partners bit dry for lack of rain. But in the midst to eliminate the invasive hybrid, the team of this hibernation, little neon-colored is now into the rebuilding phase of its flags marked the places where long-term plan, replanting the thousands of plants would area with native cordgrass in soon have a new start, the hopes that it will reclaim its next stage of a battle waged former territory. That sounds mostly out of sight on the simple enough. But the compliedges of sleepy marshes cations have been manifold and around the Bay Area. solutions have required the Until a few years ago, the same kind of ingenuity and Alameda fcc was inundated by flexibility that went into the an invasive form of spartina, original, and continuing, eradior cordgrass. Originally cation effort. Workers replant Spartina brought from the East Coast The isp was established in foliosa at the Alameda Flood 2000 with the goal of eradicatin the 1970s by the Army ing the non-native plants and Corps of Engineers for a chan- Control Channel (top). The native cordgrass (above) is restoring the wetlands. Having nel bank restoration project, now poised for a comeback. tried various forms of mechanSpartina alterniflora hybridized ical removal and found them unworkable, with the native cordgrass, Spartina foliosa, the group spent years painstakingly sprayand took over. One of the biologists on ing herbicide on the invasive cordgrass, site, a graduate student named Whitney and using helicopters to cover the larger Thornton, remembered the plants grow 8
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and less accessible areas. Persistence paid off, and from 2005 to 2010, they reported great success curbing the spread and eliminating large patches of the plant. But they found that they couldn’t just come back in and immediately replant natives. Planting Spartina foliosa where there are still even a few hybrids can trigger a new swarm and set the whole effort back. This need for a delay in replanting has compounded the challenge of helping the endangered clapper rail, which, although it is negatively affected by the clogged marsh channels, has come to use the dense stands of invasive cordgrass as cover from predators. If the clapper rails don’t get new habitat before the invasive spartina is removed — or at least soon after — then the rails could be exposed to increased predation. “We have to be as thoughtful and creative as we can to transition these sites,” says Katy Zaremba an isp field biologist. At some sites, the isp has developed islands as clapper rail refuges during high tides. At others, they have placed temporary artificial floating nesting islands while they eliminate the invasive plants. Even the growing of native plants to replace the hybrids is not simple. That challenge has fallen to the Watershed Nursery in Point Richmond, where a precise operation has been set up to make sure the replanting succeeds. To deal with concerns that hybrids might invade the nursery stock, the “parent” Spartina foliosa specimens were gleaned from marsh plants that could be genetically tested at ucla. To ensure that the plants used would be appropriate to each site and that there would be genetic diversity, multiple samples were taken from healthy native plants from the North, South, and Central Bay areas. Then the staff at the nursery had to develop methods for propagating plants in quantity (the project estimates it will still need more than 200,000 plants before it is done) and ensure they would survive in the field. Gumplant (or grindelia), another native salt marsh plant that is being planted along with the native spartina, is being raised in different container sizes to see how that impacts height and fullness, and salt is added to cordgrass water in varying amounts to see if salt-hardening significantly improves subsequent survival in the field.
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Invasive Spartina Project (2)
In December and January — the replanting time before clapper rail breeding season in February — the plants are removed from their beds at the nursery by hand and shipped off to the various replanting sites. About 20 to 25 percent of the plugs in any given spartina batch remain with the nursery so they can repropagate for the next batch. The nursery also colThe work of the Invasive Spartina Project led to a dramatic decline in the hybrid cordgrass in Ravenswood Slough between lects seeds for future beds and replantings, storing them in 50-pound 2006 (left) and 2011 (right). The once-clogged channel now has open mudflat. sacks inside a dark shed. Using seeds and one of the first to be replanted, the Alameda fcc is a poster rather than samples from the field has less impact on the habitat child of sorts for the isp. The new plants have been extremely and, because each one is unique, using seeds can also translate to successful here, with a 72 percent survival rate after the first year even more diversity at the replanting sites. of planting. Along the water’s edge the replanted native spartina The experimentation continues out in the field, as the teams is starting to fill out plots where it was planted two years ago. At determine the preferred elevations for the different strains, as well the third and final planting location of the day, graduate student as how to protect the new plants from foraging herbivores. DurThornton tugged a sled of cordgrass through the dense pickleing the first year, plants were completely wiped out by hungry weed. “It has gone very fast,” Thornton said. “We’re going to geese at two sites. Now, workers set up pvc and rope “cages” around many of the plants to protect them until they are large wrap when we finish this area.” enough to thrive on their own. The isp is also varying plant The assembly line of project workers dug and planted, dug height, parent sources, and densities in each grid to see which and planted. “Chiquitos, chiquitos,” one of the crewmembers combinations have the highest survival rates in which areas. said to a bright green spartina as he lovingly patted mud around As both the original introduction site of the invasive spartina its roots.
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by alessandra bergamin
maximum length of six feet. Like all shark species, they are long-lived, mature late in life, and have a low si gn s o f th e s eason fertility rate compared to other fish. Because of this, and in an effort to protect leopard shark populations, the California Department of Fish and It is early morning at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve and in a pond designated as e9 by Wildlife has imposed a fishing limit of three sharks per day, with a minimum the managers of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project, the water is cold and still. A length of 36 inches each. These traits of leopard shark, around three feet long with distinct black and brown bands and spots leopard sharks also make the protection of estuarine and bay habitats particumottled across a steel-gray body, rests on the pond’s silty floor. There is no real agenda for larly important for their conservation. the day except, of course, to eat, but for one of the largest predators in the San Francisco James Hobbs, a researcher from the Bay that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. So the shark can afford to wait for the water University of California at Davis, has stood on the levee overlooking pond e9 to warm and the tide to come in before it starts its day. many times, waiting for the tide to come In 1855, French in, for the water to biologist Charles warm, and for the Frédéric Girard leopard shark — the most charismatic fish published a descripspecies in the Bay, he tion of the leopard says — to wake up. shark, coining its Hobbs has been scientific name, Triakis studying the response semifasciata, and classiof fish, including fying it as a member leopard sharks, to the of the Triakidae, or restoration of the houndshark family. former Cargill Salt “Semifasciata” refers production ponds in the to the distinctive South Bay. Because there saddle markings that is no comprehensive are the basis of this data available, it’s shark’s common name. impossible to know Leopard sharks are about historic leopard a shallow-water Leopard sharks, one of the Bay’s most charismatic, and common, fish species, are a popular attraction at coastal species, with a the Aquarium of the Bay (above). Researchers like Karen Petritus, a former student in James Hobbs’ lab at UC shark populations in the Bay. But since the range extending from Davis, are studying the sharks in the Bay (below). ambitious restoration southern Oregon to project was launched in 2003 there has southern Baja California. They are the into coastal waters in the fall and winter. been a noticeable increase in the most abundant shark species in the San Bays and sloughs are important abundance of leopard sharks in the Francisco Bay, where they are generally leopard shark nursery habitats. From South Bay. Hobbs and his team have year-round residents, though about 10 March through September, with a peak caught (and released) as many as 30 percent of the population moves out in April and May, female leopard sharks leopard sharks in an hour at the e9 give birth to anywhere from 4 to pond, which is just one small part of the 36 offspring. Leopard sharks are entire South Bay complex. aplacentally viviparous, meaning Beyond tracking their overall abunfemales bear their young live. dance, Hobbs studies what the leopard After a gestation period of up to sharks are eating. He examines the 12 months, the pups emerge at 12 contents of their stomachs using a to 18 inches long, with their technique called gastric lavage. Leopard trademark pattern and fully sharks are not particularly aggressive, functional teeth, ready to take even when hands and hoses are being on life largely on their own. crammed into their small, curved They grow on average less than mouths in the interest of science. an inch per year and can reach a
co n s er vat ion in a c t i o n
James Hobbs
Ethan Daniels, OceanStockImages.com
A New Haven for the Leopard Shark
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Leopard sharks are generalists, with diets that include a variety of fish and invertebrates such as crustaceans, worms, and clams. At Eden Landing, the sharks feast on mealworms and smelt and bottomdwelling fish called longjaw mudsuckers. The restoration work at e9 and other former salt ponds has also created something of a leopard shark refuge. When e9 was breached in 2012, the inrushing waters created a scour hole, a deep depression in the mud. This scour hole allows the leopard sharks to stay in the pond at low tide rather than having to swim out to the deeper waters of the channel. And these breaches have brought another benefit for the sharks: When the tide comes in, all a leopard shark has to do is swim to the nearest breach and open its mouth to feast on the prey species being swept in. When it is sufficiently full, it may retire yet again to the pond’s silty floor to wait for the next turning of the tide. Life for the South Bay’s most charismatic fish species is essentially a swim in the pond.
LOVE
ful i t u a e b SONOMA COUNTY?
YOU’RE WELCOME! S O N O M A
LAND TRUST
Preserving what you love about Sonoma County SonomaLandTrust.org
A free outdoor exhibition of eight exuberant sculptures by the internationally acclaimed artist, on view by the bay through May 26. Learn more at sfmoma.org/onthego
Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field is presented by SFMOMA in partnership with the National Park Service and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. Presentation of this exhibition is made possible by extraordinary support from the Fisher family. Premier support is provided by the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund and the Charles Schwab Corporation.
Major support is provided by Agnes Gund in memory of George Gund III, and Robin and Virginia Wright. Mark di Suvero, Are Years What? (for Marianne Moore), 1967; installation view of Mark di Suvero at Crissy Field, May 22, 2013–May 26, 2014; Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund and Gift of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, by exchange, 1999; © Mark di Suvero; photo: Ian Reeves
april–june 2014
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on the trail
Ron Erskine
th e n e arby w i l d er n es s
SEEKING Solitude and serenity in THE ORESTIMBA
*
by Ron Erskine This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act, passed by the U.S. Congress to designate and protect certain areas “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man.” In recognition of this anniversary, we invite you to explore the only state-designated wilderness area in the Bay Area. In a moment of nighttime wakefulness on a late-winter backpack trip, I look skyward through the arching branches of the surrounding blue oaks. Deneb, Altair, and Vega, the corners of the Summer Triangle that will dominate the evening sky several months from now, are overhead. Seeing
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this iconic stellar feature this time of year means morning’s first light can’t be far away. I’m only about 25 miles from downtown San Jose, but the path of the Milky Way through the Summer Triangle is as crisp and bright as if I were on a desert island. I have seen no one in days, and there is likely nobody
Hikers in the Orestimba Wilderness approach the dramatic chert outcropping called the Rooster Comb.
within 10 miles of me. I am as alone as I have ever been. At morning’s first gray light I sit up to look across a gentle rolling landscape. Winter rains have greened the grasses and renewed the South Fork of Orestimba Creek, which is sliding gently past me on its way to the Central Valley and the San Joaquin River. The warmth of the sun rising above Mustang Peak finally lures me from my sleeping bag. In utter stillness and silence, I munch my granola, thinking only of which direction to wander. This landscape and this solitude wait in the heart of the Diablo Range south of Mount Hamilton. The 22,000-acre Orestimba Wilderness, tucked away in the remote northeastern portion of Henry W.
Barry Breckling
larkspur are abundant in the springtime. (Left) Pinto Creek forms waterfalls and pools on its way to the confluence with Robison Creek.
Barry Breckling
tr ail
I clearly remember the first time I saw this place. It was spring, so the grass was green and the creeks were running. Warm morning light dappled the forest floor through the porous canopy of blue oaks just beginning to leaf out. Larkspurs, shooting stars, purple owl’s clover, and lupine decorated the lush forest floor, but I was most moved by the surprisingly gentle and accessible terrain. At the source of the South Fork of Orestimba Creek, the steep chaparralchoked country began to give way to a landscape that reached out with open arms and promised a warm and comfortable passage. The contrast was striking. No more sweat-soaked, heart-pounding miles to travel. Instead, I walked comfortably through relaxed country that unfolded before me like a pastoral landscape painting. Recently, I lured Barry Breckling, who was a ranger at Coe State Park for 30 years before retiring in 2007, out of his Sierra foothill home and back to the park for a return visit to the Orestimba with me. A passionate naturalist, Barry seems to know every shrub and hidden feature of this vast park. We entered at the Dowdy Ranch entrance off Highway 152 west of Pacheco Pass, the closest to the Orestimba. This entrance is generally closed to the
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Orestimba Wilderness was part of the acquisition of the Mustang-Gill Ranch by California State Parks in 1981. Central Valley interests opposed the purchase over concerns about the loss of private cattle ranchland and lost development possibilities, which reduced the overall size of the acquisition to 34,800 acres. The approval of Coe Park’s General Plan in 1985 excluded cattle from the park and designated the 22,000 acres of the Orestimba as wilderness.
(above right) Wildflowers such as royal
on
Coe State Park, is one of the Bay Area’s most secluded natural areas. Moments of utter solitude are the Orestimba’s calling card. Wherever you might travel in the American West, you are not likely to find a place more isolated. The special solitude of the Orestimba Wilderness is no accident. The boundary to most wilderness areas is just steps away from a parking area, but when you leave your car at Coe Park headquarters, you are still 12 tough miles from Bear Mountain and your first view of the wilderness. To get there, you must cross steep and rugged country over trails that were formerly ranch roads, cut at steep gradients that can break a hiker’s heart. Looking east from the top of Bear Mountain, you will see that the rugged and deeply corrugated topography so characteristic of Coe Park relaxes in the Orestimba Valley into a broad, gently rolling blue oak “savanna.” Names like Mustang Flat and Paradise Flat hint at a softening of the terrain. The derivation of the word “Orestimba” itself is uncertain. “Ores” means “bear” in the Mutsun dialect spoken by the Ohlone people who lived in this area, but that is all historians know for sure. The land that would become the
public except on weekends, but as a uniformed park volunteer, I was able to get permission to enter through the locked gates at Bell’s Station. We drove past the Orestimba Corral, a relic of the region’s historic cattle ranching days, along a road that follows the gentle descent of Orestimba Creek and the wilderness boundary. On the slopes that rise from the valley floor, gray pines, buckeye, and California juniper rose above interior goldenbush, buckbrush, and a host of other chaparral species. As we rode past the confluence of Red Creek and the South Fork of Orestimba Creek, I remembered my campsite there on the last night of a backpack trip years ago. I was part of a group of park volunteers that had spent the weekend clearing coyote brush, buckbrush, and chamise from an overgrown Mt. Stakes Trail. Sunday evening, everyone else headed home while I stayed behind to backpack down the 10-mile length of Red Creek. Born at the very north end of Coe Park, Red Creek is one of the three main streams that drain the Orestimba Wilderness. This is unlike the open terrain along Orestimba Creek: Hills rise steeply from the banks of Red Creek, cutting off any distant views. While eating dinner on the first night of my trip, I went to investigate a matted-down area I saw in the grass near my sleeping bag. The dismembered skeletal remains of a deer carcass were strewn all about, testament to a life-and-death drama that april–june 2014
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Orestimba Wilderness
Vicinity Map
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At the time, we had worried that the intensity of the fire would severely damage the landscape. But, in fact, the blaze left a mosaic pattern that proved to be an ecological benefit to the region. Some chaparral hillsides burned fiercely, leaving a barren moonscape; other areas burned cool beneath tree branches or completely avoided the flames. Coe Park
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home. This area of the park had not burned in a half-century, and the fuel buildup, combined with the heat and rugged terrain, repelled every attempt to contain it. Finally, firefighters were forced to retreat to the road Barry and I were now on — a defensible position — and wait for the fire to come to them.
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had taken place here not long before. The next day, farther down the trail, I found still more evidence of lion kills, and I started noticing many spots along the creek that looked like perfect ambush sites. In all my years of exploring every corner of Coe Park, I have never seen a mountain lion there. But I’m pretty sure that they have seen me. Barry and I drove on, and he soon remarked that the hills showed almost no scars from the massive Lick Fire. In September 2007, a hunter’s debris fire on private property adjacent to the park escaped and burned 47,760 acres — more than half of Coe Park. I remember watching massive columns of smoke rise over the park from my Morgan Hill
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volunteers later did a fire recovery study and found a robust springtime display of whispering bells, a wildflower not seen in the area for many decades. The only evidence of the burn that Barry and I saw on the slope up to County Line Road was a few black snags standing above a fully recovered landscape. At the end of the road, we parked beneath the Rooster Comb, the most distinctive geologic feature of the Orestimba Wilderness. Here, the gentle landscape we had just crossed ended and rugged relief returned to view beneath the system of ridges and hills that cascade down from nearby Robison Mountain. The Rooster Comb, a forty-foot-high ribbon of radiolarian chert, rolled up and down along the crest of the ridge above us. This band of reddish brown rock was formed from an accumulation of countless protozoan skeletons that collected on the seafloor 90 to 120 million years ago. The powerful forces of shifting and colliding tectonic plates transported the rocks from hundreds of miles away, bent and folded the layers, turned them on end, and exposed them here in a striking way. Barry and I stepped across the dry streambed of the South Fork of Orestimba Creek and into the Orestimba Wilderness. The trail rose toward the Rooster Comb through a spacious blue oak woodland. We paused beneath one oak covered with so many small wasp galls — as many as twenty to a leaf — that the blue-green foliage took on a reddish hue. Farther on, up at the base of the Rooster Comb’s sheer wall, it took us a while to find an old mine shaft we knew was there. Barry called it the “two-second” shaft and then tossed a rock down the dark vertical bore to make his point. Sure enough, one Mississippi, two Mississippi … whack! There are a number of old mines in the Orestimba Wilderness, but as park historian Teddy Goodrich points out, “prospecting in the area was driven by market demand,” so what prospectors were looking for in any particular shaft depended somewhat on when it was dug. The predominant commercially valuable mineral in the
on
The blue oak savannas of the Orestimba Wilderness are surrounded by more rugged terrain—part of the
Ron Erskine
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area is cinnabar, but magnesite and manganese are other important minerals present in the Orestimba. As we descended the far side of the Rooster Comb, Barry pointed to the dried tassels of seedpods on a California ash, a tree I had never seen in the park. We continued down through a thicket of hollyleaf cherry until we stood beneath the rising hulk of Robison Mountain. On the far side of the mountain and out of our view, Robison Creek, the third principal drainage of the Orestimba Wilderness, runs between Robison Mountain and Mount Stakes on its way to the South Fork of Orestimba Creek near the northeast corner of the wilderness. We would not reach there this day, but I remember a hike up Robison Creek with Barry years ago to its junction with Pinto Creek, where the valley widens into another broad pastoral expanse so remarkable in these rugged hills. On that day, we ate lunch on a wide grassy bench set several feet above the valley floor. It was a beautiful setting shaded by huge gray pines. Until Barry pointed them out, I hadn’t noticed several shallow oval-shaped depressions — maybe 20 feet across — dug in the soil long ago by resident Native Americans. The Yokuts people dug them to increase the volume of their shelters, which were framed with willow and thatched with bunchgrasses and tule. After Barry brought them to my attention, this lovely spot seemed to vibrate with the spirits of the community that once dwelled here. It was strange to imagine such populated vitality in a place now so utterly remote. The Orestimba is a wilderness in the fullest meaning of the word. As a longtime volunteer at Coe Park, I have visited the Orestimba Wilderness many times over the last 20 years. I have startled groups of tule elk, seen countless coyotes, bobcats, and golden eagles. In spring, when the hills are green and the creeks are running, I have crossed fields ablaze with shooting stars. I have watched the setting sun ignite the
th e
reason it remains so isolated.
Rooster Comb, and a little later, I have lain down beneath a star show of stunning clarity. In most wilderness areas in the lower 48 states, there would probably be another camper a mile or two down the trail. Not here. In the Orestimba Wilderness, I’m not far from home, but the solitude is so complete, it’s almost unnerving.
Gavilan College Community Education offers occasional one-day trips into the Orestimba led by the author. GavilanCE.com or (408) 852-2801.
getting there:
Days: A Father and Son on the John Muir Trail, a Kindle eBook.
The Dowdy Ranch Visitor Center and park entrance, seven miles from Highway 152 on a dirt road, is generally open on weekends but check coepark.net for current status. Park headquarters is on the west side of the park, 14 miles east of Highway 101 at Morgan Hill. Coe Outings are volunteer-guided excursions into the remote eastern portion of Coe Park. Info at coepark.net.
Ron Erskine is a writer, photographer, naturalist, and lifelong backcountry wanderer. He writes a regular outdoor column called “Getting Out” for three local newspapers, and leads backcountry outings in California’s Coast Range and Sierra Nevada. He is also the author of Measureless Mountain
springtime in the orestimba wilderness!
Saturday, May 3, 10 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Join Bay Nature and Ron Erskine for a special one-day exploration of a small section of the Orestimba Wilderness at the height of spring. Reservations required. Sign up at baynature.org/field.
april–june 2014
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2
san francisco
Mount Sutro Rotary Garden You can lose yourself easily in the tangled jungle of the 61-acre Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, where 100-year-old eucalyptus trees cloaked in ivy crowd overhead and the songs of wrens and chickadees come in omnidirectional surround sound. Hiking the North Ridge Trail you can look west down the cloud-forest-like slope where the fog lingers year-round, and where among the tangles of ivy and Himalayan blackberry you’ll find native elk clover, elderberry, and Hooker’s fairy bells. Flashes of blue ocean through the thicket are a reminder that you’re close to the geographic center of San Francisco, just two miles from Ocean Beach. The messy beauty of the scene also conceals the bigger picture: This is a dying forest, its eucalyptus stands strangled by invasive ivy, its native plants and animals overwhelmed by non-natives, and its landlord, the University of California, now considering management solely for fuel reduction. But hike to the summit and you can see the awesome potential for Sutro’s open space, as the trees fade away into a native meadow and pollinator garden with flowering pink currant, blooming elderberry, and the blue-blossom ceanothus and Douglas iris that led early explorers to label the spot “Blue Mountain.” getting there: Trails head into the open space area from all sides. From 17th and Stanyan go half a mile on the Historic Trail, cross Medical Center Way, and follow the North Ridge Trail a quarter mile to the summit. The park is accessible by Muni’s n-line and 6 and 43 buses. Bikes and leashed dogs permitted. Trail maps at sutrostewards.org. [Eric Simons]
3
north bay
east bay
Dan Hill
Eric Simons
1
Las Gallinas wastewater treatment ponds Unappetizing as they sound, wellmanaged sewage treatment plants can attract an amazing variety of birds, and the Las Gallinas ponds are a fine case in point. The first pond, only yards from the parking area, has a couple of wooded islands, shoreline shrubbery, and inviting marshy shallows where dabbling ducks and wading birds forage, along with a resident pair of (non-native) mute swans. Recently we saw many black-crowned night-herons perched on trees by the water; on another visit a crowd of white pelicans was fishing along the shore. All three ponds are included in a two-plus-mile loop of the Bay Trail, but the other two, framed by rip-rapped dirt levees, are plain by contrast. Still, they offer good fishing for diving birds and, reportedly, river otters. The trail passes a solar array that powers the treatment facility and extends another lonely mile on the levee between high tides that flood the marsh and hayfields. San Pablo Bay is near, and way beyond it Mount Diablo, under a wide sky. A locked gate presently blocks the trail within sight of the shimmering waters of the long-awaited Hamilton Wetlands Restoration Project, where another 2.7 miles of Bay Trail have recently been completed. getting there: From us 101 in San Rafael, take Smith Ranch Road exit; go east 0.75 mile. Just before McInnis Park entrance, turn left and go 0.7 mile to the small parking lot. Bikes and leashed dogs permitted; picnic tables and toilet provided. [Ann Sieck]
Dan Hill
elsewhere
Briones Reservoir Bear Creek Trail There was a time when Bear Creek Road followed a stream that ran down the canyon where Briones Reservoir now lies. This trail fords that stream above the lake and then follows that old road for a half mile as it crosses a broad meadow, enters a forest… and plunges bravely into clear dark water, evidently not having gotten the memo about the reservoir. At this point the trail wisely diverges from the old road, proceeding along the wooded south lakeshore in ample shade. Because every party hiking in the ebmud watershed must carry a $10 annual permit, there are usually very few people out here, raising the odds of spotting members of other species. Mountain lions may be near, but you’re more likely to see coyotes and jackrabbits. Juncos, nuthatches, and wrentis can be heard if not always seen. Nest boxes for wood ducks have been placed in trees along the trail, 3 which becomes narrow and steep and, after three miles, climbs to the Overlook staging area. From there it’s less than half a mile down to 2 the dam, which you can 3 cross on the Oursan Trail 1 and continue around the reservoir for a 13-mile loop back to the trailhead. getting there:
For permits call (510) 287-0459. Going east on Bear Creek Road from Orinda, the staging area is on the left after the bridge. A toilet is provided; no dogs or bikes allowed. No swimming allowed. [Ann Sieck]
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 16
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Northern Harrier, adult female, photo © George Eade
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april–june 2014
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ha bitats of th e east bay reg i on al 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).
Moments of Inception by kenneth brower
T
The founding vision of the East Bay Regional Parks
he origins of great ideas, the moments of inception, are always hard to pinpoint. The environmental movement, for example: Did it begin with Earth Day in 1970, or with Rachel Carson and the publication of Silent Spring in 1962? Young historians, still wet behind the ears, sometimes argue for these dates. “Way too late,” old-timers in the movement insist. They suggest that a better case can be made for 1949 and Aldo Leopold’s publication of A Sand County Almanac, in which that great forester spells out his “land ethic.” Or even earlier, 1924, when Leopold established our first designated wilderness, the Gila, 872 square miles in which his ideas about our moral obligation to the land acquired territory, an actual foothold on the Earth. And then there is Thoreau, Leopold’s literary and philosophical inspiration. A case can be made that environmentalism began in 1854 with Walden and Thoreau’s musings beside that pond.
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in 1863, not a year after Thoreau’s death, Frederick Law Olmsted, king of American landscape architecture, looked into the hills east of San Francisco Bay and saw that they were good. He imagined a park up there. Seven decades later, in 1930, Olmsted Brothers, the nation’s first landscape architecture company — a firm founded by the great man and now run by his sons, Frederick Law Jr. and John Charles — drew up a plan, “Proposed Park Reservations for
Above: Paul Salemme; Far Left: EBRPD Archives; Near Left: Courtesy Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, NPS
East Bay Cities.� Their scheme would grow far beyond anything any Olmsted ever imagined. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the East Bay Regional Park District (ebrpd), a far-flung system of 65 parks. If this great experiment, or (above) Round Valley Regional Preserve east of Mount Diablo is one of the newer parks in the East Bay Regional Park District. (Right) Noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. urged the protection of the hills above Berkeley. His son Frederick Olmsted Jr. (far right) helped plan the first parks there.
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Courtesy East Bay Municipal Utility District
binge, in park creation had a moment of inception, then perhaps it came as Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. faced east toward the hills. The year 1863 had been a busy one for Olmsted. In spring he wrote up a prospectus and sought funding for The Nation, a progressive journal that still thrives, our oldest continuously published magazine. His plans for Central Park in Manhattan — he was both designer and superintendent — had been put on hold by the Civil War but were still percolating in his imagination. In August 1863 he resigned his post as general secretary of the US Sanitary Commission, where for three years he had been responsible for sanitation in all camps for Union Army volunteers, and he headed west to run the Mariposa Mine in the Sierra Nevada. Visiting Yosemite, next door to Mariposa, Olmsted was smitten. In the valley he saw an apotheosis of the harmony and wholeness for which he always strived in his landscape architecture. Yosemite was “The union of the deepest sublimity with the deepest beauty of nature, not in one feature or another, not in one part or one scene or another, not in any landscape that can be Arthur Davis, chief engineer at the East Bay Muniframed by itself, but all cipal Utility District, alerted East Bay mayors to the around.” In 1864, when potential for purchasing district land for parks. Lincoln ceded Yosemite to California, Olmsted became one of the commissioners charged with oversight of the new reserve. His 1865 report, “The Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Big Tree Grove,” was the finest expression yet of what would eventually become the national park idea. Yosemite, he wrote, should be a refuge for the physical and spiritual health of the people. It should be a park for everyone and for all posterity. It should be an exercise in democracy; in fact it was an obligation of the democratic state. Parks, he wrote, are about the pursuit of happiness, and he shrewdly iden 20
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tified the enemy: “It is the main duty of government, if it is not the sole duty of government, to provide means of protection for all its citizens in the pursuit of happiness against the obstacles, otherwise insurmountable, which the selfishness of individuals or combinations of individuals is liable to interpose to that pursuit.”
f ro m h i s m a r i p o s a m i n e , Olmsted occasionally retreated for r&r to a house he owned in San Francisco. Asked by the College of California to review plans for a campus near the village of Berkeley and then design a park for it, Olmsted tossed the whole scheme. The site, facing San Francisco, was nice, he said, “judiciously chosen,” but the plan was defective all the same. “Although it has the advantage of being close by a large town, however, the vicinity is nevertheless as yet not merely in a rural but a completely rustic and almost uninhabited condition, two small families of farmers only having an established home within half a mile of it.” The first requirement of a revised plan, Olmsted wrote, would be inducements to build a neighborhood of “refined and elegant” buildings around the college. Olmsted had a place in his heart for refined and elegant buildings — he was, after all, an architect — but his passion was parks. What he really cared about was that “rustic and uninhabited condition” to the east. In his imagination he could see a road extending from the college toward the rustic hills. To either side of the imagined road, along the stream it followed up into the hills, a park took shape in his head. e n v i ro n m e n ta l i s m h a s n o c l e a r m o m e n t of inception, perhaps, but it has its terrains. The wooded shores of Walden Pond, in Massachusetts; Aldo Leopold’s farm in the sand hills of Wisconsin; Yosemite and Yellowstone; the region around San Francisco Bay, where so much of modern environmentalist theory and activism had their start. The 115,000 acres and 1,200 miles of trails in the East Bay Regional Parks grew out of that local fervor and they substantiate it. With the establishment of these parks, the environmental movement here became landed; it acquired territory, an actual foothold in the California earth. On Wednesday evenings for the past eight years, a small group of ebrpd enthusiasts have met in the archive at the old headquarters on Skyline Boulevard in Oakland, where, gathered
Cheney Co.
“ i s ta rt e d wo r k i n g here in 1962,” Jerry Kent told me. “I made up history my whole career at the district. Some of it’s accurate and some of it’s not. So Richard and Brenda are here to make sure it’s accurate.” “You made it up off the top of your head?” I asked. “Sure. When you’re the assistant general manager, you can just say something, and people believe it.” It was good, then, that Richard and Brenda were on hand to keep their colleague’s imagination in check. I opened my notebook to the first of my questions: If they had to pick a moment of inception for the park district, I asked, what would that be? “Robert Sibley,” said Kent. “He was chair of the Contra Costa Hills Park Association. Robert Sibley, as soon as he learned that ebmud [East Bay Municipal Utility District] was going to get rid of 10,000 acres.” “A light went on?” “Yes. Sibley was a uc grad, and he had a heart condition. His doctor told him to go hike in the hills. He would go up
(above) A panorama from Round Top in the Oakland hills, looking west to the Bay, from a 1930 publication on proposed East Bay parks. Realtor and outdoorsman Duncan McDuffie (below) was critical in getting Olmsted Jr. to draw up the first East Bay park plan.
to the end of Euclid Avenue, go over the fence and the ‘No Trespass’ signs that East Bay mud had out, and hike in the hills. As soon as he heard they were for sale, he wanted to preserve them. It was either going to be real estate development, or it was going to be preserved as a park. Sibley was probably the light that got it going.” Richard Langs shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “I differ, a little bit,” he said. “The light was Arthur Davis.” “Arthur Davis?” said Kent. “Who’s Arthur Davis? “Arthur Davis was the chief engineer for East Bay mud.” “Engineers don’t have lights go off in their heads!” Everyone laughed at the truth of this observation — or, if you like, laughed at Kent’s gleeful expression of this unfair stereotype. Then Langs defended his theory: “When ebmud was successful at completing Mokelumne Dam in the Sierra, or Pardee Dam, as it’s now called, some of the local watershed became surplus. Arthur Davis, without getting permission from the ebmud board, sent letters to the mayors of the cities. ‘This land’s going to be available. It’s up for grabs.’ There had to be a park idea in his head. For this he got in a fight with George Pardee, the president of the ebmud board, and he left. He went off to Russia to do water projects there.” Jerry Kent remained skeptical that Arthur Davis belonged among the district’s founding fathers, but he was willing to listen. I loved the Arthur Davis story, myself. For one thing, it was an anecdote. I was desperate for a few of those, for the lives of many figures in the early history of ebrpd had proven disappointingly sketchy. Here at last was a fragment of narrative. Arthur Davis, for the good of the public, had risked the enmity of George Pardee, ebmud president and former governor of California. For his troubles he had been banished to courtesy Mason McDuffie Mortgage Corporation
in a kind of quilting bee, they attempt to whip the park district’s history into shape. Recently I dropped by to interview three of the participants. Presiding was Jerry Kent, burly and Falstaffian, a manager who worked forty-one years for the district and then, upon retiring a decade ago, immersed himself in its history and became an acknowledged expert. The second quilter was Richard Langs, slimmer and less Falstaffian, a retiree from the transportation industry who is writing a history of Tilden Park. Langs wears a mustache somewhat fuller than the pencil mustaches popular in the 1930s, when Tilden Park originated, but somehow evocative of that time. The third quilter, Brenda Montano, works in public relations for the park district. She did not seem anachronistic in any way, except maybe for a vaguely thirtiesstyle pin curl in a couple of ringlets of her hair. The archive is Brenda’s domain.
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water projects in Siberia, or thereabouts. For another thing, I liked what the Davis story had to say about the small contingencies that jigger the course of history — suppose those letters to the mayors had never been dropped in the mail? For a third thing, any enemy of George Pardee was a friend of mine. In the 1902 election for governor of California, Pardee had crushed the Socialist candidate, Gideon Brower, my great-grandfather, by 146,332 votes to 9,592.
“ r i c h a r d ’s p ro b a b ly r i g h t,” Kent conceded. “Did
Civilian Conservation Corps Collection, Archives Center, NMAH, Smithsonian Institution
the light go on in just one person, or did it go on in a whole bunch of people?” We tossed that one around for a while. Then Kent asked another question, for me the best one of the day. “Why was the Olmsted Brothers plan successful here in the East Bay,” he wondered, “when their park plan for Los Angeles failed? Up here they did a little $5,000 study that took six months. Down there they spent two years doing an $80,000 study for Los Angeles County. Here it succeeded. Down there it was pigeonholed and died.” Solving Kent’s riddle, I realized, would be a clean way to frame my ebrpd story. In the next days, talking the matter over with Brenda Montano’s archive team and other park staff interested in ebrpd history, I distilled a two-part theory for the success of East Bay regional parks: Plumbing and Community. Plumbing was the lesser factor, but it played a role. East Bay parks were lucky, Richard Langs pointed out, in how fast Pardee Dam and its aqueducts were completed and came on line, delivering Mokelumne River snowmelt to East Bay reservoirs. “They beat San Francisco and Hetch Hetchy Dam,” he said. “It took them just four years, instead of the fifteen for Hetch Hetchy.” The 10,000 acres of watershed in the East Bay hills became available at just the right moment, as other ducks were lining up in a
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row. (The fact that those acres were water district land did not hurt either; the land necessary for the Olmsted park plan in Los Angeles was in private ownership, a much more difficult and expensive proposition.) But community was what truly made the difference. A convergence of forces in the East Bay — the nascent conservation movement, engaged scholars at the University of California, and resident expertise on national, state, regional, and urban parks — combined to make fertile soil for the seed of the regional park idea. For the conservationist faction, the realtor Duncan McDuffie was point man. Tall, distinguished, eloquent, an eminent residential developer in the Bay Area, McDuffie was also an outdoorsman. He loved the Sierra Nevada and had wandered the range with Little Joe LeConte, the uc professor who had cofounded the Sierra Club and who, upon Muir’s death, became its second president. In 1908, LeConte and McDuffie spent a month hiking and mapping a 230-mile route across the High Sierra from Yosemite to Kings Canyon. McDuffie made the first ascents of Mount Abbot, 13,736 feet tall, and Black Kaweah, 13,754. He was a man who knew his way around in the wilderness. As with Olmsted, his experience of wild nature informed his philosophy on space and landscaping in his projects.
“ m c d u f f i e wa s a u c a l u m ,” Jerry Kent told me. “He was president of the Save the Redwoods League and became president of the Sierra Club. He was chair of the California State Parks Committee, which began lobbying to create a California park system in 1927, and he chaired the $6 million bond campaign for that cause. That same year, 1927, Clement Calhoun Young became governor of California. McDuffie had employed Young at Mason McDuffie, so he had an in with the governor, who referred to the realtor as his ‘park man.’ McDuffie also knew Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. He had used Olmsted to design some of his residential developments. In 1927, at McDuffie’s urging, Olmsted Jr. was hired to do the state park plan at the same time he was designing the plan for Los Angeles County. Then in 1929, those two plans completed, McDuffie telegraphed Olmsted Jr. requesting that he prepare a park plan for the surplus ebmud land.” (left) National Park Service Chief Naturalist Ansel Hall (in uniform, center) offered critical advice on the creation of the East Bay Parks. Here he points out parkland boundaries to local mayors. (Elbert Vail, the District’s first manager, is on the right.) (opposite page) Eighty years later, parks like Tilden continue to offer “public enjoyment and physical stimulation” to Bay Area residents of all ages.
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Kathy Barnhart
Olmsted came up from Los Angeles and met in Berkeley with McDuffie, Robert Sibley, and uc political science professor Samuel May, who, as director of the UC Bureau of Public Administration, had obtained a $5,200 grant to pay for the report. On hand as well was Ansel Hall of the National Park Service. “Olmsted Jr. had encountered problems with the state park plan. They buried it,” Bob Doyle told me, picking up the story later. Doyle, who has worked for 35 years in the ebrpd, is now in his fourth year as general manager “The state legislature just buried the state plan. A wonderful plan. Beautiful plan. It was too radical for them, so they buried it in a file, and before that they had buried his L.A. plan. So Olmsted was suffering from big losses on these really great, visionary plans. He had to be convinced to do this little Podunk plan for the East Bay parks. I’m sure McDuffie had a big role in that. He and Olmsted were friends, and they were connected through their work on the state park plan. But the bigger role, I think, was Ansel Hall’s.” Hall had graduated from UC in 1917 with a degree in forestry. He started his career in the National Park Service (nps), an agency then just one year old, with a brief stint as a ranger in Sequoia National Park. He left to fight in France in the First World War, then returned to become a park naturalist in Yosemite. He rose quickly through the ranks: chief naturalist for the nps, then senior naturalist and chief forester — the first to hold that position — and finally chief of the Field Division. He was a great teacher, creative thinker, charmer, and fundraiser. In 1929, when Olmsted Jr. came up to Berkeley to meet with the backers of East Bay parks, Hall was dispensing advice to state and local park agencies out of nps Educational Headquarters at 213 Hilgard Hall. “I think this story’s remarkable,” Bob Doyle told me. “Because nobody even thinks about it — that national parks had such a role in Berkeley, or that Berkeley had such a role in national parks. The first naturalist in Yosemite ends up having an office at UC Berkeley! And the naturalist ends up being the one sent out to scout the hills and reassure Olmsted. It was really Hall. He was the one to say, ‘Yeah, this is worth a plan! These would be really nice parks.’” Hall would confide to his son his own opinion on who dreamed up the parks. Not Sibley, or Arthur Davis, or any Olmsted. The idea for the 22 miles of ridgetop parks, he told the boy, was his own. The park study, researched and written by Ansel Hall and George Gibbs, a planner with Olmsted Brothers, was approved by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and published in December 1930. The new park system was conceptually launched. Robert Gordon Sproul, president of uc, represented the university in the fight for parks, heading up the successful election campaign for formation of the ebrpd. But the truth is that almost all the campaigners — McDuffie, Sibley, Hall, May, and many others — were connected to the university. They were interconnected with one another, as well, and they overlapped in their affiliations. In studying the resumés of the protagonists, I am struck by
how times have changed. Many of the principals in the creation of the park district were developers: McDuffie, the Olmsteds, George Gibbs. They were Republican businessmen. It was an age when “conservatism” and “conservation” resonated not just phonically but ideologically. That age is now cold and dead. One wonders why this had to be. Was a Duncan McDuffie possible only because California was still roomy enough that both dreams could exist in one head? If one man, in his person, subsumes all the convergent forces that spawned the East Bay Regional Park District, then my candidate is Frederick Law Olmsted the First. Olmsted was an academic, a nature lover, a progressive, an urban park specialist, a national park innovator. Jerry Kent does not consider Olmsted to be the founder of the park district — Senior came too early, in Jerry’s opinion, and Junior was too remote from the action. Kent favors what he sometimes calls “the water carriers” and other times “the heavy lifters.” The boots on the ground. The people who got it done. Bob Doyle, who now manages the legacy of the district, seems to lean toward a broader definition of authorship. “The Organic Act, which established the National Park Service, and which Olmsted Sr. helped write, came in 1916,” he told me. “And in 1927 came the state park plan. And in 1930 came the East Bay regional park plan. Olmsted’s key lines in the Organic Act, about public enjoyment and physical stimulation, and so forth, were definitely incorporated into the thinking of this park district I manage. It’s just there. It’s all over it, whether you see his signature there or not.”
f r e d e r i c k l aw o l m s t e d s r . transformed how we think about parks. We need muddy boots on the ground — can’t do without them — but we also need visionaries and prophets who change the very air we breathe. Berkeley-based nonfiction writer Kenneth Brower, the eldest son of environmental leader David Brower, is the author of more than a dozen books about people and the environment. His latest book is Hetch Hetchy: Undoing a Great American Mistake (Heyday, 2013). april–june 2014
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by L e at h T o n i n o il l us t ra t i on s by N i c o le M . Wo n g
Tree
i l oa d e d m y b ac k pac k with everything I thought I’d need for a three-night trip: hammock, sleeping bag, 100-foot rope, rock-climbing harness, carabiners and webbing, rain gear, headlamp, six peanut butter sandwiches, a $20 bill, a knife in case I got tangled in my rigging and
City ofBoughs aBed in a
had to cut myself free. It was already afternoon when I left my apartment on Dolores Street and headed west, uphill, in the direction of Twin Peaks. Mockingbirds talked across the bright sky. Babies babbled from their strollers. And the trees, as anticipated, were bountiful, beautiful, and diverse. Mike Sullivan, an
Lights
of
obsessed amateur botanist and author of the urban field guide The Trees of San Francisco, has identified 274 species growing in the city. There are Washington thorns and cockspur coral trees; jacarandas, cajeputs, and Chinese photinias; sweetshades and golden rain trees; spotted and lemon-scented gums; pin, cork, and holly oaks. I didn’t know the names of most of what I saw, but it wasn’t names, after all, that I intended to climb. My plan was really more of a prompt, a
nudge from me to myself in the direction of urban-arboreal adventure. I’d wander San Francisco, neighborhood to neighborhood, park to park, paying attention to trees. I’d pay attention to ants and squirrels and clouds and my own shifting thoughts as well, but mostly I’d focus on the trees. When I found one I liked, probably a big one, I’d climb it, string the hammock as high as I could, and lose myself in the dreamy sway and drifty weave of green smells, green sounds, green moods. This would be a new city, a lofted metropolis of branch and twig. I’d rock to sleep, wake with dawn’s birds, rappel to earth, go get a cup of coffee. Maybe I’d be downtown, at april–june 2014
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Union Square or the Embarcadero. Maybe I’d be in the Presidio or out by the zoo. Strolling along, I began noticing more and more of the particularities of the trees I passed. By creating a situation in which I needed a tree to sleep in, a situation where without a tree I was just your average drifter, I’d tricked my mind into a new type of attunement. Magnolias I’d walked by a hundred times demanded consideration. A ginkgo with yellowing leaves stopped me in my tracks. Crown structure, exact location in relation to buildings and power lines, degree of rot in dead and dying limbs — all of this was now of the utmost importance. I stared, scrutinized, kept moving. The perfect one was out there, somewhere. I made a mental map of trees I could come back to should nothing better turn up. A California pepper tree in the Castro had a sweet umbrella shape to it but leaned against someone’s secondstory window. A ring of eucalyptus on Tank Hill promised amazing views of the Financial District but the trees themselves were unappealing, their hammock sites few and tricky to access. I liked one Monterey cypress a great deal and was pretty sure I could finagle my way up into the crown, but when I followed the trunk downward it disappeared behind a fence, into a backyard. This got me thinking. The cypress’ roots extended out beneath the street – I could imagine them pulsing with water and nutrients below the blacktop – and visually the bulk of the tree inhabited an airy public space. So whose tree was it? I was a bit miffed: To hog a tree like that! To lock it away and deny it a hammocker’s companionship! But at the same time, I was also conscious of the dubious legality of my whole enterprise. Best to leave it alone; go find something with some privacy. Norfolk island pine (too boingy). Cliff date palm (too frondy). I felt like a sailor navigating by stars, except my stars were explosions of chlorophyll twinkling in light wind above a sea of roofs. Tree by tree I worked my way to the top of the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve, a mostly undeveloped 61-acre area at the city’s geographic center. The afternoon was easing toward dusk, my anxiety about finding a place to sleep beginning to rise. I followed a shuttle bus into an apartment complex where the trees, mostly eucalyptus, were out of my league, ascension-wise. I’d learned technical tree climbing techniques while working for the U.S. Forest Service on a study of northern goshawks (we had to nab the nestlings to band them), but that’s not to say I’m confident around either heights or knots; climbing is risky work and generally not to be messed with after dark. I needed to find my perfect tree. And soon. t h e c oa s t r e dwo o d is a Northern California icon; it’s the sparkle in John Muir’s eye, the poet Jane Hirshfield’s “great calm being” that “taps at your life.” As a human body provides a vast terrain for mites and other roaming micro-critters, a redwood’s body provides habitat for warblers and salamanders and epiphytes. Redwoods can grow to well over 300 feet tall and live more than a thousand years. They’re skyscrapers, fogscrapers, living towers with corridors and chambers and rooms and balconies and elevator shafts and fire escapes
only ten feet away and no more than eight feet up, she didn’t see and rooftop patios. Though they’re not native to the San me. A man with a briefcase passed, then a grandma with a Francisco Peninsula, they grow just south, north, and east of the toddler and shopping bags, then another shuttle bus. Nobody city. Some have been planted here, and they do just fine. So it looked up. So quickly I’d crossed over to the secret city above. probably comes as no surprise that in searching out a hammockhotel there atop Mount Sutro, I found myself checking in at the yo u s c r a p e yo u r l e g s and hands, get needles in your hair, trunk of a Sequoia sempervirens. hook branches with your elbows, your armpits, your ankles and Mine was around 100 feet tall, by no means a monster, but the backs of your knees. You impress yourself on the tree and the then again, an absolute monster. It made a nearby lamppost look tree impresses itself on you. It’s like Robert Frost’s poem about like a wee sapling and rose considerably higher than the fourapple picking, the one where an “instep arch not only keeps the story apartment buildings across the street. It spoke to me, this ache/It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.” Your body learns friendly monster, calling me up into its complex heights. Its the tree though this touching, this ache and pressure. There’s some language was presence, massive, and inviting, not heard but felt. I mysterious reciprocity here, some deep rapport between beings. know it’s unscientific and weird, but this is the truth: Hey there It might be worth recalling that image I mentioned earlier, a mite little guy, the tree said, why don’t you grab that low branch of mine and see orienteering the landscape of a human body. As I climbed higher I where it leads? became smaller and smaller, the tree larger and larger, until I was The redwood isn’t just a major Bay Area player; it’s also the absorbed in full. The other world, call it “Below” or “the Ground” quintessential adventure tree, a botanical Everest. In college, or “the City I Once Knew,” dropped away like so many kicked twigs around the time I started hanging hammocks higher than three and fluttering chips of bark. Sure, sounds filtered through the walls feet off the ground (I was into rock climbing and forest of foliage – sirens, kids yelling – but they were removed, distant and ecology), I read an article in The New Yorker about the search for less than real; they came to me the way an alarm clock filters through the world’s tallest trees. The article, written by Richard Preston, a dream. What was real was the near at hand, the wood profiled Humboldt State biologist Steve Sillett, a guy who in my hand, this hold and the next and the next, spends days on end in the redwood canopy again and again. living out of a harness and a After 80 or so feet — maybe hammock. Preston’s book on the subject, The Wild Trees, argued I felt like a sailor navigating by stars, somewhere near the tree’s collarbone? — I stopped, my that the upper stories of a except my stars were explosions attention drawn from the redwood forest are as littleof chlorophyll twinkling in light climbing for the first time in a known as the depths of the wind above a sea of roofs. half-hour or longer. Something ocean. Hyperion, the tallest tree pink caught my eye through a on earth at 379 feet and change, window in the boughs: the Bay reflecting the sunset sky, a huge lives in an undisclosed location in the tangled backcountry of view of toy-size cargo ships and the Oakland Hills. I looked Redwood National and State Parks. Epic storms, Tyrolean around. Another window opened to the north: the Golden Gate traverses, automobile-size chunks of debris crumbling loose Bridge, Mount Tamalpais spilling ridges to the Pacific, blue folds above helmeted scientific heads: I burned through my copy of of land fading into the distance. I’d been in the meditative trance The Wild Trees in a weekend. of Do Not Fall, of effort and exhaustion, and was only now Organizing my gear and nerves in the duff beside the awakening. A red-breasted nuthatch emerged, landed nearby, sidewalk, I kept reminding myself that I’m no Steve Sillett, no gleaned an insect, and dissolved back into green. Again the tree expert, and that I needed to be methodical and slow. Overhead, a spoke: This is your spot, little man. Make yourself at home. thousand or more branches radiated out from the redwood’s It took another half-hour of tiptoeing around to rig the perfectly straight bole in a maze of ladders, the lowest ones hammock, stressing the whole time about bobbling a key piece of almost within reach. With all those holds I wouldn’t need the gear and watching it plummet, but when the chore was done I long rope, just the harness system and my own monkey style. By really did feel at home. My supplies hung on lines I’d strung up, anchoring loops of webbing to limbs as I climbed, I could move everything within arms’ reach, like a kitchen in Tuscany with upward without ever risking a major fall. I might slip off a herbs and salamis and pots and pans dangling from the ceiling. I branch, drop five feet, knock my noggin, and dangle unconscious was at ease, leaping over gaps, swinging in my harness, even for a spell, but at least plummeting to my death was out of the balancing on one foot with no hands just for fun. I took off my question. Once I left the ground, I would never take the harness sneakers and socks and let my sweaty feet dry against the tree’s off, not to sleep, not to pee, not for anything. In a sense, the tree cool, rough skin. I tested different seats and figured out a way to would save me from its own dangers. recline across three branches. A part of me wondered if the I double-knotted my shoelaces, tucked my shirt in, then hammock was necessary. jumped for the first branch; I missed it, jumped again, pulled, Two scrub-jays stopped by for a chat. A red-shouldered hawk contorted, and got it underfoot. A young lady in a purple jacket shrieked. I ate a peanut butter sandwich and watched the city’s walked by, and I held my breath. 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lights rise from the gloaming in yellows, reds, oranges, and electric blues. It got darker. A neon glow leaked through the gaps and cracks in the foliage walls. I ate another sandwich and flipped on my headlamp. The top was out of sight but only 20 feet away. t h e t r i p wo u l d g o on for another three days, with overnight rest stops in a wind-tortured, rain-lashed cypress by the ocean, and a redwood in Golden Gate Park that only let me get 50 feet up before scaring me back down to a cramped hammock site. I hobnobbed with the homeless, walked dozens of miles, bought a slice of pizza, studied trees from afar, from below, from inside and out. Each was different, a unique portal providing access to itself and to some new perspective on the city. The trip was everything I’d hoped for: a series of engagements, a sequence of invitations. But nothing beat that first night’s redwood. Those long relaxed minutes up there at the “summit” were the literal and figurative high point of the adventure. The trunk tapered down to the diameter of my wrist and I took a seat on a branch the diameter of my thumb, then reached up and touched the utmost tiptop of the tree for good measure. I tied in twice, just to be safe, and to my surprise I actually did feel safe. In fact, I felt as safe as I’ve ever felt anywhere in the city: no threat of creeps or thieves, no fear of getting hit by a car in a crosswalk. The night embraced me like a fat firm hug. A dog barked. A car parked and turned off its engine. I watched a middle-aged couple preparing dinner in one of the nearby apartments but lost interest pretty quickly; the city lights were better. Hirshfield’s line about a “great calm being” came back to me, and for a long while I felt that way, like a redwood, both great 28
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and calm. It was mellowness by association, I guess. There was no wind. All was soft and still. Nobody on earth — no human, at least — knew where I was. Again, it’s weird and unscientific, but as I paused there in that soupy dark stillness 100 feet off the ground the thought did come to me: I never asked this tree for permission. In my excitement, first over the climb, then over the hammock site, I’d plumb forgot my manners. It’s not like I really deeply believed it was something I had to do, like the tree would be angry if I didn’t, but it was a courtesy, and I am, or at least I try to be, a courteous man. So I started to say something, some thanks and praise, some little poem of gratitude for offering me this unique experience. As soon as I heard the words aloud, though, I shut up. Or maybe the tree shut me up. All I know is that I felt silly, not because I was talking to a tree, but because I only now realized that I’d been talking to it all along; I’d heard the redwood’s voice, why wouldn’t it have heard mine? It dawned on me that anything that needed saying had already been said, and moreover, said with a clarity no human words could ever achieve. It was the clarity of climbing, of touching. It was the language of bodies, of presence. My host knew everything I was thinking. I knew it knew this — don’t ask me how. The dog barked again and I began my descent, back to my cozy hanging bed. Then, in a flash, it was broad daylight and I was on the ground, roaming, coffee in hand, a thousand trees greeting me with arms — I mean, limbs — spread wide in welcome. the street trees of san francisco
Join Bay Nature and Michael Sullivan (author of The Trees of San Francisco) for a ramble through the heart of the city (Cole Valley and Mount Sutro) to learn about the trees that grow on our streets and in our yards. (No tree climbing, however!) Sunday, June 8, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Space is limited. Sign up at baynature.org/field.
Leath Tonino’s writing appears in Orion, Sierra, the High Country News, The Sun, and other magazines. He is a native of Vermont living in San Francisco. Science illustrator Nicole M. Wong produced the illustrations for Sardis and Stamm, a children’s book about the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge. Find her online at nicolemwong.com.
Lyngso Vegetable Blend, Nursery Mix, Potting Mix, Organic Essential Soil Landscape Mix, Light Weight Roof Top Mixes, Bio Swale Mixes, Diestel Structured Compost OMRI, Bu’s Blend Compost, Garden Compost OMRI, Arbor Mulch, Fir Bark, Mocha Chip, Ground Redwood Bark, Wood Chips, Actively Aerated Compost Tea, Mycorrhizal Fungi, Down to Earth & Dr Earth Organic Fertilizers, Eco Nutrients Fish & Seaweed Liquid Fertilizer 19 Seaport Blvd, Redwood City Mon – Sat: 7 to 5, Sun: 8 to 4
www.lyngsogarden.com 650.364.1730
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climate Change: Dispatches from the Home Front
Living Shorelines Recruiting Oysters for Habitat by sean greene
Sally Rae Kimmel
Restoration and Climate Adaptation
native oyster. But in the years since Townsend wrote about them, the public’s attitude has changed. Dismissed as “worthless” a century ago, native oysters are now one of the key parts of an ambitious idea to restore the Bay’s health and simultaneously protect people and land from the danger of sea level rise.
“Dispatches from the Home Front” is a series of articles highlighting groundbreaking work being done by Bay Area institutions, agencies, and nonprofit groups to comprehend, mitigate, and adapt to the impact of climate change on Bay Area ecosystems. The series is a partnership with the Bay Area Ecosystem Climate Change Consortium (baeccc.org). More at baynature.org/climate-change.
W
hen the first live eastern oysters came to the Bay Area by train in the late 1800s, Victorianera foodies lined up to buy them by the box at four dollars for 200. Capitalizing on San Franciscans and their love of trendy food, would-be oyster farmers followed, hoping to raise their imported shellfish in the Bay. But life proved difficult for the farmers, and their oysters. For the preferred eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), summers in the Bay Area were too hot and dry, stingrays too hungry, and one particular “parasite” far too fast-growing for the bivalve to take hold, as the naturalist Charles Townsend wrote in 1893. “It is possible that I have not attached sufficient importance to the evil of overcrowding,” Townsend declared, by this “remarkably fertile” competitor. The so-called parasite was the once-abundant Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida), the West Coast’s and the Bay’s only species of
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The densely populated and expensively developed Bay Area is also home to one of the largest wetland restoration projects in the country. Millions of dollars and hours have been spent refashioning the margins of the Bay, but it’s become clear that under some future climate change scenarios, rising seas could erode and drown much of that work. By conservative predictions, the water level in the Bay could rise between 36 and 55 inches by the end of this century. More frequent storms with powerful surges and higher tides will lead to increased flooding — with today’s king tides just a preview of the challenges to come. There is an obvious solution, one arrived at by the Dutch in the Middle Ages: build a wall. In some places, like the heavily
Along the riprap of the San Rafael Bay shoreline, native oys-
Christopher Reiger, 2013
ter shells litter the mud between the rocks made jagged by the crunchy remnants of a gone-but-not-forgotten population of Olympic oysters. On a dry winter day, the tide is receding and a crenellated line of shell bag mounds and reef domes and castles begins to appear out of the exposed mud. This is the prototype of the Living Shoreline: an experimental nearshore habitat for oysters. As the twilight hour nears, two wetsuit-clad scientists from the Romberg Tiburon Center lab of Dr. Katharyn Boyer slog through a foot of water and a foot of mud toward the oysters, with a boogie board and various instruments in tow. The thick mudflat bubbles with each footfall as they make their way across, careful not to slow their pace lest they get stuck and sink. Their
Christopher Reiger, 2013
urbanized shores of San Francisco, that might be the solution. But the hard engineering solution isn’t always ideal. You have to repair seawalls, and sometimes rebuild them. And a wall does little for the ecological health of a Bay that’s significantly degraded from the biologically rich body of water enterprising 19thcentury oyster farmers toiled in. So a few years ago the State Coastal Conservancy went looking for another option: habitat restoration that would also address sea level rise. Borrowing a concept from the East Coast, the conservancy and its partners came up with the San Francisco Bay Living Shorelines Project, a pilot-scale experiment to restore native oysters by the million and test the idea of a new kind of shoreline at selected sites around the Bay. Two years into the experiment, the results suggest that in the appropriate places this green climate adaptation might work.
(opposite page) Boyer Research Group staff and volunteers trudge through the mud near San Rafael to check on offshore oyster reefs. The reefs (above), of varying sizes and compositions, wait for deployment at the Romberg Tiburon Center. The RTC also has tanks (below) for growing eelgrass.
goal this evening is to gather water quality data and take some samples using a fish-tank vacuum to see what’s living at the site— part of the Boyer lab’s regular monitoring of the reefs. The structures, now covered in millions of native oysters, are the first small test of three questions: What’s the best way to restore native oysters (and their partner-in-habitat eelgrass) to the Bay? What effect does their restoration have on the rest of the ecosystem? And how do those oyster reefs change the dynamics of waves and storm surge heading toward shore?
Baby oysters require a solid surface to settle on. Larvae float
through the water until they find a suitable spot to attach to and mature. The project designed a variety of artificial reefs to see which materials and which shapes would collect the most native oysters. In 2012, in the shallow waters of the San Rafael shoreline, the team dropped bagged shells of Pacific oysters—a species native to Asia—provided by the Drakes Bay Oyster Company in Point Reyes. The thousands of oyster shells, cured for two years in the sun and packed into three-foot-by-one-foot bags, were placed in the water in a carefully designed pattern to give the researchers the ability to compare both restoration success and physical effects in different conditions. Off San Rafael and at a separate site miles to the south at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Hayward, the team is also testing varying styles of human-made “baycrete” (a home-brewed concoction of concrete mixed with native oyster shell and sand mined from the april–june 2014
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Bay) structures to see what artificial surfaces and orientations oysters prefer. (Oysters prefer settling on oyster shells, but since a major point of this pilot project is anticipating future needs and much larger scales, it’s worth exploring otherw options.) The project team then fashioned baycrete reefs: domes, stacks of domes, “layer cakes,” and castle-shaped “oyster blocks” where oysters and fish can live. Each model has a different configuration of surface areas, horizontal and vertical spaces, and varying amounts of hiding space. The preliminary results suggest oysters like the dome and block structures; the layer cakes not so much. The San Rafael site has also been designed to test varying methods for the restoration of another formerly abundant but now threatened Bay species, eelgrass. By planting plots of eelgrass interspersed with the large oyster beds, Boyer and her team are investigating the relationship between the two: how they might help each other, and how they might work together to help the ecosystem. The general theory goes that the filter-feeding oysters can improve water clarity. That helps eelgrass grow because more sunlight can reach the otherwise murky Bay bottom. Eelgrass in turn might influence the particle size of food floating in the water, making it more palatable to native oysters. The oyster reefs might help protect eelgrass from wave energy. Eelgrass also makes important habitat for other invertebrates and other plants. Its roots could also help stabilize sediment, which would offer more shoreline protections. More importantly, oysters and eelgrass are two cornerstones of the Bay’s subtidal habitat. Our options for future climate adaptation are constrained by available land, says Environmental Science Associates geomorphologist Jeremy Lowe, and so the Bay’s intertidal and subtidal margins—almost all of it stateowned—offer some of the most promising terrain for building nature-based adaptation measures. Oysters and eelgrass thrive in the subtidal, and so can be restored together. This is one of the first scientific attempts at asking the question: Should they be? With the reefs in place, Boyer said it’s been exciting to see the development of habitats used by wildlife. Wading birds like egrets and black oystercatchers normally hunt for food on the shoreline. At the experiment sites, the birds can be seen
(above) At low tide, the oyster reefs emerge from the Bay off the San Rafael shoreline.
Stephanie Kiriakopolos
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further offshore, stalking and pecking at prey between reefs and eelgrass beds. Over the course of a year, the one-acre project area in San Rafael had recruited two million oysters, according to an October 2013 report. The oyster reefs provide habitat niches for small crabs and other invertebrates, which are food for fish, birds, and mammals. Fish can hide among the reefs and eelgrass and feed on the smaller creatures that live there. Salmon have visited some of the project’s test reefs, and Boyer said sevengill shark and steelhead are also making use of the structures. “We’ve even had sturgeon stopping by,” Boyer said. “It’s a boon to a large array of organisms.” Both oysters and eelgrass are having a harder time at the Hayward site. The invasive Atlantic oyster drill, a predatory sea snail that feasts on small oysters, has helped keep oyster populations at Eden Landing low. Two separate small eelgrass plantings failed to take, although the second established for a few months before mostly disappearing—possibly, Boyer says, because there are so many non-native eastern mudsnails laying eggs at the site that they weighed down the eelgrass. The Hayward site also seems to have an unexplained influx of sediment, unrelated to the project, which might have buried the plants. The varying success rates at the two sites further bolster the project’s big idea: Oyster reefs and eelgrass could be a valuable part of the future Bay. But we also know they won’t work everywhere—the Hayward shoreline may be such a place—and before we go big on living shorelines, we need to know why. This is, after all, how science works: Understanding negative results is just as important as getting positive ones. (left) Researchers work with volunteers to plant eelgrass plugs raised in the lab and then study its success. Pictured here: researcher Katharyn Boyer (on right) with volunteers Adam Bayardo and Natasha Dunn.
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The habitat restoration is just
Sally Rae Kimmel
part one. There’s also the climate component: the potential that the reefs could help protect the tidal marsh edges from erosive waves. A wave starts in deep water, losing speed from friction as it moves across the shallow Bay and mudflats. When a wave reaches an oyster reef, it “trips,” losing even more energy before it reaches shore. While sea level rise calls to mind a slow drowning of the Bay Area, like filling a bathtub, the bigger problem is storm surges that could overwhelm levees and cause widespread sudden flooding, like the flooding that follows hurricanes on the East Coast. Although we don’t have hurricanes, the Bay’s combination of open water and regular wind can result in large waves for an inland body of water. And that’s where sea level rise matters most: the higher the water starts out, the worse the effects of those surging waves. At the San Rafael site, the project team installed four acoustic Doppler current profile monitors, wave gauges that lie in the mud and measure, at a very fine scale, the height of waves moving by overhead. Wave height is a function of wave energy, so with a lot of observation and a bit of math thrown in, the team found that the reefs in San Rafael are reducing the energy of incoming waves by 30 to 50 percent, with the effect greatest at average tides. Oyster reefs are widely used as shoreline protection on the East Coast, so the effect isn’t particularly surprising. What’s new with the Living Shoreline Project is both its specific application in San Francisco Bay—where living shorelines are still a new concept—and its design to consider habitat restoration first. Some East Coast living shorelines, Lowe says, tend to just be breakwaters first with oysters added on. This project, with its comprehensive monitoring of oysters, eelgrass, invertebrate life, vertebrate life, sediment health, and water quality, asks questions about how to achieve the best habitat in San Francisco Bay and provides answers specific to the Bay. “We’re testing concepts that we can then apply to future projects, that could have more protective benefits if they were larger,” says Marilyn Latta, the Living Shoreline project manager at the State Coastal Conservancy.
While the project is still in a test phase, the idea behind it
is grand. The Living Shoreline represents a creative way of responding to the threat of climate change with “green infrastructure.” Employing natural systems to support human ones is an idea that’s catching on, says Andy Gunther, executive coordinator of the Bay Area Ecosystems Climate Change Consortium. “It’s that kind of thinking that I hope we are going to be able to
build more of,” he says. Climate change means uncertainty. We know, Lowe says, essentially one thing: the direction of sea level, which is up. How much, and where, and how it will affect both human and natural systems, we don’t yet know. Somewhere down the road we’ll no doubt have to spend a lot of money protecting the coast. It’s nice to have an option that provides immediate habitat benefits, and the Living Shoreline is one first, pilot-scale step in unlocking that option. “We do consider it a win-win, but we’re cautious about how much we can say about it at this point,” Boyer says. “There are big decisions we want to make as a society on how close to the shoreline we have our infrastructure. [And] oysters and our reefs are part of a solution that everyone, scientists and managers included, will have to address.” When the reefs were first built, someone contacted Latta to ask how oysters could fix sea level rise, wondering if oysters, since they’re filter feeders, would just suck up all the water, saving the Bay from climate change. Latta gracefully responded that there are no bad questions. But that question illustrates an unfortunate truth about climate change: There is no easy way out. There’s no magic oyster reef we’ll be able to throw into the water to drink away our problems. “Focusing on what might be the solution, and even small ways to adapt,” Latta says, “gives me great hope.”
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First Person Conservation Action Award: Craig Anderson Interview by Aleta George It’s sometimes hard to tell what Craig Anderson loves more: land, people, music, outdoor adventure, or his 29-year-old Toyota pickup. That’s because whatever he’s doing at any particular moment, he’s doing it with great passion, keen intention, and a big heart. So it’s no surprise that in the 17 years that Craig has directed LandPaths, it has become one of the most dynamic, innovative, and effective — and eclectic — conservation organizations in the Bay Area, pioneering new and fun (never forget the fun part) ways to connect people to land…and perhaps save the world in the process. food, nature, and people. What’s the importance of that triangle? ca: We have largely been disconnected from land in the technology-fixated Western Hemisphere. LandPaths’ job is to reestablish the connection of people and place. That means wildlands, but it also includes participatory agriculture. The ability to connect over land gives us a greater sense of community wholeness and integrity. ag: LandPaths connects people to land in Sonoma County. As state and county programs lost funds and the capacity to operate and steward open space, your organization developed a model called “peoplepowered parks.” What is your definition of a people-powered park? ca: People-powered parks are an idea that is still evolving on each individual property. Our organization comes to a piece of land not with a plan but with a purpose that involves deep participation, open dialogue, and inclusivity. Exclusion is subtle. It’s very common in the community-based conservation field to bring people to our mission and show them what we do, instead of helping them show us how they would express our mission. That’s a big difference. A peoplepowered park is also about ownership. As one of my former staff members said about Bayer Farm, “We offer the dignity of responsibility.” When the Grove of Old Trees in Occidental opened for public access in 2000, it was the first privately owned preserve in Sonoma County that was free and open to the public every day of the year from dawn to dusk. Our staff manages
the grove in a strong partnership with Friends of the Grove, or fog. They fundraise, walk the trail, put chips on the trail, mend fences, and talk to neighbors. They are there every single day and what they provide is beyond what can be valued. ag: LandPaths has had success doing something that other organizations talk about but don’t manage to do: earn the participation of the entire community. How did you do it? ca: Twelve years ago, assistant director Lee Hackeling and I started to ask that question and got a small grant from the Coastal Conservancy and the Bay Area Open Space Council. Our first attempt was an outing for the Spanishspeaking community. We hired a guide, aired psas on a Spanish-language station, and advertised in a bilingual paper. We got three people on the hike. I was crestfallen. We went back to the drawing board and ultimately figured out that we not only needed to change the way we communicated our programming, we needed to change our programming. Frankly, taking a ninemile hike on a new piece of open space with a naturalist pointing out oak galls doesn’t necessarily appeal to everyone. We also learned that we needed to change our organization’s face to reflect our community. Now we have three people on a staff of fifteen who are bilin-
gual, bicultural, and Mexican-born. They are phenomenal staff members. Diversity in Sonoma County is not just the Latino–European–Pan Asian community. It’s also people from a traditional agricultural and ranching background; it’s vintners; it’s Gen X and Gen Y; it’s families; and frankly, it’s urbanites who are so busy trying to keep up in this world that their understanding of local economy and food has not expanded beyond big-box stores. We’re not happy at LandPaths until we’re able to reach everybody.
John Burgess
ag: LandPaths seems to be the intersection of
Bay Nature’s 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 2014 awards were presented at Bay Nature’s Local Hero Awards Dinner in Oakland on Sunday, March 23.
ag: How do you see yourself as a leader in this
organization? ca: When I was a rafting guide, in a previous life chapter, I found that there were times to let the people in the boat paddle so that they could learn about currents and eddy lines and underwater obstructions. And there were other times to say, in a clear and hopefully calm voice, “All back!” or “Back left! Now back right!!” Because if you didn’t, you’d flip and swim. I’ve been at LandPaths for 17 years now, and these days my leadership role is more to inspire our staff, volunteers, and community to incubate their own ideas (continued on page 38) and projects. april–june 2014
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First Person Environmental Education Award: Liam O’Brien Interview by Eric Simons In 1996, a tiger swallowtail butterfly flew into a small backyard in San Francisco’s Duboce Triangle. It paused long enough to catch the attention of Liam O’Brien, who was having second thoughts about his successful career as a stage actor. Shortly thereafter O’Brien joined the Lepidopterist Society, began to scour the region for butterflies, and turned his incredible talent for observation and theater into a career as San Francisco’s foremost butterfly champion. The architect of urban butterfly habitat projects like Tigers on Market Street and the Green Hairstreak Corridor, and the restoration of Mission blues on Twin Peaks, O’Brien is a man on a mission to prove that habitats for humans and habitats for butterflies aren’t mutually exclusive.
Amber Hasselbring
es: OK, well, let’s start with the big one: What is it about butterflies? lo: Well, I can’t really answer that. On a basic level, clearly our species loves beauty; that’s a no-brainer. Like anyone, I was enthralled. But why did I go buy a guide and join the Lepidopterist Society? My brother Colin says, “Liam, you don’t do anything half-assed.” But I’m equally enthralled by our relationship to these creatures. A building just went in down the street, one of these major condos. They have a rooftop garden for endangered butterflies. It’s like, really? The nearest bay checkerspot is 90 miles to the south. But I know what’s going on there. Our species likes to help things. It makes us feel good. And yet these creatures have a distinct lifestyle, they’re not just randomly flying around everyone’s garden. So people’s exploitation of butterflies I find equally enthralling.
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es: So it’s almost like the question of “Why?” is as motivating as the scientific study? lo: Well, I definitely want my passion to be grounded in science. I was lucky that in my early years, in the nineties, I hooked up with a PhD entomology student at Berkeley named Jim Kruse. He was really into Hemileuca moths. He would let me go with him to set up moth lights on the Mexican border, and I’d just stand there and ask dumb questions. His wife was pregnant, and he was like, “Dude, she said I can have 24 hours, want to go to Utah?” And we would just drive all day for one species. So I had these sort of gonzo years. I’m definitely lucky that [UC Berkeley lepidopterist] Jerry Powell has been a great mentor. And [San Francisco State entomologist] John Hafernik. People ask, “Why do you say you’re a lepidopterist?” I’m like, “Well, first of all, it’s a friggin’ cool word. No, I don’t have a degree in it, but I’m pretty proud of what I’ve done.” I could never have guessed I was going to do this. es: And you kind of mixed your previous theater career with some love of the outdoor world. lo: I guess. [Robert Michael] Pyle says in his book, “Going on a butterfly walk with Liam is an experience in street theater.” What the heck does that mean? I’m not acting. This is just me. I’m
not a character out there, I’m just the nerdy lepidopterist. I get that. But I have a big personality; always have, since I was little. The San Francisco Chronicle wrote a profile on me and called it “Butterfly madness.” Come on. es: Does it feel like madness? lo: No, not at all! I guess I’m sort of an add border collie. Because if I flip it over, I guess I have a big loud voice and I point at things and go, “Look at this!” es: So how do you know what to point at? lo: I’m a trained actor, so I have acute powers of observation. I just do. es: You almost have your own creation myth about how you took up with lepidoptery. lo: It was down the street from here, in the Duboce Triangle. I had just come back from New York, where I did Les Miz for three years, and I was like, get me the hell out of New York City. I had a weird career as an actor. I had a lot of success, a career people would dream of, but I never had an emotional investment. So I got cast to replace Garret Dillahunt in Angels of America. And where I was staying, there was a window facing the back and this butterfly flew into the yard and it was a tiger swallowtail, which is this huge new project I have now. That’s oddly serendipitous, 15 years later. But it’s only in retrospect I can look at that moment and see the change: 180 degrees. Theater was waning. I don’t miss it at all. It was a lot of stress. es: So you started going out, and— lo: Yeah, I surveyed all the butterflies in San Francisco. Jerry Powell said, “Learn where you live.” And I really took that to heart. Jumped every vacant-lot fence and combed the city. es: What did you learn? lo: Well, to be so cavalier at first, thinking, “God, what a lousy place for butterflies,” then to just really go out. Am I sad that Paul Ehrlich wrote that 52 butterflies used to fly in San Francisco and I know there’s only 34 now? Do I get sad about what is going on? Or do I tell people that half of our butterflies, females of 18 of the 34 species, now use weeds in the street to lay eggs? A female (continued on page 38) butterfly is usually a
First Person Youth Engagement Award: Cheyanna Washburn Interview by Jacoba Charles We first encountered Cheyanna Washburn in her role as an intern with the California Phenology Project at the John Muir National Historic Site in her hometown of Martinez. Now a student at Diablo Valley College in botany and recreational therapy, Cheyanna found her path into the natural world at the alternative New Leaf Leadership Academy, where she participated in many restoration and environmental education projects. Today, Cheyanna continues on that path as the Youth Programs Assistant at the Historic Site, where she develops programs for youth to learn about their environment and the legacy of John Muir.
to Martinez when I was about seven.
jc: How did you get interested in the outdoors? cw: I’ve always had a curiosity for
nature. When I was younger I always wanted to go outside and play in mud and dirt — my mom tells me that a lot. I didn’t really grow up having much of a backyard — my mom was a single parent who was mostly trying to get the bills paid and we lived in apartment complexes. But my grandpa believed in camping, so I have memories of camping with him on Angel Island and at Lake Berryessa. Also, because I’m 25 percent Cherokee, my mother and I would go to gatherings where there were drum circles and I made moccasins and learned about the Cherokee. That really helped expose me to my more natural side. jc: Tell me about your high school experience. cw: I went to the Environmental Studies Academy, which is now called New Leaf Leadership Academy. It’s an alternative program within the Martinez Unified School District that emphasizes handson, experience-based learning. I jumped right into restoration projects and other things that were hands-on and I wound up doing almost every single project. We did ecological peer mentoring projects to help bring ecological awareness to youth at local elementary schools; we did wildlife monitoring with professional biologists; and we did six mural projects about John Muir, which is really pretty cool, because he lived in Martinez. The summer after my freshman year I was a
conservation corps leader at John Muir’s house in Martinez. jc: Did New Leaf make it easy for you to be so active? cw: They asked me if there was anything that I was interested in and pretty much put it on a silver platter for me. That was the first time that had ever happened to me. I was at Alhambra High School for my first semester and I was definitely a struggling student. I had some bad habits and I personally didn’t see myself graduating. But as soon as I got to New Leaf, I hit the ground running and I graduated with over a year’s worth of extra credit. New Leaf provided opportunities that were perfect for my learning style. I have add — not very intense, but it’s really hard for me to focus on one thing for a long period of time without being physically engaged with it. Before that, I didn’t know I was a hands-on learner who needed to write everything down and hear it as well; I just thought I couldn’t learn. I’ll tell you something really embarrassing, but I’m also really proud of it: between junior high and the end of freshman year at New Leaf, I went from a 0.5 average to a 4.0. jc: When did you decide on doing environmental work as a career? cw: In my senior year , I was selected by the Children’s Jacoba Charles
jc: Where did you grow up? cw: I was born in Antioch but we moved
Nature Network as one of four teen representatives to Disney’s Nature & Kids Celebration. They flew us down to Disney World in Florida along with other youth from around the world. There were three days of speakers and seminars about conservation. It was great. Having the opportunity to go to these events about youth development, and engaging the leader inside of us, and having speakers who had amazing experiences — I actually cried in the middle it, it was so inspiring. I thought to myself, “I’m here because I’m one of these people who changed something in the world.” After that I made myself own it, in a sense. I realized maybe this isn’t just about high school; this is my career. jc: What were your favorite natural places around where you grew up? cw: The places where I went camping with my grandpa, like Angel Island. But in my mind the place I always thought about was Yosemite. But I never thought I’d get to go there until I was old and retired and could afford the trip there. And now I’ve been there! I was chosen for an internship at the park last summer. It was amazing going from “I’ll never go there until I’m old” to working there for three months. jc: You’ve been involved with the Phenology Project for several years now. What is it? cw: The California Phenology Project is a way to get the youth and other community members involved in observing changes in their local environment (continued on page 38) through observation
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Leadership in 2014 also requires that I not just look at LandPaths’ mission, but that I work with our organization to heal the wounds in our community. That includes the melting of ice sheets up north where the polar bears live. That includes the death of Andy Lopez [the 13-year-old boy fatally shot by a Sonoma County sheriff ’s deputy in Santa Rosa in October 2013], and the seeming alienation that leads young men to commit acts of violence. Those of us who work for nonprofits and community-based organizations need to follow our missions, but we also need to figure out how our mission can help bind the wounds of our communities. I look at cyberbullying, school shootings, and juvenile obesity as conservation problems. I believe that the great pain and suffering in our communities and in our civilization can be addressed if we do our work better, which is to connect people to land, culture, and hope. That, to me, is true leadership. ag: What’s more fun? Fishing from your kayak on the Sonoma Coast; playing in your band, Cahoots; or attending a LandPaths board meeting? ca: They’re all fun because they’re all productive. Even when a meeting is hard and even when the seas are choppy, I love my work. That includes going to board meetings and it includes paddling in my kayak in 25-knot winds when I feel I’m going to die in order to pick up a crab pot. ag: What keeps you up at night? ca: Thinking about how our organization could be better. It’s a sacred act for someone to give you land. LandPaths now owns four pieces of land. Families dearly loved all four of them, and I stay up at night thinking about how we will care for, financially sustain, and provide programs for every preserve. I actually think right now is the most exciting time to be alive. I believe we’re living at the crest of a wave where we can help turn our civilization toward living in greater harmony with not only the land but with each other. I’m sure by the time I go to the convalescent home — if I’m lucky enough to live that long — the sides of buildings will be gigantic vertical kale farms. There’s going to be the weirdest stuff. I just think it’s a really exciting time to be alive.
(Anderson, continued from page 35)
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generalist within a family of plants, so if a new mallow is on the block, she’s got a new option. A new tree on the street—there because our species thinks it’s pretty— and she goes, “Oh, my kids can eat that.” That’s the interesting story to me. That’s kind of an amazing adaptation. And you know, I’m a non-native. I’m doing the best I can to live in a hostile ecosystem as well. I always say, “Smart girl. She’s moved over to a weed.” I don’t think I’m answering any of your questions. es: Has there been a lot of learning process? For the non-butterfly people among us, it’s hard to tell the difference. How — lo: I’m from a world of white-hot honesty. I really have a lot of confidence in who I am, and many times I’m confidently wrong. The thing that separates you from the sociopaths is that if you’re emphatic, and I’m an emphatic speaker, you have to know that you might be emphatically wrong. I learned that one early. You have to check your ego. They interviewed the silent-screen star Lillian Gish. She was 94 years old. They asked her, “Ms. Gish, what is the key to longevity?” What do you think she said? “Curiosity.” I don’t know who said this to me, but the first moment of stewardship is learning the name of the thing in front of you. es: The final question: Do you have a favorite butterfly? lo: Probably the green hairstreak because that emerald green is just jaw-dropping, and what it’s come to represent as a change in my life, and this kind of crazy band of people in the neighborhood on the west side of San Francisco. Robert Michael Pyle talks about — that it’s not just endangered species, it’s the extinction of experience. You used to be able to see a little green butterfly all the way across this tiny peninsula, from sea to Bay. Now the experience of seeing this little green butterfly is trapped in this neighborhood. But you know what, I’m such a freakazoid, I like them all. Cabbage white! Really? Really! They’re all sort of fascinating to me. (O’Brien, continued from page 36)
of seasonal changes in selected plants. I got involved as an intern at the John Muir National Historic Site in 2011, when I was 17. Now I’m able to look at plants and say, “Oh, that is that type of plant,” or “Oh look, it’s budding right now.” It’s almost like it’s normalized in my brain. It used to be so hard, but now I have a story behind each plant. Also, just seeing the physical evidence of climate change makes me step back and look at my own life. jc: What do you find most exciting about your new job? cw: As a Youth Programs Assistant at the John Muir Historic Site, I connect high school students to restoration events and volunteer opportunities. I do training for phenology, so I get kids connected to climate change and how that relates to them. I’m now the kind of person who I got help from when I was in high school. I’m still feeling my way, but its kind of everything I’ve ever wanted. jc: Is part of your work motivating your peers to be interested in environmental issues? cw: Definitely, yes, like these experiences taking youth out on hikes and letting them know about things to look at that they wouldn’t have noticed before. As soon as they get a chance to do it, it just clicks. The new interns I’m working with right now are so excited. They’re like, “I get to learn the plants and know which are the bad or good ones? And I get to wear a uniform and answer questions?” They just never realized they could do anything like that before. jc: What are your goals for the next few years? cw: I’m hoping to apply for another internship in Yosemite, but in more of a lead position where you manage students in the internship. That position is more focused on education, ecological awareness, and public speaking, which are things I definitely want to work on. I want to push beyond my own limits and gain more experience — but also still be a part-time student. jc: What’s your long-term career goal? cw: To become a superintendent at a national park, hopefully somewhere amazing and beautiful. I wouldn’t mind Yosemite! I know it’s going to happen. I’ve actually had dreams about it lately. (Washburn, continued from, page 37)
Scott Severn
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The District has protected over 100,000 acres of agricultural land and open space in Sonoma County.
to
sites at the San Leandro Golf Course and Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont have had relatively stable numbers, with around 5,000 at the golf course and 1,032 at the farm. Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz showed the most surprising results this year: In 2012, the number of monarchs overwintering at the park’s seaside eucalyptus grove dropped to an all-time low of just 500; this past year the number rebounded to 4,600. “With all the fires and the drought, I was really worried that we wouldn’t see many monarchs this year,” said Martha Nitzberg, an interpretive specialist at Natural Bridges. “We were very pleased that it was a better population than last year.” Nitzberg said that several changes at the park may have contributed to the
higher number of overwintering monarchs. In 2012, the park’s scrub-jay population disrupted the monarchs, so much so that few butterflies stayed for the duration of winter. Since then, staff have relandscaped various areas of the park to make them less favorable to nesting scrub-jays, and the scrub-jay population seemed to decrease in 2013. While monarch populations at some overwintering sites were up and others were down, monarchs in California overall are at a fraction of their historic number. In 1997, the count’s inaugural year, more than 1.2 million monarchs were counted at 101 coastal California sites. By the following year the number had dropped to just 564,349 butterflies recorded. Jepson says that researchers are still trying to explain the decline, but issues such as loss of overwintering sites and spring and summer breeding habitat, use of herbicides, and drought have all contributed. Many of the same factors have been blamed for bleak news about the monarch population east of the Rockies, (continued on page 40) much of which over-
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in the bigger statistical picture, the increase is an encouraging sign that monarch populations are hanging on. “We were bracing ourselves for that downward trend to continue this year,” said Mia Monroe, a Xerces Society volunteer (and supervising naturalist at Muir Woods National Monument) who coordinates the yearly count. “So to have the population be a little higher and to have some sites really holding on to the monarchs is encouraging.” For the annual survey, volunteers across the state meticulously count scores of butterflies during a three-week period around Thanksgiving. In the Bay Area, about 20 volunteers participated in the 2013 count, Monroe said. The count focuses on the population of monarchs west of the Rocky Mountains that overwinter in coastal California. In the spring, these monarchs will fly east to the Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada foothills, as well as north to Oregon and Washington, in search of milkweed on which to lay their eggs. For the past few years, overwintering (continued from page 7)
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Twice a month, from October to March, Audubon California volunteers spread out along the shores of Richardson Bay from Sausalito to Tiburon, pull out their spotting scopes, and count the birds they see bobbing on the water. In December 2013 they saw a familiar mix of species: cormorants, grebes, ruddy ducks, scaups, and buffleheads. But there was a surprise. The tally of 21,000 birds in Richardson Bay the week before Christmas 2013 was higher than any tally since the surveys began in 2006 — much higher. The previous high was 13,000 birds. “This year we destroyed that record,” said Kerry Wilcox, the sanctuary manager at Richardson Bay Audubon Center and Sanctuary. “It’s very encouraging.” And if this year was all about volume, scaups certainly did not disappoint. The December survey tallied a combined 16,000 greater and lesser scaups, making them the most populous bird on the bay. Birdwatchers on the shore could see them in dense floating flocks of thousands of individuals. While the numbers slowly decreased after the December count, there were still higher-than-average numbers of birds in the bay through the winter, and sanctuary staff consider it a huge year. Tens of thousands of migratory ducks, cormorants, and shorebirds stop
Create a California Createand a native California water-wise native and landscape! water-wise landscape!
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Richardson Bay Sets Winter Bird Count Record
in Richardson Bay — an arm of San Francisco Bay—in the winter months. Some stay for a few days to rest before continuing south, while others stay the entire season. The rest of the year the bay is relatively quiet. “We do have some beautiful terns, but overall this isn’t a great place to bird in the summer,” said Jordan Wellwood, the sanctuary’s director. “The bulk of the birds floating on the bay are winter migrants.” December through February typically see the greatest spike in bird numbers, which correlates with the annual Richardson Bay spawning of Pacific herring. The small fish come in large schools into the shallow waters of the sanctuary to spawn, with their eggs coating blades of eelgrass, blanketing docks and pilings, washing ashore, and providing a veritable smorgasbord for the gulls and ducks. But not everyone is showing up to the table. “One thing you don’t see is a lot of scoters out there,” Wilcox said. Scoters are diving ducks that have become something of a poster species for the health of San Francisco Bay, due to their declining population. “The general trend over the past four to five decades is downward and no one is exactly sure why,” Wilcox said. Scoters breed farther north than most other ducks, building their nests on permafrost along the banks of shallow lakes. Scientists don’t yet know how this habitat is changing, but it is likely that the effects of climate change are more pronounced there. And with warmer winter temperatures, insect and other invertebrate prey may be emerging earlier in the season, before scoter ducklings hatch and have a chance to feed on them. Scientists also worry that environmental contaminants such as mercury picked up in the Bay may be harming scoter breeding success. But scoter nests are spread out over vast expanses of boreal forest, and tracking them is no easy task. “There may be one or two hens on a little tiny lake,” said usgs biologist Susan de la Cruz, who studies the linkage between the winter and breeding habitats of Pacific coast scoters. And although some nests have been tracked, the eggs in them didn’t have particularly high levels of contaminants. “There is no one smoking gun,” de la
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winters at sites in Mexico. A February report from the World Wildlife Fund in Mexico found that the number of monarchs overwintering in Mexico’s Oyamel fir forest has reached an all-time low. The western monarch butterfly counts are volunteer-driven, and the Xerces Society calls volunteer efforts critical to understanding monarch trends. To learn more, or to volunteer, visit xerces.org /butterfly-conservation/western-monarchthanksgiving-count/ [Alessandra Bergamin]
(continued from page 39)
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Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary
th e Sanctuary status could also limit coastal development and the construction of erosion-control barriers such as seawalls, which change the distribution of sand on the seafloor and affect aquatic animals that live in sandy habitats, such as halibut and Dungeness crab. Maria Brown, superintendent of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, said she hopes to have a draft management plan for the expansion completed this spring (2014). There will then be a 90-day public comment period, with public scoping meetings to incorporate and address further concerns. Congress would have 45 days to object to the final proposal, Brown said, but she’s optimistic that by the end of 2014 the sanctuaries will more than double in size. [Rachel Diaz-Bastin]
grou n d
The Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries cover roughly 1,800 square miles off the northern California coast and provide rich feeding grounds for populations of endangered blue, humpback, and gray whales and white sharks. The marine habitats protected by the sanctuary status conferred in the 1980s are abundant in marine wildlife, and they provide many benefits to fishermen, researchers, tourists, and the coastal economies that depend on them. They’re a success story for conservation — a story, scientists and local legislators say, that could be better if it were bigger. Senator Barbara Boxer and former Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey spent almost a decade trying to expand the
to
Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank Marine Sanctuaries Look to Expand
sanctuaries, introducing legislation in each of the last four congressional sessions only to have each effort stalled by Republicans in the House of Representatives. So in 2012 Boxer and Woolsey asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expand the boundaries administratively — a process that takes more time and incorporates public feedback, but also one that is more likely to advance. A proposal now under noaa consideration, which supporters hope will be made final by the end of this year, would more than double the size of the sanctuaries, protecting the Sonoma County coastline and part of the Mendocino coastline to Point Arena, west to the edge of the continental shelf. Unlike the more restricted state designation of “marine protected areas,” sanctuary designation does not entail restrictions on fisheries, said Mary Jane Schramm, public outreach specialist at the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. But sanctuary status does prohibit oil exploration and drilling.
ear
Cruz said. “It’s likely several things, and people are desperately trying to figure it out.” [Rachel Diaz-Bastin]
su pport f or bay natur e The Bay Nature Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes exploration and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through tax-deductible contributions, the Friends of Bay Nature invest in the continued growth and development of our capacity to serve as an independent voice for local nature and conservation. The Friends of Bay Nature list below shows individual donations received between Dec. 4, 2013 and March 3, 2014. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Circle and receive invitations to special events and outings. Friends of Bay Nature $5000+ Anonymous (1) $2500–4,999 Jane & Richard Peattie $1000–2499 Nina Brooks Tom Debley Marilyn & Nat Goldhaber Tracy Grubbs & Richard Taylor Louis Jaffe & Kitty Whitman Kimberly & Matthew Krummel Mia Monroe Larry Orman & Marice Ashe Lester Rowntree & Meg Conkey Michael Santullo The Laney Thornton Foundation John Waterbury $500–999 Anonymous (3) Jacqueline Desoer Carol Donohoe Paul Epstein & Jennifer Traub Tom & Cheryl Fields-Tyler Dan & Hilary Goldstine The Hufty Foundation Jerry & Lola Kent Ashok Khosla & Susan Bodenlos Peter & Sue LaTourrette John & Valerie Metcalfe Bruce Naegel & Constance Roberts Virginia Slaughter Chuck Slaughter & Molly West Max Stoaks Peter Wiley & Valerie Barth Trevlyn & Jumbo Williams David Wimpfheimer $250–499 Anonymous (1) Alan & Helen Appleford Julie Barney Mary Burns Helen Cagampang Chris & Lucy Cesar Mary Ann Cobb & Peter Wilson Doug Lipton & Cindy Daniel Frank Delfino B. Mason & Anne Flemming Susan Forsythe (in memory of Paul Patterson) Jan Hintermeister Karen Larsen David Loeb Paula & Mark Lowery Lynn MacDonald Daniel & Lynne Russell Jake Sigg $100–249 Anonymous (3) Jeannette Alexich &
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Bruce Harris Scott Atthowe & Patricia Thomas Linda Bartera Ralph Benson Sandy Biagi & David Ogden Peter Brastow Brian Carr Brian Cilker Thomas Colton & Ellen Simms Paul Da Silva Dan & Kathy Dixon Mark Eliot & Kelly Moran William Euske Margaret & Todd Evans Evan Evans Alf & Sarah Fengler Barbara & John Friedenbach Heather Furmidge Peter Gleick & Nicki Norman Mark Glusker Larry Goldman & Paci Hammond Gary & Nicola Gordon Kirk Gould Mark Greenberg Diane Guerin William Guilford & Marcella Lillis Lee Hackeling Lisa Hall Cricket Halsey Barbara & Earl Hamlin Deidre Harrison Jules Heumann Jane Hiatt John Igoe Susan Jacobson Carolyn Johnson & Rick Theis Larry Jones Giselle Jurkanin Dorothy Kakimoto Jonathan Karpf & Kathy Zaretsky Adam Keats Kathy & William Korbholz Lucinda & Richard Kraynick Jane Kriss Robert & Karen Kustel Michael Kwong Linda Lancione David De Leeuw H. J. Lindqvist Rick Lloyd Cynthia Lloyd Frank & Sally Lopez Philip Maldari Tamia Marg Claire Max Peter Mayer Erinn McIntyre Ralph Mihan Barbara Moulton Christine Mueller Audre & Roger Newman Anne & Charles Olsen Christine Orr David Parks & Maggie Sharp Mary & Matt Powell Daren Prouty Merna Richardson & Larry Wright Lennie Roberts
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Bay Nature Funders are foundations, agencies, and institutions that have provided funding for general support, specific editorial content, or other programs over the past 12 months. To learn more about how you can support Bay Nature, contact Development Director Judith Katz at (510)528-8550 x105 or judith@ baynature.org. You can also donate directly online at baynature.org/ donate. Thank you for your interest and support.
Elaine Michaud & Charlie Stott David Miller Susan Mines Steve Mullin Clare Murphy Marjorie & Richard Murray Sharon Nelson Sharon Ordeman Bruce Orr James & Marcia Parker Andrea Pflaumer Mary Pierce Penny Pollock Donna Preece Joanna & Thomas Reynolds $50-99 Wayne Rodoni Anonymous (2) Subir Sanyal John Allen Christine & Martin Sculati Catherine Atcheson Drew Shell Sarah Bade Sharie & Clem Shute Judith Barker Lynn Sinclair Peter Barnes Charles Ray Six Maria Beamer Igor & Shirleymae Skaredoff Magnus Bennedsen Cindy Russell & Cris Benton David Smernoff Anonymous Elinor Spellman Don Broderson Nicki Spillane China Brotsky David Stoddart Ronald Brown Peter Alley & Carolyn Strange Deborah Brown George Strauss Barbara Callison Anaya Rose & Gary Stroud Brenda Carter Roy Takai Joanne Castro Dan & Janet Tankersley Chevron Humankind Daniel & May Tjoa Matching Gift Program Mari Tustin Fred & Joan Collignon Douglas Vaughan Sylvia Darr Margaret & Robert Davenport Nancy Walters Cynthia & Robert Wantland John Derdivanis Scott Watson Irene Ehret Don Weden Rev. & Mrs. John H. Elliott David Wegenka John & Barbara Erickson Daniel Woodward Linda Felt Barbara & Tom Wysham Tim Forell Pauline Yeckley Stephen Foster Karin Zahorik Robert Freidenberg Lewis & Patricia Zuelow Rachael Gershenson Dale Gieringer $25–49 Elisabeth Gleason Anonymous (5) Elizabeth & Wade Greene Andrew Aldrich Daniel Greene Laura Alonso & Faisal Tbeileh Ed & Jeanne Griffiths Linda & Robert Alwitt Andrew Gunther Johanna Anderholm Robert Haxo Jean Andrews Faye & Tom Hendricks Harriette Atkins Peitsa Hirvonen Beverly & Gary Austin Nan Ho Tom & Lili Beggs Reed Holderman Keith & Atsuko Bennett D. L. Humphreys Robert Berman Thomas Johnson Gary Brand Kathy Kahn Gudrun Kleist & James Morel Ann Brown Jim Callahan David Larson Patricia Chambers Mark Lewis Danine Cozzens Linda Lustig Sandra Curtis Suzanne Maddux Hunter Cutting Carlos Marquez William Davis, Jr. Robert Mauceli Karen DeMello Jean & Steve McDonagh George Doeltz Sam McFadden Kim Ecclesine & Ruben Salcido Jamie Menasco Ricky Erway Edgar Mendelsohn Susan Floore David Sacarelos Dianne Safholm Susan Schwartz Carolyn Serrao Warren Siegel Steve & Wendy Smit Molly & Wesley Smith David Strassman Chris Thorman John & Linda Thurston Ellen & Mike Turbow Randy Vogel J. Patrick Waddell Matthew Wilson & Lyle York
Maria Gounaris Natasha Granoff Douglas Gray Joan Grosser Paul Grunland Eugenie & Walter Halland David Halligan & Simone Hoelck Bruce & Coral Harper Russell Hartman Egon Hoyer David Hutton Charles Kennard Peggy Chang & Gerald Knezevich Cinda & Thomas Mac Kinnon Danelle & Thomas Mann James McGrew Nancy Mckown Tina Meinig Phillip & Laura Miller Robert Moeller Shelby Morales Gregory & Jean Myers Sheldon Nelson Camille Nowell Pat Overshiner Laura Owens Scott Pease Nadine Peterson & Mike Tuciarone Dolores Priem Lisa Quigley Lynn Quirolo Caesar Quitevis Jeanne Rosenmeier Donald Roth Richard Rowland Steve Ruley Bruce Schine Lisa Schmidt Sandy Sher Susan Sherman Malika Singh Maryann Sargent & Stephen Solnit Anthony & Carol Somkin Tom Spiekerman Peter Stiehler Karen Taylor Steve TenBroeck Ann & Jerry Tennant Jack Tolvanen Frank & Lynn Ubhaus Mark Valentine Linda Wagner Eileen Wampole Alice Webber Florence Weber Deborah Weinstein Jennifer & Marshall White Virginia Wilcox Amanda Worden In-Kind Donors Carrie McAlister | The Grubb Co. Commerce Printing Hafner Vineyard Preston Farm & Vineyards Setfarth & Shaw Trumer Brauerei Berkeley
Bay Nature Funders Cargill Salt Company Clif Bar Family Foundation Coastal Conservancy Craigslist Charitable Fund Dean Witter Foundation Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Charitable Foundation East Bay Regional Park District Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Jewish Communal Fund Pacific Gas & Electric Company S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society Thomas J. Long Foundation Event Sponsors Carol Baird & Alan Harper Christopher & Kathryn Dann Will & Julie Parish John & Frances Raeside Sara Sanderson & Eric Weaver Greg Sarris Steve & Monie TenBroeck Bart & Nancy Westcott Clif Bar Family Foundation Friends of Alhambra Creek Google Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District Sonoma County Water Agency Union Bank Silent Auction Donors Barefoot Winery Caffé Delle Stelle California Native Plant Society Costanoa Lodge & Resort East Bay Regional Park District Evergreen Lodge at Yosemite Footloose Forays Hornblower Cruises & Events Jay House Vacation Rental Tom Killion KOR Water Landmark Vineyards John Muir Laws Liam O’Brien Organics Mechanics Presidio Trust REI SFJazz Touchstone Climbing Yexplore Special Thanks Jerry Kent Sue Rosenthal
Los Vaqueros Interpretive Center and Marina Come us!
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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
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Ask the Naturalist m i c h a e l q: Will there be major changes in the plants and animals on Mount Diablo as a result of the Morgan Fire? [Jean, Berkeley] a: Well, unfortunately (maybe fortunately) we have a lot of data from wildland fires that can help us answer that question. The scientific monitoring of the massive Yellowstone Fire of 1987 generated a huge amount of valuable data on postfire regeneration. In the Bay Area, our gold mine of information comes from the 1995 Vision Fire at Point Reyes. Here’s the short answer: A few extremely fire-adapted plants and fungi may pop up; and the relative abundance of native mammals and birds may change. But essentially there will be no unusual species. Mount Diablo and Point Reyes both have Mediterranean vegetation types that have evolved to cope with periodic fires, which naturally occur every 30 to 130 years (often due to lightning strikes).
e l l i s So fire plays a regular and regenerative role in both ecosystems and even though both of these recent fires were started by human activity, they replicated a naturally occurring phenomenon. Some plants, such as the so-called fire pines, actually require fire or heat to release seeds and start germination: the Bishop pines at Point Reyes, and the gray and Coulter pines on Mount Diablo. Another strategy is root or stump sprouting characteristic of shrubs like manzanita and chamise. Then there are geophytes —literally earth plants, such as soaproot, zigadene, and iris— that grow from bulbs. With enough rain, we can expect rapid regeneration of these plants this spring. A fascinating observation by researchers from Point Reyes Bird Observatory (now Point Blue Conservation Science) after the Vision Fire was the remarkable
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breeding success of many resident coastal scrub birds (such as song sparrows) in the severely burned habitat. Intuitively you’d think a degraded environment would cause a decrease in productivity. But in reality many of these birds had double broods! Then there are the invertebrates, including the charismatic tarantulas of Mount Diablo. I suspect the fire killed many of the males who may have been out searching for mates when the fire hit. The females, on the other hand, stay down in their underground burrows and may have escaped. But as long as there are thriving populations nearby, these large spiders should have no trouble recolonizing the area. Small mammals like shrews, gophers, voles, and deer mice probably suffered high mortality. However large animals like deer and coyotes had no problem escaping the flames. But nature works in interesting ways, so it will be fascinating to follow the changes on Mount Diablo, especially the possibility of rare wildflower displays this spring.
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E AYUDAR A PROTEGER A IHSS DE TES EN EL FUTURO?
se en nuestra Campaña de “Saludable en Casa”
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Recycl ing Isn’t Free Noticias de CUHW LA VERSIÓN DE LA CONVENCIÓN
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for the cleanup, either now in prepaid fees, What’s the best way to dispose of discards later in after-the-fact taxes, or both. that can’t be reused? Easy: recycle them. oletín de los Trabajadores Unidos que Cuidan en Cas a Some communities call recycling “free” Only if they can’t be recycled or composted DENTE to encourage people to participate. Then do they have to be wasted - landfilled. In es the y coming Zero Waste world, nothing se nos haya dañado o se a nuestro político, asegure they hidey the costsdeinquegarbage fees. But ashaya (or personal uidado en los servicios de los individuos que abusado de nosotros mentalmente. wasting shrinks, little) will be un mundo viven y respiran la política durante este truth comes landfilled. de que atrapados tiempo critico en la historia del cuidado •Merecemos elthederecho bajo elRecycling esquema del e, nuestraCan total del hogar a nivel Federal y Estatal. se nos pague out. os a otros CUHW, al salir de la burbuja, Seguro Social por una vida de trabajo has expenses, recovery dor, usted emerge con nuevas ideas ahora que por un miembro de la familia. including trucks mandabe que done for estamos en período electoral este •Merecemos vacaciones pagadas, sted esfree? un agosto. Nuestras elecciones estatales for collection; No. ed vive en incluirán Ddos semanas en las que merecemos el derecho de que se nos IV facilities; Recycling ER u relación puede votar en línea o llamando trate con compasión y respeto por las SI ON employees veedorand de a un número sin costo, usando su WASTE RECYCLE & familiar, número de celular o un teléfono fijo. to sort and composting Burn and/or Bury diferente. Una vez más nos salimos de nuestra COMPOST process; cost money. años y burbuja, hemos lanzado un Programa equipment; and But they have proveedor de Voluntariado de Incentivos de marcar un hasta aquí, de nuevo, Service fees Service fees are ar, pero para ofrecer descuentos a nuestros taxes. goods to sell, delonly pasado,income sobre el rompiendo la burbuja miembros en los+negocios al mostrar commodity sales the When cities so they should ador de siempre avanzando acercándonos, sus tarjetas del Sindicatolo cual emas cost que less than representa un todos. money? show you how How do you want toganar-ganar spendpara your “CUHW está endientes Hemos establecido oficinas much they wasting. extraño. rompiendo todos los en más de 9 de nuestros condados. really charge for recycling, they won’t Wasting creates the pollution andLalongUHW, ha mayoría de las oficinas tienen need yto capacidad hide recycling behind garbage term liability Landfills the de llamadas mitosofallandfills. enfocarse en are ya durante bancos enciónlargest de de difusión de web y cuentan con cut wasting to zero. fees. They can human-created source of methane, los miembros.” gidos por grandes pantallas. Contamos con IF YOU’RE NOT FOR ZERO WASTE, a potent greenhouse gas. Every landfill will a Loretta otra acción que es también otra conforme continuamos construyendo HOW also leak eventually. Someone (you) will pay campaña burbuja que se rompe, y estasMUCH son las WASTE ARE YOU FOR?
DISCARDS
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ndado de el “Puente Hacia un Mejor Futuro” actualizaciones por email y mensajes Estamos reventando la de texto que alertan a los miembros de dificultades que enfrentamos en nuestros dico y los Urban Ore salvages for reuse at Berkeley’s transfer station. People trabajos por una paga justa, beneficios dores. En burbuja cuando nuestro Comité los últimos acontecimientos de IHSS. also bring us things and call for pickups. We conserve about médicos y oportunidades de educación, un grupo de Constitución sugiere un cambio Yo personalmente quiero 7,000 tons a year and sell the reusable goods in retail sales. al igual que las otras fuerzas de trabajo. sido los que combine el espacio de nuestro salirme de la burbuja en lathe queAge se of Waste To End We’re open until 7:00PM (receiving closes at 5:00) 360 days a year Secretario Tesorero y que cree una nueva considera la reforma h t t de p : //u r ben a nore.com uecido IHSS at sus 900 Murray, nearVicepresidente Ashby @ 7th, Berkeley. ¡No solamente lo merecemos, posición, segundo. El plan para California y sugiero que empecemos con
URBAN RE