Bay Nature Jul-Sep 2014 by Bay Nature Institute

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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 A RE A

Oh, Wilderness!

Bay Trail Takes Off at Hamilton

Making Their Mark at East Bay Parks Bioblitzing the Golden Gate

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c o n t e n t s

Redwoods

Features

The other San Francisco giants

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TRAIL BLAZing, peace seeking, wilderness wanderers WANTED

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chuck graham

MAKING THEIR MARK

BAY AREA WILD

A G e n e r at i o n t h at S h a pe d t h e E a st Bay Pa r k s

Re f l e c t i o n s o n 5 0 Ye a r s o f Wi l d e r n e s s P rot e c t i o n

In the 1970s, a rapidly expanding East Bay Regional Park District drew scores of young workers influenced by the environmental and cultural movements that were transforming American society. Over the next four decades, many of this generation stayed on board and rose to positions of leadership, gradually transforming the park district itself. Now at the end of their long careers, six from this generation sat down with Bay Nature to reflect on how they shaped the parks and how the parks shaped them. by Victoria Schlesinger

Wilderness in a busy metropolitan area like the Bay Area? Yes, indeed! It turns out that wilderness doesn’t have to be remote and far away. In fact, we have a wide variety of federal and state wilderness areas in and around the Bay Area, from the ocean-bound granitic islets of the Farallones to the sandstone spires of the Pinnacles. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the federal Wilderness Act, we take a look at these wild places nearby and reflect on the evolving concept of wilderness and its enduring value 50 years later. by John Hart

WRESTLING CLIMATE CHANGE TO THE GROUND One of the most challenging aspects of discussing global climate change is making it meaningful on a local scale. Fortunately, some of the best scientific minds in the Bay Area are working together in the Terrestrial Biodiversity and Climate Change Collaborative to track the changes already happening on the ground and build a model that can forecast future changes in our local landscapes and watersheds. Their open-air laboratory is the mosaic of grasslands, oak forests, and riparian areas in Pepperwood Preserve near Santa Rosa. by Mary Ellen Hannibal

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The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District is a champion of nature. We offer 26 preserves, over 225 miles of trails, and everything from towering redwood groves to rolling grasslands to stunning panoramic views. All free, all the time. Discover your own adventure today.

july–september 2014

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Bay View Ear to the Ground News from the conservation community and the natural world

On the Trail

The Bay Trail Takes Off at Hamilton Airfield After almost two decades of restoration work, the tides are now reclaiming the former Hamilton Airfield on San Pablo Bay near Novato. A brand-new section of Bay Trail meanders alongside ponds and wetlands, offering a close-up view of the Bay and the birds taking their rightful place in this once and future tidal marsh. by Ariel Rubissow Okamoto

Conservation in Action Citizen scientists take nature’s number in the Golden Gate National Parks by Joe Eaton

10 Signs of

12 Marsh Once More

Letter from the publisher

the Season

A tiny organism lights up our coastal waters. by Claire Peaslee

16 Elsewhere . . .

Devil’s Slide, Burleigh H. Murray, Motorcycle Hill

45 Ask the Naturalist

What’s the deal with snake sex? by Michael Ellis

46 Naturalist’s Notebook

Bush lupine, ghost moths, and a nematode by John Muir Laws

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FOR

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ERSITY o f

2014

IV a

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CAL GARD

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(footlooseforays.com). Alison Hawkes (p. 16) is Bay Nature’s online editor. 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. Claire Peaslee (p. 10) is a naturalist, writer, editor, and improvisational theater artist whose home is Point Reyes. She produces Point Blue Quarterly and other

Publisher David Loeb Editorial Director Eric Simons Development Director Judith Katz Online 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 Board of Directors Carol Baird, Christopher Dann, Catherine Fox (president), Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, David Loeb, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott, Malcolm Margolin (emeritus) Volunteers/Interns Becca Andrews, Rachel Diaz-Bastin, Sabine Bergmann, Elizabeth Devitt, Paul Epstein, Asbery Rainey, Autumn Sartain, 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/subscribe 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.

contr ibuto rs Elizabeth Devitt (p. 38) is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz. She draws on her career in veterinary medicine to write about the links among animals, people, and the environment. Joe Eaton (p. 8) lives in Berkeley and has written for the San Francisco Chronicle and Estuary News. Michael Ellis (p. 45) is a Santa Rosa–based naturalist who leads nature-based tours with Footloose Forays

Volume 14, Issue 3 july–september 2014

elizabeth hewson

y interest in the natural world had its roots in childhood trips to “the woods,” lakes, and beaches around New York and New England. But it was a few family trips to the West that exposed me to wildness on a much grander scale. So when I was 20 and got my first car, I headed west to further explore some of those places with the alluring title of “wilderness,” with their implied promise of breathtaking scenery and wild nature. It was a humbling experience for a young fellow from New York City. On our first night out in western Montana, swarms of ravenous mosquitoes forced us to beat a retreat to the car. A few days later, in the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness, our first-ever encounters—in rapid succession—with a rattlesnake and a black bear caused us to turn around and head back to the campground at the trailhead. Later, we made a less than graceful exit from the Bridger Mountains following an overnight snowfall for which we were woefully and naively unprepared. Returning to the car, we discovered that some manner of small mammal had been having its way with our food supplies. So I learned that wilderness has its daunting aspects. Yet the allure was undiminished, and when I moved out to the Bay Area a few years later, I again gravitated to designated wilderness areas for summer backpacking trips. But by now I was better prepared, and the Emigrant, Mokulemne, and Desolation Wilderness areas of the High Sierra did not disappoint. How exhilarating to clamber up the side of a granite peak above my

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

letter from the publisher

BayNature

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campsite for a vista of dramatic peaks as far as I could see, while down at my feet intimate wild gardens flourished in the patches of soil between the rocks. Sometimes it felt like I was the only person to have ever been in that place. As far as I know, the passage of the Wilderness Act 50 years ago was the first time in human history that a society has declared by statute that certain areas shall never be developed, nor exploited for commercial gain, nor intruded on by motorized transport. What do we gain from these areas? Of course, there are the great views, the escape from the distractions of “modern life.” But what strikes me as most important is the opportunity to witness forces of nature at work without the controlling hand of humans. Our urban and peri-urban parks are critical ingredients for a healthy society and for wildlife, but they are nonetheless places where natural processes have been interrupted or obscured by infrastructure, invasive species, fire suppression, and the like. But in those intimate granite gardens at 9,500 feet, miles from the nearest road, you can see right away how nature arranges itself in response to the physical characteristics of that place: See how the underlying rock has eroded; see where soil has collected and seeds gained a foothold and small animals found food and shelter. And then look up and see, on a much grander scale, how the land has been uplifted, canyons created, lakes formed, and so on. That connection to the infinite beauty and diversity created by nature offers us the opportunity to understand and respect those forces that produced all life—including our own—and that enable our existence for a time on this wild and beautiful planet. Happy wild anniversary, America!

by david loeb

Y BE RKELE

Matilija Poppy (Romneya coulteri)) | Photo by Melanie Hofmann

Front Cover: Looking north over the High Peaks area of the Pinnacles National Park at dawn in the early spring, with the Gabilan Range in the distance. The Hain Wilderness in the Pinnacles is a federally designated wilderness area, protected forever from roads and any mechanized human activity. [George Ward, georgeward.com]

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 Members | 9 - 10:30 am Public | 10:30 am - 2 pm

publications for Point Blue Conservation Science. Autumn Sartain (p. 16) is a wildlife biologist and Bay Nature editorial intern. 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.

University of California Botanical Garden botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu | 510-643-2755

Karen Gray at the Point Reyes Schoolhouse Compound Welcomes You to the Wilds of the Northern California Coast PointReyesSchoolhouse.com

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Point Reyes Schoolhouse Lodging, is honored to support the Point Reyes National Seashore Association and BayWood Artists as part of “Wilderness Forever,” the national celebration marking 50 years since the historic passage of the Wilderness Act. Special lodging rates are extended for Bay Nature readers

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Interior Secretary Praises Contra Costa Habitat Plan

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U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell took in the view from the summit of East Contra Costa’s Kreiger Peak in May to highlight the habitat conservation plan that helped preserve the peak and much of its surrounding open space. On a perfect spring day, the 175,000 acres covered by the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservation Plan (hcp) unfolded below the hilltop like a map: from the developed suburbs of Pittsburg and Bay Point to the green agricultural lands and smoky blue canals of the Delta, and south past Clayton and the looming hulk of Mount Diablo to Los Vaqueros Reservoir and Vasco Caves. The hcp, a joint project between four East County cities (Pittsburg, Oakley, Brentwood, and Clayton), Contra Costa County, the Contra Costa Flood Control and Water Conservation District, and the East Bay Regional Park District, is a tool for land use on a landscape level. It targets up to 30,000 acres for protection and up to 13,000 acres for development in the project area, in theory offering benefits to proponents of both. The parks can identify high-priority areas that will turn Mount Diablo into the centerpiece of a regional greenbelt and allow unobstructed movement for endangered

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species, while developers get streamlined endangered species approvals that save them time and money. It was developer–endangered species competition for the same turf that led to the hcp’s creation to begin with, says John Kopchick, executive director of the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy: “The reason we needed a plan was there was a land-versus-species conflict. The developers liked the low-lying land, and so did the [endangered] kit fox.” “I think it’s working,” ebrpd General Manager Robert Doyle told Jewell at the summit. “There are some complications, but overall it’s been a huge success.” In an article in the October 2011 issue of Bay Nature, John Hart wrote that “something big is happening in eastern Contra Costa County.” Jewell’s visit was a confirmation that the plan has attracted national attention. Six years into the 30-year hcp timeframe the park district has acquired 11,000 acres for futami heilemann, u.s. department of the interior

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The East Bay Regional Park District article (“Moments of Inception: The Founding Vision of the East Bay Regional Parks”) in the April–June issue contained two errors (on page 23). First, it was Olmsted Senior’s state park plan, written in the 1860s, that was buried by the Legislature, not Olmsted Junior’s subsequent 1928 plan, which was implemented. And it was Olmsted Jr., not Sr., who helped write the Organic Act for the National Park Service in 1916. (Olmsted Sr. died in 1906.) A corrected version of the article can be found at baynature.org/articles/ moments-inception-foundingvision-east-bay-regional-parks/. ❖ The On the Trail article on the Orestimba Wilderness in the April–June issue (page 12) incorrectly described the native Mutsun people as Ohlone. Mutsun and Awaswas-speaking peoples inhabited much of region that is now southwestern San Mateo County southeast to eastern Monterey and San Benito counties; the Ohlone tribes lived farther to the north. ture parks, while builders and developers who have received permits praise it for offering certainty and consistency. On Kreiger Peak, Jewell quizzed Doyle and Kopchik about the plan and the lands spread out below. She asked about the relationship between local agencies and the federal government and about the park district’s plans to engage younger visitors. She also asked several natural history questions: about the tree species on Mount Diablo, about native and nonnative grasses, about the Morgan Fire, about the mobility of endangered species. Later, Jewell said the cooperative elements of the plan make it something other areas—and even the various agencies of the “federal family”—could aspire to. “You’ve got every level of government working well (continued on page 38) j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

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was a balmy afternoon, with the massed blooms of silvery lupine scenting the air. Following a boardwalk, we crossed paths with several parties of grade-schoolers, a few of the 2,700 students participating in the bioblitz, whose excitement almost drowned out the singing mockingbirds. The dune plants were a mix of residOn the last weekend of March, 9,000 people armed with binoculars, butterfly nets, cameras, ual and reintroduced. Schaefer showed and smartphones, spread out over an archipelago of national park lands from Point Reyes in us a patch of creamy-white San Francisco wallflowers and other local specialMarin County to Mori Point on the San Mateo coast. Their goal: document as many speties. She pointed out the saw-toothed cies as possible of plants, animals, and other living things in the Golden Gate National Parks gray-green leaves of the endangered San Francisco lessingia, a sunflower relative within a 24-hour period, noon Friday to noon Saturday. It was a bioblitz, an exercise in mass that had a moment of notoriety in 2002 citizen science organized by the National Park Service and the National Geographic Society. when a newspaper columnist attacked it as a useless weed. We It’s not a perfect scientific were too early for its yelenvironment, but whatlow flowers. “Working at ever it lacks in rigor or the nursery, you learn to thoroughness it makes recognize everything when up for in quantity, with it’s not flowering,” Schaefer bioblitzers recording alsaid. Like all the group most 10,000 individual obleaders, she used the iNatservations during the event. uralist smartphone app to And indeed, the goal of record significant finds. the event was as much to Along the way, we enengage people with nearby countered local butterfly nature as it was to thorexpert Liam O’Brien, oughly catalog it. whose group searching But plenty of catalogfor butterflies and moths ing was done. As of late had just added a new speApril the tentative grand cies to the Presidio’s fauna total according to National record: a fiery orange Gulf Geographic stood at 2,303 fritillary. Larval Gulf fritilspecies: 986 single-celled laries eat only passion vine Tom Carlberg of the California Lichen Society and Betty White of the Presidio Nursery record some organisms, 655 plants, 33 leaves; years ago, the butof the 28 lichen species found in the Marin Headlands during the bioblitz, including the robust seaweeds, 111 fungi and terfly followed passion vine Niebla homalea covering this chert outcrop. lichens, 60 mollusks, 139 plantings into the western insects and arachnids, 17 fish, 19 reptiles Francis, National Geographic’s vice United States. and amphibians, 150 birds, 39 mammals, president for research, conservation, and I had been warned that nature hapand 94 taxonomic odds and ends. The exploration. “But it provides a valuable pens, rain or shine. Saturday morning animals ran the gamut from freshwater baseline. The record will be useful genwas shineless: a frog-strangler of a rainsponge to mountain lion. A surprisingly erations from now.” storm. Tori Seher, a national park biolohigh number of species—at least 80 — To get a taste of this increasingly gist based on Alcatraz, met 11 undaunted had never before been recorded in the popular exercise in citizen science, I volunteers at Crissy Field for a bird cenGolden Gate National Parks. Fifteen— joined two inventories at the Presidio in sus. As we squelched toward the restored among them the Mission blue butterfly, San Francisco. Friday’s event focused on lagoon, she coached the group’s novices the Presidio clarkia, and the San Franthe wildflowers of Lobos Dunes. Brianna on the field marks of ducks and grebes. cisco garter snake—are on federal and Schaefer, who manages the Presidio’s We spotted a couple of shorebirds, state lists of endangered and threatened native plant nursery, led a small group loons, a sparrow or two, a lone barn species. from Baker Beach up along Lobos Creek swallow. But it was hard to see plumage “It would be disingenuous to say this and into the dunes. At least 130 native details through rain-blurred binoculars, is robust science in the sense of rigorplants have been documented at this and our ranks thinned rapidly. Good ous questions and answers,” says John site, where restoration began in 1995. It weather for waterbirds, maybe; less so

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

david loeb

jessica weinberg-mccloskey, golden gate national parks

It’s Fun! It’s Science! It’s a Bioblitz!

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for observers. You can look at the 114-year-old Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count as the prototype of the bioblitz, and of grassroots citizen science in general. But including every life-form dates only to 1996. National Park Service biologist Susan Rudy, who organized a pioneering survey at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, D.C. in 1996, is credited with coining the term. The concept has since gone global, with bioblitzes from Ireland to New Zealand. Locally, the grassroots group Nerds for Nature has blitzed Lake Merritt, the Palo Alto Baylands, Sunol Regional Park, and Tilden Regional Park, all within the last few months. The bioblitz partnership between National Geographic and the National Park Service started in 2007 in Washington’s Rock Creek Park. That inaugurated the current series of annual events in national parks from Biscayne Bay to the Colorado Rockies, the Lousiana bayous, and the Sonoran Desert. (Next up: Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.) The series was expected to end in 2016, coinciding with the Park Service’s centennial, but now there’s talk of extending it. These National Geographic–National Park Service bioblitzes are the Super Bowls of bioblitzing, given their scale and the presence of scientific celebrities: Marine biologist Sylvia Earle led a beach walk at the Marin Headlands while in Muir Woods, Humboldt State University botanist Steve Sillett—profiled in Richard Preston’s book The Wild Trees— ascended a redwood in search of whatever might be living in the canopy. Sillett and his Humboldt State colleague Marie Antoine found more than 40 lichen spe-

cies living on the trunk and branches of one 250-foot-tall redwood (including one, Loxosporopsis corralifera, never found this far south before); nearby, UC Berkeley researchers Rikke Reese Næsborg and Cameron Williams found 57 lichen species and an arboreal salamander Humboldt State researchers Steve Sillett (right) and Marie Antoine ascend into the canopy of a redwood tree at Muir Woods to survey the surprising number of on a 230-foot-tall species found there. Douglas fir. biodiversity of our national parklands, A few scientists and for the engaged community in and amateur naturalists follow the which we live that supports the national national park bioblitzes around the parks on our doorsteps,” says Golden country. Gary Hevel of the Smithsonian Gate National Parks Conservancy presidrove out from Silver Spring, Maryland, dent Greg Moore. to collect 150 insect species, including a For National Park Service public dozen kinds of parasitic wasp, at Crissy affairs specialist Alexandra Picavet, the Field. Randy Miller, a professor at Baker event was “successful on many fronts. College in Michigan, was after tardiWe created new relationships with the grades, small but near-indestructible community and diverse audiences, and invertebrates also known as water bears. we got to know more about our park.” Four years ago, Miller discovered a new Bioblitzes are joint ventures in scitardigrade species in a barnacle growing entific research and public education. on a mangrove log in Biscayne National “The contribution to science is in the Park. He was hoping something interdiscovery of species, the confirmation esting would turn up in Sillett’s moss of diversity patterns,” Miller says. “The and lichen samples from the top of the biggest contribution is public education, redwoods. “The appeal is access to the with the hundreds of people who get a National Parks with a valid collecting look at how we conduct research.” permit,” he said. “And it gets me to Hevel agrees: “I see these outings places I might not otherwise get to in as mostly educational. However, science my lifetime.” improves with each one because of the The Golden Gate BioBlitz 2014 was records.” the largest one to date, with some 320 National Geographic Society’s FranNorthern California scientists—from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and other cis notes that all the national park sites schools, as well as the California Acadehave been chosen for their proximity to my of Sciences—and informed amateurs metropolitan areas, as a way of helprecruited to lead 161 separate outings ing city kids connect with the natural over the 24-hour period. world. For example, some students from Despite Saturday’s inclement the Los Angeles area had never waded weather, the San Francisco bioblitz in the Pacific before a recent Santa broke previous records for numbers of Monica Mountains National Recreparticipants, students, scientists, and ation Area bioblitz. species counted. But it wasn’t just about Ten thousand observations is plenty the numbers. “We all came away with to keep a naturalist occupied. But for a renewed appreciation for the amazing some of the younger participants, the bioblitz may have served as a gateway Bioblitz participants enter data into iNaturalist. drug for the natural world. tonatiuh trejo-cantwell

by joe eaton

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by claire peaslee

causes bioluminescence in our local waters, viewed

s ign s o f t h e se aso n

through a microscope.

The California Current ecosystem in the ocean off our coast is a dynamic place with distinct seasons, one of which usually peaks near the autumnal equinox. The northerly winds relax then, and the water and air temperatures warm. This is the time for humpback and blue whales to arrive near our shores to feast on a massive abundance of krill. Another phenomenon, equally fabulous but much lower in the food chain, can also occur in the ocean at this time of year: bioluminescence, or “living light.” A veritable light show may manifest in the water as early as June, becoming more frequent by September. In some years, displays begin as early as April and may continue well into November or beyond. Among humans, an urge to understand bioluminescence generally follows close upon a first encounter with it. Perhaps you are sitting on a dune or bluff at night, far from city lights, entrained by the breaking waves; when darkness finally inks the sky, the surf takes on a greenish white glow or even a roiling, bright pearlescence. Or, your beach walk has gone longer than planned, and a dense cloud cover soaks up the last ambient light; then your footfall in the wet sand generates bursts of ethereal sparkle, sometimes lasting seconds and b ay n at u r e

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flashing many inches outward. Kicking and splashing and general merriment may ensue. Boaters sometimes encounter the phenomenon in the ocean, lighting up their vessel’s wake or streaming off the backs of dolphins that ride the bow wave. Nocturnal kayakers in coastal estuaries find explosions of light as they glide through the water. Here the primary consideration is safety: Fog banks that coincide with dark night skies (when the “living light” shows up best) can obscure the route back to shore. But those who take the proper precautions bring back seductive tales of their encounters: of drifting above eelgrass beds illuminated by the splashing of the paddles; of bat rays winging their way through the shallows, resembling starships traversing a twinkly galaxy; and of the sleek forms of harbor seals passing by underwater, glowing. Any motion in the water will light things up when bioluminescence is “on.” The ”bio” behind this particular luminosity consists of a marine microorganism, a single-celled creature that is a kind of dinoflagellate. Along with much other life in the fertile California Current, these tiny organisms explode into profusion during the long days of May, June, and July. Seasonal upwell-

ing then brings nutrients up close to the surface, propelling the biodiversity of these waters. Though present yearround, the dinoflagellates multiply in earnest near the summer solstice and reach their greatest abundance in September and October. Then they can concentrate in dense clouds in surface waters and shallow shoreline basins. That’s when human “biolume” aficionados head for accessible bays and beaches on dark nights. As a group, dinoflagellates have varied arrangements vis-à-vis the food web. Some can photosynthesize, like plants. Some capture and ingest other creatures, like animals. Some go both ways. All of them get their name from a pair of threadlike whips, wrapped around their tiny midsections, which they may flail to slightly control their drifting positions in the water column. Our local bioluminescent dinoflagellate has both a scientific and a common name that are poetically right on. Typically dubbed Noctiluca for its genus, it has the species name scintillans, giving us the Latin (roughly) for “glistening night light.” And the little creature’s best known common name is, appropriately, sea sparkle. Noctiluca’s glowability most likely has to do with defense. Everything in the food web needs certain equipment not only to find prey but also to avoid becoming prey. Suppose that Noctilucas are floating around en masse, encountering beings even smaller than themselves, to eat. The approach of a larger creature, potentially the enemy, is quickly revealed, as its movement jiggles the water and thus the dinoflagellates’ cell membranes. They suddenly, collectively, light up, exposing the intruder’s location and even its size and shape. Chances then improve for the next predator up the food chain to pounce. In this big-fish-eats-little-fish-eats-tinyprey-eats-dinoflagellate scenario, a flash of light can interrupt the sequence right before “tiny-prey-eats-dinoflagellate,”

Bioluminescence glows in the waters of the Pacific just north of Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands.

marsha kirschbaum

steven haddock, monterey bay aquarium research institute

Enlightened by Bioluminescence

to Noctiluca’s advantage. The purposes that life forms have for emitting light, especially in the ocean, are so basic that the trait is common there. On land it is much rarer: the best-known terrestrial group to bioluminesce are the beetles called fireflies (and their larvae, called glowworms). In the marine environment, however, some 90 percent of residents—jellies, squid, fishes—can glow or flash or somehow signal using living light. Since the vast majority of them live in total darkness, in water far deeper than sunlight can penetrate, bioluminescence is equivalent to sight (for creatures with optic nerves). By now you must be wondering just how sea sparkle works (while scheming how to get some on your very own toes). Essentially, two compounds stored in a body—be it multi- or single-celled— mix together in the presence of oxygen, and voilà—a cold bright strobe of visible light is produced. The two ingredients

Noctiluca scintillans, the single-celled organism that

involved are a light-emitting compound called luciferin and an enzyme called luciferase that serves as the catalyst. Both of their names derive from the Latin lucifer, meaning “light-bearing.” (A more famous entity with that name was a certain high-ranking angel who fell from grace but retained the name synonymous with his erstwhile luminosity.) There are several types of luciferin, and the dinoflagellates have their very own (distinct from the luciferin in fireflies or deep-sea fish), which is a chemical derivative of chlorophyll. Bioluminescence happens when the catalyst luciferase ignites the luciferin, like a match put to kindling. The light-emitting reaction that results is a cold one, unlike the incandescence of a burning candle or electrical bulb. Because heat is not a byproduct of bioluminescence, the light produced is essentially 100 percent energy-efficient. The mechanics of all this have understandably commanded people’s interest for millennia. The explanation for “living light” eluded scientists until 1887,

when Raphael DuBois found a fairly simple way to separate luciferin and luciferase (which he so named) derived from a Caribbean cricket. In a famous demonstration at the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, DuBois filled sconces in a dark room with bioluminescing stuff and produced enough light for people to read Le Monde (or the like). Since then, people have explored applications for bioluminescence, from miners’ lamps to nocturnal naval advantages (recall Noctiluca’s strategy when it lights up an enemy). The scientific effort to purify and thus analyze luciferin found in a glowing jelly in the Pacific Northwest ultimately earned the Japanese biochemist Osamu Shimamura a Nobel Prize and precipitated a revolution in the science of molecular biology. Which may be a long way to travel, in our mind’s eye, from the sand beaches of north-central California. Yet the general fascination with bioluminescence is a proper backdrop for one’s own local quest for contact with sea sparkle; for ventures to the cold water of our home place in the sea-season of summer through early fall; at night, when the moon is small or has set, far enough from city lights, perhaps under a good dense fog layer. It’s then that we may cavort in wet sand at the sea’s edge, seeking to excite the “sea sparkle.” Perhaps the shore will be limned with rapid jets of light expressing the pure energy of sea waves. The brilliant water will beckon, the surf all a-tumble with chaotic glow. If conditions are known to be safe (check for undertow; bring a friend), this may be the moment for the skinnydip of a lifetime. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

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The yellow path of a new segment of Bay Trail leads

The Bay Trail Takes Off at Hamilton airfield

by Ariel Rubissow Okamoto In 2014, the San Francisco Bay Trail marked its 25th anniversary by dedicating the trail’s newest segment, 2.7 miles at Hamilton Wetlands. The Bay Trail Plan was adopted by the Association of Bay Area Governments in 1989 to provide public access to San Francisco Bay for recreation, wildlife viewing, and enhanced appreciation of the region’s signature natural asset. For a listing of upcoming 25th anniversary events, go to baytrail.org/events I imagine many of you are like me: you jog a little but wish you biked more? You know there are new trails along the Bay shore but you always go to the same one? You’re feeling a little older or wimpier so you opt for yoga or the warm pool over b ay n at u r e

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strenuous outdoor activity? After all, it could get foggy, there could be traffic… It’s hard to believe a friend once called me “intrepid.” I admit that on the warm clear morning when I get my not-sointrepid rear end in gear for a bike

hikers past a tapestry of newly restored wetland habitats.

ride, I have help. My husband has been trying to lead by example for several years now. He bikes from our San Francisco home across the Golden Gate to Tiburon and back; he jogs long enough to come back tired enough to fall asleep right after dinner. That morning I wheedle him into strong-arming the oily bulk of my bike into the backseat of our compact while I make a show of carrying the front wheel. He manages a grunt of encouragement and strides off to work shaking his head. The hard part done, I feel pumped up as I head north to explore the newest miles of the San Francisco Bay Trail, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. I look forward to revisiting the former Hamilton Army Airfield near Novato, a landscape I’d last seen

A crowd of dignitaries and restoration advocates watches as Bay waters pour through the just-breached levee at the former Hamilton Airfield (April 2014).

hint of fog on the horizon—you might think it’s the San Francisco skyline but the lay of the land is confusing. From here, Point San Pedro (on the Marin side) and Point San Pablo (the Contra Costa promontory) merge, hiding the Bay proper. It took an earlier walk on this same stretch with Bay Trail planner Maureen Gaffney to reveal the true identity of the city in the mists: Richmond’s Chevron refinery. A man in shorts walks up and, just as I had done, inspects two panels placed prominently in front of the view over Hamilton’s future wetlands mosaic. There’s nothing posted on the panels yet. I ask him what he knows about the landscape, which turns out to be a lot. Ralph Reyes has lived at Hamilton for 10 years and has done his homework on the activities offshore. He even knows

dredged material was used to raise the subsided farm fields and airfield back up to elevations more hospitable to wetland plants. “This is awesome; nature’s clawing its way back onto this land, and the birds are amazing,” he says. After putting up with dust, noise, and construction for years, locals like Ralph are making the most of their new access to the shoreline, including for midday breaks. Reyes tells me he walks here every day. “This wetland and these trails are a huge benefit to our community, increasing housing values, making it a more desirable place to live,” he says. “It’s awesome, but what happens when the tide turns, when someone decides it’s so attractive we need another mall?” A clean rope and a polite sign block me from continuing south. Planners hope to close the 700-foot gap between the sign and the next three miles of Bay Trail eventually, but first they have to find a way to work around some endangered California clapper rail habitat. Once that has happened, I’ll be able to pedal all the way to the Marin Civic Center from Hamilton. In the meantime, from

sally rae kimmel

wetlands.

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Mallards swim through the ponds in the Hamilton

covered with mud and construction crews, and to freewheeling along new marshes designed by humans to help endangered birds and mice. I have no clue I’ll also get into a spot of bother. The first thing that hits me as the tread of my bike wheel grabs the grit of the new trail—a sandy facsimile of the yellow brick road—is the smell of the sea. I’d assembled the bike, stymied briefly by how to reconnect the brake wire, in the suburban parking lot at the south end of Hangar Drive. The lot, opposite a walled community, offers access to ball fields, a kiddie park, and the Bay Trail. That morning it was full of mothers calming toddlers who needed naps. Coming out of that hot, close pocket of family life up onto the levee and seeing and smelling the Bay spread out before me is both a relief and a surprise. There’s nothing new about the environs—many segments of the Bay Trail originate in shoreline office parks and lagoon developments. There’s often a wall, with trail and Bay on one side and three-bedroom homes on the other. But the baylands vista feels different here than it does in the South Bay, which is less rural and still dominated by the architecture of salt making. Here on the east shore of San Pablo Bay, I note more trees and more hills. I smile and follow the breeze. Hamilton’s newest stretch of Bay Trail shadows a slope of black oak forest and winds along wetlands to a point that promises a view. On my way there, I spot four pairs of mated mallards, each claiming their own finger of water. In every pair, one has its head down, dabbling for food, while the other remains on lookout. A non-birder, I feel proud to have noticed. A short pedal brings me to the lookout point, where the varnish on the new fencing is still recent enough to smell. Tall towers poke through a

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more likely a common garter variety reptile. Probably a California red-sided garter, but certainly “wildlife”— a good sign for a construction site. I must look like I’ve seen a ghost, because a truck pulls up and the driver asks if I’m okay. I recognize Eric Polson, one of the engineers behind Hamilton’s face-lift. I ask Polson how it feels, having worked on the project more than 18 years, to be going into the final breach. “I’m glad we’ve come this far … we’ve even seen a family of otters exploring our new ponds … but I’d like to see the Bel Marin parcel finished too,” he says. I hadn’t planned to continue up the narrower levee-top trail along Pacheco Pond, but the conservancy’s native plant crews have thinned the thickets of eucalyptus on either side, opening up the views. I wobble a bit, timid on the rougher terrain, and stop to admire the waterfowl, only to be attacked by an unidentified buzzing object. I bat at the insect—big enough to make me think horsefly or monster wasp—which divebombs my head. I pull off my cap and swipe at it, but before I can get away, it’s in my hair, stinging my scalp. Somehow I get on my bike and head for the hills, finally losing the buzzer (but carrying the stinger all the way back home to my husband and a pair of tweezers). Between the snake and the ufo, I’m now a little spooked but soon settle into the ride home, putting my back into it. I manage a good three-mile sprint— enough to remind me how much I enjoy biking and how little it aggravates my grumpy knees and bad back. Parking the car back in the city, I decide not to take the bike out of the car. Maybe I’ll go for another ride tomorrow. After a shower and a Benadryl for my swelling head, I sift through the Bay Trail map card set Maureen Gaffney had given me to plan my next ride. She clearly enjoys the variety of Bay Trail bits she is working to connect, from the crowded sidewalks along San Francisco’s Embarcadero to a remote corner of the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge where hares and hawks are more common than humans. “Now that we’re 25 years in, it’s easier to keep going because

northern cul-de-sacs and arrive at a fork in the trail. Left leads down to a native plant nursery created to supply this restoration site; right, which I choose, leads toward the community of Bel Marin Keys across farm fields owned by the state, where neighboring wetlands are planned. Red-winged blackbirds hop out of the way by the dozen as I bike, enjoying the freshwater seepage. It’s not as wild on this stretch of trail—Bel Marin’s blue-and-whitepainted homes stand out more in the distance than the earth tones no doubt mandated by the Hamilton homeowner associations. The wind carries the whip of highway traffic to my ears. Lone men jog past, adding the steady crunch of gravel to the local sound effects. Out near Pacheco Pond, as I hop off the bike for a water break, a slim striped snake slides between my Nikepadded feet, curls for a hiss, then disappears under an orange construction cone. I blink, decide it wasn’t a rattler;

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ing and built the backbone of the new Bay Trail. But it’s the tapestry I marvel at when I consider all the progress, and so does Hutzel’s conservancy colleague Tom Gandesbery, who has worked on the project for more than five years: “When we laid the whole thing out, it was just solid, desiccated mudflat, not much to look it. Then after they graded it and planted it, we got some topography and some greenery. The water catches my eye now, in the different ponds.” While we’re chatting, two whitehaired women set out on a walk they take several times a week. “At first there wasn’t much water or many birds. The water adds another dimension, and so do all the yellow flowers showing up. We can see everything unfolding,” says one. “I’ve lived around here for 40 years, and my husband’s father was stationed here,” says the other. “Now, we’re seeing jackrabbits, geese, ducks, and hawks.” Back on my bike ride, I pass Hamilton’s former airplane hangars and

this distant vantage point, Frank Lloyd Wright’s county seat looks like a spaceship crash-landed in the forest. Heading back and along waterfront homes, I pass two cormorants fishing in a storm water outflow channel. The bulky white bird in flight must be a great egret, I think—the head is too elegant for the white pelicans drifting in distant waters like buoys. A good mile or more away out on the Bay horizon trucks and a backhoe are taking the levee that separates the Bay from the former airfield down a notch. In addition to a big breach in the levee on April 25, the final stages of this elaborate restoration project have involved scraping off the top three feet of dirt so a high tide can overtop it, adding the final ingredient to the mix of habitat types prepped by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the California Coastal Conservancy: water. Looking out across the 650-acre project toward the distant Godzilla arm of the backhoe against the blue sky, I finally see on the ground what the planners and engineers have been describing to me ever since I first began writing stories about Hamilton ten years ago: a tapestry of habitats. The lay of the land is bumpy— watery here, carpeted with yellow brass buttons there, clumps of green, hummocks of earth, pools in shades of gray. Everywhere there are signs of good intentions: blue and white flags marking the planting sites of sapling willows; ridges in the dirt left behind by earthmoving equipment; holes in the ground waiting to be filled by bench legs. “Seeing the final construction crew at work with the dump trucks and excavator is exciting,” says Amy Hutzel of the conservancy, one of several people with a role in the project whom I had met at this same vista point days before. “What’s most unbelievable to me, though, is that all this fill was dredged out of the bottom of the Oakland harbor and brought all the way here. It took quite a lot of work to raise the elevation and get it all sculpted so the site can evolve on its own.” The Army Corps did the heavy lift-

A view of the new Hamilton Wetlands several days after the breach in the levee (middle left) exposed the area formerly occupied by the airfield’s runway to the tides. Hangars (on right), now converted to mixed use, are a reminder of what used to be here.

all the jurisdictions—the cities, the counties, the communities—accept that we should do this 500-mile trail around the Bay,” she says. “But it’s also harder because now we’re planning trail for the more challenging segments like Highway 37 and the west span of the Bay Bridge. Those are years away.” Time enough for me to get in shape. getting there:

From Main Gate Road in Novato, there are three trailhead options: 1. Reservoir Hill: From Main Gate Road, take a left at the fork in the road and head up the hill on North Hamilton Parkway. Trailhead is on the right. (limited parking) 2. Hangar Parking Lot: A ramp opposite the old Control Tower goes over the City’s levee and connects to the trail.

3. Palmisano Park: Parking at end of Hanger Avenue, by service road that connects directly to trail. Dogs must be on leash. No public restrooms on site. More information at http://hamiltonwetlands.scc.ca.gov/public-access/. Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, editor of Estuary News, the quarterly newsletter of the San Francisco Estuary Partnership, is also a co-author of The Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press, 2011) and writer of numerous articles on Bay Area watersheds. hike the new bay trail at hamilton wetlands

Sunday, September 14, 10 am – 1 pm Join Bay Nature and Maureen Gaffney of the San Francisco Bay Trail to walk this new segment of trail. Space is limited. Sign up at baynature.org/field.

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elsewhere . . .

Motorcycle Hill, El Cerrito Hillside Natural Area The Motorcycle Hill trail begins between two houses, then quickly rises above suburban roofs on a steep incline made easier by switchbacks and wooden steps. The trail, forged into the city of El Cerrito’s Hillside Natural Area in 2012 by the El Cerrito Trail Trekkers, alternates between sunny meadows and shade from fullgrown Monterey pines and eucalyptus. Serving in the 1920s as a dirt play area for the National Motorcycle Hill Climb, the hill now boasts a diverse native plant community including sticky monkey flower, with orange blooms in spring and summer; coyote bush; spreading California buckeye; and aromatic California sage. Western scrub jays scold, wild turkeys quietly roam the understory, turkey vultures soar overhead, and holes in dead trees indicate the presence of woodpeckers. The trail has its human marks, too, from white pottery shards left over from the long-closed tepco ceramics factory to oak seedlings deposited in a modern effort to restore and enhance the area’s natural beauty. It takes about 20 minutes to walk up the trail to the top of the hill, where there’s a bench from which you can view another mix of nature and people: El Cerrito and Richmond provide the foreground for a beautiful panorama of San Francisco Bay waters, downtown San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Mount Tamalpais. g e t t i n g t h e r e : Entrance at the corner of Blake and Navallier streets in El Cerrito, over a small concrete wall between two houses. Dogs allowed; no toilet. ectrailtrekkers.org. [Autumn Sartain]

south bay

dan hill

Burleigh H. Murray Ranch State Park The one short trail in this 3,200-acre preserve starts as a narrow gravel road following Mill Creek up into the Santa Cruz Mountains. When this valley was home to an active dairy farm, it must have been a well-tended pastoral scene, but now it has reverted to riotous nature, grown all around with coastal scrub and partly shaded by stands of red alder, willow, and tall eucalyptus. Ceanothus, thimbleberry, currants, and twinberry duke it out with the poison oak; spotted towhees, quail, and flickers find ample cover. Few people come here. A gentle mile along the road brings you to the Mills Dairy Barn, built in 1889. It’s what is called a bank barn, set into the hillside so hay could be loaded into the loft from a road running alongside its second story. This access road is shored up by a remarkable buttressed retaining wall of irregular stone. The barn is closed, but a picnic table sits outside. Antique farm equipment rusts in the tall weeds. Beyond the barn, the trail is unmaintained and eventually fades into a tangle of thistles, grass, stinging nettle and coyote bush (but no visible poison oak). The roadbed still provides good footing, and we easily bushwhacked on for another mile. Just as we turned back, a great blue heron passed us, flying low along the creek. getting there: South of Half Moon Bay take Higgins-Purisima Road 1.5 miles to the park entrance, a small parking lot on the left. No fees; bikes and dogs permitted; portable toilets are near the trailhead and the barn. [Ann Sieck]

Sorensen’s

peninsula

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alison hawkes

east bay

autumn sartain

Special Events History Tours Stargazing Birding Wild�lower Walks Landscape Photography Medicinal Plants Hike

Devil’s Slide Coastal Trail Sunset on a clear day may be the most glorious time to visit the newly opened Devil’s Slide Coastal Trail. The ocean stretches out before you to the horizon and beyond, while the light from a setting sun turns the rocks on the barren hillsides hues of gold and pink. The trail itself has the even terrain of an asphalt road, perfect for biking and easy walking and entirely accessible to wheelchairs and strollers. The quiet beauty of the new trail defies what it once was — a curvy, jaw-dropping highway that was finally closed earlier this year after decades of rockslides. Highway One is now routed through the tunnels that were blasted through Montara Mountain. With the opening of the 1.3-mile trail, you can now see up close what all the fuss was about. The hillsides continue to heave into the sea, a result of our region’s topsy-turvy geology. On the north end you can see the textured patterns of sedimentary rock, the re3mains of an ancient seabed. The south end has the underlying bedrock composed of massive granite blocks. Also not to be missed: the view to the north of the ze1 bra-striped headland of Point San Pedro. In the spring look for gray whales hugging the 2 rocky shoreline on their long migration north to summer feeding grounds.3 getting there: There are small parking lots at either end of trail on Highway One south of Pacifica or north of Montara. Restrooms and benches available. Bikes and leashed dogs. [Alison Hawkes]

Located in Hope Valley Just south of Tahoe in the High Sierra

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

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A g e n e r at i o n t h at s h a p e d t h e e a st b ay r e g i o n a l pa r k s b y v i c t o r i a

walter knight, ebrpd archives

aking Their Mar

(right) Jeff Wilson (left) with colleague Jack Kenny at the dedication of athletic fields in

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Martinez in 1979. (below) Wilson relaxes in his backyard at home, post-retirement.

and not really embarrassing myself too much.” His first assignment was to haul away a scrapyard’s worth of abandoned cars and junk. Then he built fences in places no one would notice, so that visitors could have a more natural experience. And he worked on building the trails that people still hike on today. “It was a different world back then,” he says. “Seeing what you did all those years ago being used now is really something.” At the same time, Wilson started to study botany, took biology classes, joined the California Native Plant Society, and expanded his knowledge of birds. He helped compile some of the first species lists for Black Diamond. Just as Blau had anticipated decades before, Wilson and many from his generation moved from work in the field into management. Wilson left Black Diamond to work at Briones Regional Park, where he lived and raised his kids in a park residence for 18 years. He advanced to supervisor of Tilden Park, staying at the job for 15 years, longer than anyone else has held the position. Heading up such a heavily used park meant learning lessons in public relations and politics. He also mentored many new rangers and saw five of his staff reach supervisory positions themselves, and he helped others find money for their projects. He then put all those skills and more to use as the district’s wildlands unit manager, overseeing all the large open space parks before being promoted to chief of park operations in 2010. He retired two years later, in 2012. “I stayed at the park district for so long in part because it was like a big family,” Wilson says. “In the end, it was more about people than parks.”

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tutions. But the ideas driving the environmental and social movements of the early 1970s gained a strong foothold in the East Bay Regional Park District, thanks in large part to a cohort of young park workers hired during that decade. These workers, many of them still college students, had come of age during the era of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the first Earth Day, as well as the anti-war movement and the civil and women’s rights movements. Before long, these workers’ influence in the district was felt in everything from where fences were built to which species thrived and what land was saved. Over the past 40 years, this generation has grown up in and with the East Bay parks and built a regional park district that is the largest in the nation, with some 115,000 acres of parkland and trails in 65 units. The environmental movement was a growing force in the Bay Area of the 1970s. Protection of undeveloped lands was a popular cause, and in 1971 the state Legislature allowed the district to increase taxes to finance the purchase of new parkland. Time was of the essence as environmental groups and the park district faced off against developers competing for the “best of the last” farmland and shoreline parcels flanking the Bay’s urban core. Boosted by the new funds, the district more than doubled in size between 1968 and 1984.

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From the top of Kreiger Peak near Clayton, East Bay Regional Park District General Manager Robert Doyle points out some of the 114,000 acres of open space the district manages to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (in teal jacket).

To accommodate that growth, the district took on scores of college kids as summer “groundsmen,” the early term for ranger. These young workers removed old infrastructure, debris, junk, and invasive species in an effort to restore newly purchased parcels to a more natural state. In an era when procedures had not yet been standardized, the new staffers were often able to follow their own ideas: When a park needed a new trail, a staff member came up with a plan and built it. Now, those young workers have started to retire, and with them go four decades of history and insights into the landscapes they tended and, in many cases, saved. We asked six park workers hired in the 1970s and early 1980s to share some tales of their years with the district.

jose carlos fajardo, photographer

It can take time for new ways of thinking to penetrate insti-

For all of Jeff Wilson’s accomplishments, management positions held, and years worked in the park district, he lights up most while recounting his early days as a groundsman at Black Diamond Mines, a regional preserve northeast of Mount Diablo. “When you worked in the outlying parks in those days, you might as well have been in Siberia,” he recalls. “Communication was so different then. Every few days we’d get an envelope full of memos.” The working conditions were different, too. Wilson’s first office was a plywood shed. Mornings began with running a stick under the furniture to flush out the rattlesnakes. “I got real smart about rattlesnakes real fast,” he says. Although he grew up a backpacker, turning out snakes at work wasn’t exactly old hat for this educated hippie from Berkeley who was part of the new wave of college graduates the park district was hiring. As the acreage of parklands ballooned in the 1970s, then-Superintendent of Parks Robert Blau saw a need to take on young people with the skills to do both manual labor and office jobs that required reading, writing, and a sensibility that could connect with the urban Bay Area population. Two years after he was hired in 1974, Wilson started working to get Black Diamond’s 3,000 acres of diverse terrain and vegetation, dotted with former town sites and defunct coal and sand mines, in shape to be opened to the public. Wilson’s boss at Black Diamond was part of the old guard, a bonafide Portuguese cowboy who didn’t think much of uppity urbanites. But Wilson was lucky; being half Portuguese helped him earn the boss’s trust as he learned the trade. It was an era of minimal resources and the ethos was make do and figure it out. “Art students are really good at that,” says Wilson, who had earned a bfa in sculpture from the California College of Arts and Crafts. “So I succeeded in staying alive

e x p l o r i n g t h e e a s t b a y r e g i o n a l pa r k s

This story is part of a series exploring the natural and cultural history of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD), which is celebrating its 80th anniversary. The series is sponsored by the district, which manages 114,000 acres of public open space in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

robert wilson

h i red 1974 / Reti red 2012

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joe rubini, ebrpd archives

Just two years after Anne Scheer began a summer job lifeguarding alongside other UC Berkeley students at Lake Anza in Tilden Regional Park, she found herself holding a chain saw and cutting down enormous eucalyptus trees in the park. “I grew up in east Oakland. I didn’t know anything about tools,” she says, laughing. In retrospect, it was the inaugural step of a long career in demolition and building—literally and figuratively. In 1972, an 11-day run of freezing temperatures killed or damaged thousands of eucalyptus trees in the ridgeline parks from Tilden to Chabot. Their dead wood and highly flammable sap posed a tremendous fire hazard, so the district received emergency funds to launch an all-out effort to clear the dead trees and create a firebreak. Scheer and many other young park employees were drafted into the project. She ended up in a crew of guys amenable to teaching her the precarious art of felling 100-foot-tall trees. The eucalyptus freeze also brought up the issue of pesticides. To make sure that the damaged trees didn’t resprout, park staff applied the harsh herbicide 2,4-d, a component of Agent Orange.

This was in the early days of pesticide regulation, and workers were applying the herbicide with minimal protection or training. So the union fought to create a district-wide advisory ecology committee and a permanent position devoted to integrated pest management. The committee still exists today and tracks all pesticide use in the district and investigates more benign alternatives. Scheer served on the committee until her retirement.

D ionisio “Dee” Rosario Dee Rosario’s Redwood Creek vigil began in 1976 when he became a full-time groundsman at Redwood Regional Park. Service in the park district wasn’t an obvious choice for a competitive college wrestler who had been born in the Oakland projects, the son of Filipino immigrants. But he was the head of a household with three siblings, trying to pay his way through college, and needed to work. And when Rosario saw the serene, giant trees in Redwood Regional Park he thought, “Oh my God, this is meant to be.” b ay n at u r e

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Park in 1986. (left) Scheer receiving a distinguished service award in 2003.

the office. The guys in the shop were not happy about that and the next day, a similar array of photos “mysteriously” appeared on her locker. She took them down; but the next morning they were back up. It went on like that for several days, until the guerilla decorating finally ceased. “It bothered some people a lot, but it didn’t get to me. I knew they would get tired of it before I did,” she says. In her last years before retirement, Scheer was promoted to chief of operations, one of the top leadership positions in the district. Once again she was the first woman to hold the position, and she says guiding young park employees in the right direction is what thrilled her most. “It sounds sappy, but I love this job so much. I realize what a cool place it is to work, how many things you can do, and I just want to share that with other people,” she says. “I want somebody else to have a career as cool as mine.”

Providence may have had a hand in getting him there, but so did the sweeping changes in equal rights around the country, as well as a legal fight by women’s groups and the park employees’ union to require the district to hire more women and minorities. As a Filipino-American, Rosario says, “I’m indebted to that effort.” He repaid that “debt” by taking on leadership roles in the union throughout his career. Rosario also gave back to the redwoods that inspired him. The old-growth trees in the area had been thoroughly logged during the Gold Rush. By the 1950s and ’60s the area had become a heavily used recreation site, with huge picnic areas, a baseball field, and drive-in campsites. By the time Rosario started with the district, it was all he and other park staff could do to clean up all the trash after busy weekends. Moreover, the natural areas of the park had become seriously degraded. Redwood Creek had been dammed to make way for a road to the camping facilities. Rosario recalls watching the native rainbow trout trying to fight their way up the muddy stream only to reach the dam and then bang their heads against it. “It was heartbreaking,” he recalls. But in the mid-1980s, in keeping with the district’s new emphasis on natural resources, it was decided that Redwood should be restored to a more natural state. Rosario was thrilled when stonemasons constructed a fishway around the dam to the upper creek to allow the two-foot-long rainbow trout to return to their historic spawning grounds. “It was incredible,” says Rosario, “both that it got built, and that it was successful.” When Rosario became supervisor of the park in 1996, he continued the restoration work, overseeing the elimination of picnic sites from the east side of the creek and the removal of

failing footbridges. The guiding principle for all of this work was the health of Redwood Creek and its fish. “We really thought about what the fish needed —clear water, deep pools, and to be left alone during the summer,” Rosario says. Upslope from the creek, Rosario noted that the forest understory was also in dire need of attention, so he established a small nursery to propagate redwoods and riparian species such as willows that staff planted along the recuperating creek. Invasive species were also a serious problem, but getting rid of them seemed an impossible task for the small park staff. Then, in 2002, Rosario forged a valuable partnership with well-known local TV news anchor and nearby resident Wendy Tokuda to tackle the invasive species. Together they recruited local volunteers for what has become a twice-monthly restoration event that involves roughly 3,000 hours of volunteer work annually and has dramatically reduced the presence of invasive French broom, opening up space for the return of native plants. In Redwood Creek, the number of spawning trout has climbed to between 30 and 40 pairs. The water flows clear and the surrounding understory has slowly recovered. A few years ago, in an open area, thousands of redwood seedlings popped up. Rosario describes watching the slow rebound of the land as nothing short of spiritual. “You see how beautiful it is now and you wonder what it was like before the Gold Rush,” Rosario says. “To be part of that healing process, it makes you feel like you’ve done something worthwhile.” (left) Dee Rosario in 1990. (right) Rosario takes a well-deserved break from work in the field at Redwood Regional Park, 2011.

pamela beitz

h i red 1974 / Reti red 2014

(far left) Anne Scheer on fire duty in Wildcat Canyon Regional

Five years after the freeze, Scheer’s longstanding interest in architecture and “how things work” landed her in the district’s maintenance department, which handles plumbing, roads, roofing, trails, and much more. Eventually, in 2003, she became the first female chief of the department. “I can’t remember what I did yesterday,” Scheer jokes, “but I can remember where the septic line to the merry-go-round is. I could get a shovel, dig down, and hit it.” To help her advance from being a novice with tools to overseeing major infrastructure projects, Scheer took a slew of UC Berkeley classes in subjects such as surveying, construction materials, architecture, and wooddestroying insects. She also had to have a pretty thick skin. The park district was making strides in changing its male-dominated culture in the early 1980s, but the maintenance department wasn’t exactly leading the way. Scheer recalls a run-in with a mechanic, whom she asked on behalf of another female employee to remove the girlie pictures hanging in ebrpd archives

A nne Scheer

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R obert Doyle

But his work in the field wouldn’t last long. The park’s upper management knew about Doyle’s successful activism, and in the wake of a new emphasis on conservation (and the requirement to comply with the new environmental laws) the district needed help. In 1978, Chief of Plans, Design, and Construction Lew Crutcher asked Doyle to take a temporary position in the main office to learn about a new form of documentation required of developers called an environmental impact report. Then in 1979 the park’s chief of land acquisition, Hulet Hornbeck, decided to link many of the parks through a trail system and recruited Doyle to handle everything from planning trails to buying and negotiating rights for the lands the trails would traverse. Doyle went on to spearhead the creation of the 28-mile-long Ohlone Wilderness Trail and many others. When Hornbeck retired in 1986, Doyle was tapped to take over. Among his first challenges was the protracted battle for a secluded valley just east of Mount Diablo. Round Valley had a creek wending along its floor, with lovely valley and blue oaks growing on its hillsides. It was owned by Jim Murphy, the cantankerous son of the original owner, an Irish immigrant who had purchased the land in the 1870s. Now Murphy was looking to sell the ranch, and a group of developers wanted to buy it and turn it into a dump for the fast-growing suburban communities of east Contra Costa County. Murphy was outspoken in his dislike of government, but Doyle knew he loved the property and didn’t want to see it ruined. So Doyle worked to build a relationship and eventually offered to option the property for a year and promised to set aside funds for the full purchase in an upcoming bond measure.

Mines Regional Preserve in 1979. (right) Doyle at Round Valley Regional Preserve, 2013.

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walter knight, ebrpd archives

h i red 1973 / sti ll goi ng

(above) Bob Doyle takes a break from working in the mine at Black Diamond

Botanic Garden plant sale in 1986. (left) Edwards photographing plants on a field trip east of Lassen Volcanic National Park in 2008.

their own garden—maybe two or three pots on their windowsill,” Edwards says. “All of us who work here are very aware of that. We’re providing this experience for them. Families teach their babies to walk on these lawns. We see it all the time. It’s inspiring for us. ” Edwards recalls arguing with Roof about the role of botanic gardens and insisting that it should not be just about the plants in the ground, but also about the people who work and volunteer in it. “After 31 years as director,” Edwards says, “I’ve been able to discover the truth in what I argued theoretically back then. I’ve lived it now and realize that the more I attended to and was able to love the people I worked with, the more this place was a garden for me. We’re all growing together. We’re all tending each other.”

Growing up at the edge of the suburbs in Concord, Bob Doyle hung out with kids whose parents worked nearby ranches and farms. He roamed and played in their mustard fields and walnut and almond orchards. Then he watched those lands being sold to developers who chopped down the trees and tore up his former stomping grounds. “I grew up with that loss,” he says, “but at the same time there were these people around saying that you could actually do something about it.” He celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970 with his high school biology teacher, who later helped him attend college via a small grant for books and tuition. Simultaneously, a group of older environmentalists (whom he fondly calls “the Wizards”) took him under their wing as they established the nonprofit Save Mount Diablo. By age 19, Doyle was testifying before legislators in Sacramento about preserving land surrounding the East Bay’s iconic peak. “I bore witness to huge successes,” he says, “and to the Wizards’ tenacious drive to never give up. I saw what that can accomplish.” Those hard-fought battles led to a dramatic increase in the size of Mount Diablo State Park. Like many other young staffers of that era, Doyle got his start as a part-timer in 1973 cutting down those dead eucalyptus trees in the ridgeline parks. Two years later he took a permanent full-time job as a groundsman at Point Pinole Regional Park.

tina batt

By the time Steve Edwards was in high school in Oakland, he was already deeply involved with plants. He had grown thousands of succulents and won prizes at local fairs; his bedroom was adorned with a collection of conifer cones. Eager to find summer work at a botanic garden while he attended UC Berkeley, he went to the Regional Parks Botanic Garden in Tilden Park in search of its

ebrpd archives

hired 1970 / retired 2013

(far left) Steve Edwards (right) at the Regional Parks

California native plant garden with a focus on rare species. His many field expeditions around the state contributed to the garden’s distinguished collection. One of the first was a Port Orford cedar cutting he gathered near Mount Shasta for his Ph.D. dissertation in paleobotany; the tree has since grown into a robust 70-footer. Edwards is also known for his expertise in native grassland management, geology, and human prehistory. His Saturday morning lectures on California’s natural history regularly drew more listeners than could fit in the garden’s auditorium. He published his research in peer-reviewed journals and was editor of the garden’s own well-regarded journal The Four Seasons. He also helped foster the garden’s volunteer program and promoted a staff culture that embraced the special role of public gardens. “A lot of the people who come here live in apartments down in the city and don’t get to have bob case, cnps.org/cnps/nativeplants/gallery/case/

S teve Edwards

director, Jim Roof. Wandering the garden grounds, he approached an older man hand watering some plants and asked for Roof. The man replied, “He just left for Alaska.” Suspecting that he actually was speaking to the notoriously misanthropic Roof, Edwards persisted, explaining his passion for plants and desire for work. His tenacity paid off. The following summer Edwards got a call from the park district offering him a job in the garden. But it came with a warning. Roof was a master botanist, historian, storyteller, and natural history writer, who founded the park’s botanic garden before World War II and then resuscitated it after it fell apart in his absence during the war. But he was also a hard man to work for, according to Edwards (and others), and the eager student lasted only two seasons in the position—long enough to help hand-build many of the rock walls found in the garden today. He spent the next few summers building trails in Las Trampas Regional Park while earning degrees in philosophy and mammalian paleontology. Once Roof retired, Edwards returned to work in the garden and never left. “I’d wake up in the morning,” he says, reflecting on his 35 years at the garden, “and think, ‘I get to go to work today!’” In 1983 he became director of the garden and spent the next three decades furthering its mission of being a renowned and respected

In 1988, Measure AA garnered the two-thirds majority it needed, giving the district $226 million, including the funds for the purchase of Round Valley. It was the largest local bond measure of its time and it transformed the district. Doyle says it was like “getting tied to the nose of a rocket.” For the next 24 years, Doyle oversaw the acquisition of some 48,800 acres of parkland, often taking the battle to court to keep the properties out of the hands of developers. “I don’t think the environmental movement is generally looked at this way, but saving land is a competitive sport,” he says. “You fight hard but play fair.” In 2010, Doyle was selected to take over the district’s top position, general manager. When he looks back over his four decades with the district, he says, “I hope the public understands how lucky they are that there were so many groups at the same time working to protect special places. They were getting the best of (continued on page 37) the last. It really could have gone differently.” j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

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REFLECTIONS ON 50 YEARS OF WILDERNESS PROTECTION

Bay Area

Wild

b y J o h n H a rt

ilderness. It’s a word with a kind of electrical charge; merely

to mouth it produces a vague thrill and an image of some place enchantingly alien to our daily lives: a perfect mountain meadow, a swamp that no path penetrates, a desert mesa under a trumpet-blast of stars. We’re a little short of such shiversome scenery in the Bay

Meaning what, exactly? In a world thoroughly worked over by humankind, wilderness is our term for those places that seem the least altered, the least managed. It identifies the rawer end of a spectrum, with downtown San Francisco on one end and, say, the Wrangell Mountains on the other. But the word is elastic. It is often used in a place name, as in several East Bay regional parks with “wilderness” in their titles, or as a synonym for protected open space, as when Bay Nature titled a story about land acquisitions around Mount Diablo “Planned Wilderness.” This loose usage complicates life for the people who are gearing up to celebrate a federal law signed 50 years ago on September 3, the Wilderness Act of 1964. For it was the purpose b ay n at u r e

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of that law to turn the wilderness concept from a squishy abstraction into something very specific, a land classification with legal meaning and “teeth.” A “wilderness area,” says the law, is “an area of federal land that appears primarily to have been influenced by the forces of nature” and that has been designated for preservation, within precisely surveyed boundaries, by an Act of Congress. Inside these limits, roads, mechanized access, and most forms of resource extraction are forbidden. There were wilderness areas before the Wilderness Act, tracts set aside by the u.s. Forest Service, which could make or unmake them on administrative whim. With the passage of the act, the creation of wilderness areas became solely the prerogative of

george ward, georgeward.com

Area, yet wilderness is something we do have.

p i n nac l e s nat i o na l pa r k

Sunrise lights up the sandstone spires at Pinnacles National Park, which contains one of the wilderness areas on the outskirts of the Bay Area.

cedar roughs wilderness area

frances freyberg blackburn, francesfreyberg.com

Congress— and fair game for citizen pressure and political horse trading. For wilderness advocates, this arrangement has worked out pretty well. Since 1964, in all political weathers, they have continued to get wilderness areas designated—on a much larger scale, in fact, than the authors of the act ever dreamed (though not as large as current advocates desire).

near Lake Berryessa and the Cache Creek Wilderness, along the outlet stream of Clear Lake. Farther afield lie the great roadless areas of Mendocino National Forest, Los Padres National Forest, and the Sierra Nevada. The local array shows that “wilderness” does not have to mean “remote” or “difficult to access,” and it illustrates several other aspects of wilderness areas in general: the reasons for their The National Wilderness Preservation System is now designation, the debates they engender, and the management up to some 110 million acres; California has 15 million acres — issues they involve. about 15 percent of the state, second only to Alaska. Wilderness After the act passed, several federal land agencies were areas confer another layer of protection on lands inside national required to survey their holdings to determine which roadless parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, or areas conareas might be wilderness candidates. The u.s. Fish and Wildlife Service looked at its Farallon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, trolled by the Bureau of Land Management. State parks in ma22 miles west of the Golden Gate, and found it good. Except ny states, including California, also contain wild areas classified for the largest island in the group, Southeast Farallon, these under parallel state laws. Some Indian tribes have designated scattered seabird islets were indubitably wild, and nobody wilderness areas on reservation land as well. had plans to change that. It was an easy thing for the agency Even the San Francisco Bay Area, settled early and intento recommend, and for Congress to create in 1974, a Farallon sively, has a roster of officially designated wilderness areas. Wilderness consisting of all of 141 acres. (The act foresees most Parts of Point Reyes National Seashore are in the zone; so wilderness areas containing at least 5,000 acres but allows smallare all but one of the Farallon Islands. Henry Coe State Park er ones if these are “manageable units.”) To put the wilderness has the large and remote Orestimba Wilderness, and Big Basin rubric on the Farallones is what veteran wilderness advocate State Park contains the smaller, more frequented West Waddell Phil Farrell of Palo Alto calls “labeling our jewels.” Creek Wilderness. A bit south lies the backcountry of Pinnacles Things got more contentious with the next two areas up National Park; a bit north are the Cedar Roughs Wilderness for consideration: Pinnacles National Monument south phillip burton wilderness (point reyes) of Hollister and Point Reyes National Seashore in West Marin, both managed by the National Park Service. In each case, wilderness designation became a way for advocates to head off some cherished development plans of the agency itself. The chaparral hills and rust-colored cliffs and towers of the monument (since upgraded to a park) seemed obviously qualified for wilderness status, but there was disagreement about boundaries. Most significantly, the park service wanted to leave room for a new road connecting the two dead-end highways, one from the Salinas Valley and one from the San Benito Valley, that access the park today. On this and other points, wilderness View over Ocean Lake south to Double Point in the Phillip Burton Wilderness at Point Reyes advocates prevailed. There National Seashore. will never be such a road. b ay n at u r e

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tom muehleisen

Emotions ran higher at Point Reyes. In 1971 the park service had just backed away from an astounding development plan for the new park: seven major recreational complexes, a clifftop parkway north from Bolinas, Limantour Estero reshaped into a pond for swimming and boating. Though the service promised a new vision, the old one was still fresh enough to suggest the value of an insurance policy in the form of maximum wilderness. At one hearing, a citizen challenged official reassurances: “Although you say you are dead set against [overdevelopment], who comes after you?” Advocates also sought to block one road that was still proposed: the Muddy Hollow connection between the Limantour area and Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. The park service offered little resistance, and in 1976, Congress enacted most A view east across the rugged chaparral of the Cedar Roughs Wilderness in eastern of the citizens’ plan. Nearly half of the Napa County to the spine of the Blue Ridge mountains. park became wilderness, divided in four pieces. Most of the acreage of the Phillip er than defensive—can involve eliminating historical traces. Burton Wilderness (named after the powerful San Francisco The first pioneer dairy on the point is an unmarked site in the Congressman who was a strong proponent of preservation) is in Limantour wilderness. the southern portion of the national seashore, in two blocks sepYet “creative” wilderness is implicit in the Wilderness Act. arated by a road open to service vehicles. A third area includes The Wilderness Society’s Howard Zahniser, architect of the Limantour Estero and Spit, with a section of hills up behind. A law, vetoed the use of words like “pristine” or “undisturbed” to fourth is centered on the northern tip of the peninsula, Tomales describe the lands at stake. To renaturalize formerly occupied Point, with a rather awkward tail draped the length of Point lands is a legitimate choice. Whether it is the right choice in evReyes Beach (to preclude any thought of waterfront concessions ery case is another matter. Some think it was overdone at Point or dune buggy access). Reyes; some hope to see it applied there yet more widely. Point Reyes, a close-in area created by the purchase of private Point Reyes also tests the hopeful idea that wilderness can lands, is something of a limit case for the wilderness concept. It be a zone free of human management: the faith that we can reshows just how crowded, just how marked by human activity, and ally simply draw a line, refrain from meddling, and watch an just how in need of management an area can be and still be wilecosystem prosper. Indeed, in the era of climate change, mass derness by law. extinction, and the global free-for-all of shifting species, it may You hear people scoff at applying the a “W” word to trails be malpractice not to meddle. Parts of the Point Reyes wilderas busy as the route north from Palomarin to Bass Lake or the ness, for instance, are afflicted by invasive Scotch broom and walk out to Tomales Point in wildflower season. In the early giant South American grasses. The Wilderness Act has been inyears under the Wilderness Act, government planners, and some terpreted to allow intervention in such cases if the “minimum conservationists too, felt that busy peripheral areas should be tool, equipment, or structure” is used. Near Wildcat Beach, left out of wilderness or called by another name. The act, howropes and herbicides were backpacked in to deal with jubata ever, carefully describes wilderness as providing “an opportunity grass proliferating on cliffs. At Abbotts Lagoon, an effort to for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation.” remove European dune grass for the benefit of native plants Crossing that boundary does not have to mean being alone. and birds required more horsepower: In this case, the “miniPoint Reyes is also an extreme example of what has been mum tool” was judged to be a bulldozer. called “creative” or “restorative” wilderness. The lands purAnd how does the Drakes Bay Oyster Company fracas chased for the park had been rather thoroughly occupied and fit in? In the 1970s, environmentalists sought wilderness staaltered, first by the Miwok Indians and then by early ranchtus for Drakes Estero (linked to the neighboring Limantour ers. This is especially true of the Limantour unit and of the unit), but would have let the oyster farm continue as a “nonTomales Point area, once the prosperous Pierce Ranch. This conforming use.” The park service objected that this sort kind of wilderness classification—offensive, if you like, rathof exception was stretching the Wilderness Act too far, and

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W e s t Wa d d e l l C r e e k s t a t e w i l d e r n e s s ( b i g b a s i n )

ly acquired land, some 22,000 acres in two units separated by a fire road. Additional acreage was to be studied, but the study apparently never came to pass. “The state parks department missed a chance to think big,” Phil Farrell says. “They could have created a really magnificent Coast Range wilderness.” The latest additions to our wilderness list lie on the region’s northeastern rim and are administered by the Bureau of Land Management. This federal agency, which manages vast tracts of mostly arid land, came late and reluctantly to the wilderness study game. In 2006 Congress overrode the blm’s wishes and designated two areas. The Cedar Roughs Wilderness Area, on the skyline west of Lake Berryessa, is a remote serpentine barrens that supports the rare Sargent cypress and Napa County’s only known resident population of black bears. A little north, the Cache Creek Wilderness surrounds the rugged middle reach of the little river, patrolled by bald eagles and popular with rafters, that drains Clear Lake. In both cases, wilderness status meant closing a number of minor roads; at Cache Creek, some potential mining and energy development, not very promising, was foreclosed. Wilderness here does not head off some blockbuster invasion but simply halts what Vicky Hoover of the Sierra Club’s California Wilderness Committee calls “the normal trend of development” that can, over time, transform the face of the land.

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u.s. fish & wildlife service

hank christensen

the portion of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail within the wilderness is destined to remain forever single-track and closed to mountain bicycles. Across the Santa Clara Valley, in the heights of the Diablo Range southeast of San Jose, lie Henry W. Coe State Park and the wilderness called the Orestimba. If your sense of the wild does depend on solitude, the Orestimba, whose boundary lies 12 miles from the closest public road, is a good place to find it. This rolling blue oak savanna is the first area on our list that is large enough to accommodate that typical wilderness activity: dispersed backpack camping. Yet the Orestimba is in a sense the one that got away. The state’s first wilderness plan, in 1978, would have included almost the whole of what was then a 13,000-acre park. When a vast land acquisition expanded Coe Park sixfold, advocates inside and outside of government sought to expand the wilderness proposal to match. Instead, the state parks commission limited its final wilderness designation in 1985 to a far reach of the new-

As if in response to the critics, two local efforts aim to integrate wilderness into a broader and subtler program of land protection and management. At Pinnacles, the park is working with the Amah Mutsun people, descendants of a group who once ranged the park and harvested resources within it, to relearn the precolonial management practices that helped shape the landscape Europeans first encountered. In 2012, a controlled burn took place, partly inside the wilderness boundary, with the objective of encouraging the growth of two native plant species used in basketry. “This is the first time in well over 100 years we’ve been able to deliberately start a cultural burn anywhere on our territory,” says Chuck Striplen, a tribal member who is also a scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute. The burn site yielded an abundant wildflower show, though two subsequent dry years have

The golden anniversary of the Wilderness Act is a time of thought as well as celebration. A movement whose leaders are mostly white and largely of pre-digital vintage knows it must find more recruits among the young, the brown, and the wired. Meanwhile, the wilderness concept itself, and the attitudes of its supporters, have faced attack from unexpected quarters. farallon wilderness Wilderness, some critics complain, is a sentimental idea, a romantic indulgence. There is no such thing as a “primeval” place. The Native Americans were there first, followed in many cases by farmers and loggers; and the broader human influence is inescapable. To idealize wilderness is to devalue all that land—the great majority— that can never be considered for this specialized zone. Eminent historian William Cronon decries “wilderness dualism,” which, he says, “tends to cast any use as abuse, and thereby denies us a middle ground in which responsible use and nonuse might attain some kind of balanced, sustainable relationship.” From what seems the opposite direction comes another argument: that the wilderness movement is too timid. Drawing lines around a few scattered areas, largely high, cold, or dry, or otherwise infertile, is An aerial view over the North Farallon Islands about 30 miles west of the Golden Gate, a “strategy of weakness,” some say, doing with the South Farallones just visible on the horizon

Berry Creek tumbles over a 60-foot waterfall amid redwoods and ferns in the West Waddell Creek State Wilderness in Big Basin State Park.

Congress instead placed these waters in a novel holding category, “potential wilderness.” Today the service and major environmental allies want the oysters gone and the wilderness classification fulfilled, while other greens and agricultural supporters push back with talk of sustainable food production. Sometimes painted as a deep ideological battle, this one seems to me more like a border dispute arisen, almost by accident, between essentially compatible players. In 1974, the Legislature passed the California Wilderness Act for state-owned lands, giving the California State Park and Recreation Commission the designation authority. In 1982, the commission established the West Waddell Creek Wilderness within Big Basin Redwoods State Park. Amounting to almost a third of the park, the tract contains mature second-growth forest and popular Berry Creek Falls. This classification may seem to be a case of “labeling the jewels,” but it has consequences. Deadfalls are cleared with handsaws, not chain saws; permanent bridges have given way to flimsier “wash-away” ones; and

little to help the biosphere adapt to climate change and other human-caused disruptions; what is needed is a vast continental system of protected corridors along which species can migrate and shift. In the 1990s, a group of scientists and activists, joined under the banner of the Wildlands Project, called for a network of wilderness areas and gently used buffer zones covering about half the area of the United States. The two lines of criticism converge on a single point: that wilderness as we know it is a limited tool. This seems fair enough. It does not follow that it is a bad tool. There is much to be gained by setting aside certain less-developed lands explicitly as roadless and outside the usual range of human activity. This is, as academic critics point out, a highly artificial, culturally determined act. The Sierra Club’s Hoover puts it a little differently: “Wilderness is an achievement of American culture,” she says.

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DOLPHIN CHARTERS

orestimba wilderness (henry coe)

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ron erskine

made it hard to judge how the two target species—deer grass and root sedge—will respond. The experiment and the relationship continue. Up north, a group of citizens who began by lobbying for the Cache Creek Wilderness are now seeking to assemble a vast sweep of protected lands to be known as the Berryessa–Snow Mountain National Conservation Area. The spine of the plan is the innermost ripple of the Coast Range, known in Solano County as Vaca Mountain and farther north as Blue Ridge. The concept is to wrap core wilderness areas in a matrix of less strictly managed recreation lands, with working agricultural landscapes alongside as well. Indeed, it might be said that the entire Bay Area, with its ever-expanding greenbelts like the one centered on Mount Diablo, is evolving in the direction so boldly (and controversially) sketched by the Wildlands Project. When wilderness areas are seen in this context, much of the tension surrounding the concept disappears. Stewardship? Of course. Wilderness? Absolutely.

ALASKA, BAJA, GALAPAGOS and CALIFORNIA “ Totally satisfied...it was wonderful, spectacular, fantastic, splendid. The wildlife and scenery surpassed my expectations.”

Paradise Flat, in Henry Coe State Park’s Orestimba Wilderness, explodes with wildflowers in the spring.

I recall how moved I was, many years ago, when I first stepped across the boundary of a wilderness area (it was the Hoover Wilderness near Yosemite). Behind the modest boundary notice, the scenery was not different; the flowers no more vivid, the waters no more clear. What changed was in my mind. I knew that I was entering a zone where society had decided to arrest, even reverse, the sometimes slow but seemingly relentless process by which land becomes more civilized, more imprinted by human needs, more doodled on by random human markers.

Pinnacles wilderness

• Small Groups • Skipper with Years of Experience Photo by Jim Braswell • Abundant Wildlife

Almost anywhere else, even in parkland, I may wonder, What are “they” planning to do here next? Within these boundaries the answer is known: nothing, or as little as “they” can. I’ve learned a lot since then about the complexities involved in carrying out such a decision, but the feeling has not died. It is a kind of relaxation, a dropping of mental guard. Looking out from the roadless clifftops of Point Reyes toward the blackon-silver outlines of the Farallones; enclosed by the fir woods of Inverness Ridge or the redwoods of West Waddell; tramping a brushy ridge near Cache Creek or descending among irises and oaks toward Orestimba creek, I can forget the marginal puzzles and disputes and simply be glad for places like this— and for the laws and stubborn human efforts that provide their enduring shield.

California Native Grasses, Wild�lowers, Forbs & Wetland Species

Bay Area journalist and poet John Hart has written a dozen books on the California environment; his latest is An Island in Time: 50 Years of Point Reyes National Seashore (Lighthouse Press, 2012). His work has also appeared frequently in Bay Nature.

Wholesale Seed to the Restoration & Revegetation Industries

chuck graham

phillip burton wilderness ramble

A hiker takes in the view of surrounding wilderness from a peak in Pinnacles National Park.

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sonomalandtrust.org

Sunday, August 24, 9:30 am – 4 pm Join Bay Nature and naturalist David Wimpfheimer for an all-day exploration of the varied habitats of the Phillip Burton Wilderness at Point Reyes National Seashore. Space is limited. Sign up at baynature.org/field. ❉ The largest Wilderness 50th celebration in California will be the “Visions of the Wild” Festival in Vallejo Sept. 3 – 6. Outings, speakers, exhibits, and more. For information visit visionsofthewild.org

Preserving the rich bounty of Sonoma County for you ... and for future generations

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Climate Change: Dispatches from the Home Front

the tangible signposts of earth, rock, vegetation, and wildlife, but also the interpenetrating elements of sunlight and water in all its myriad forms.

do add up to big signatures, but for grape growers, for farmers, for ranchers, for water district supervisors—for everyday people who need to make decisions about the landscape—what happens on the small scale is much more important. The group will therefore “downscale” climate models to the level at which we actually live.

To Keep on Keeping on

Multitudes and Multivariates

(left) The view east from Pepperwood Preserve to Mount St. Helena highlights the dramatic topography of this protected research site in the Mayacamas Mountains.

TBC3: Wrestling Climate Change to the Ground by mary ellen hannibal

tom greco, pepperwood preserve

It’s not “news” to Bay Nature readers that climate change is in the process of giving a serious thwack to living systems. But what’s less well understood is how plants and animals and the habitats they inhabit are moving —and being altered— in response to changing temperature and precipitation patterns. The Pepperwood oaks, branches reaching like so many grandmothers‘ arms, may not be here in the future. When will they go, where will they go, and what might be here in their place? Moreover, even if these species are able to move, they won’t all move in lockstep, so the evolutionary relationships among them are likely to be disrupted. How will that further impact the landscape? And how will that affect the way we manage the areas we have protected and the way we target other areas for protection going forward? There are several big hurdles to figuring out these issues. As academia requires, these scientists are all specialists, virtuosos of the narrow focus. One analyzes fog, another plants, another landscape connectivity. But nature, of course, is made up of all those parts, and more, and functions through interaction. So to understand the whole, the group will need to integrate their individual approaches —not easily done. Further, climate models provided by the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (ipcc) show future temperature and precipitation patterns, but at enormous scales. Natural interactions

“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.

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tom greco, pepperwood preserve

It’s

July 2010, at state-of-the-art Dwight Center for Conservation Science at Pepperwood Preserve in the Mayacamas range east of Santa Rosa. The place is surrounded by some 3,000 acres of iconic Bay Area Coast Range habitat: sunny skies, untrammeled oak woodlands, gorgeous views. Inside, 23 palpably excited scientists introduce themselves and rattle off their disciplines: climate change modeler, spatial ecologist, physicist, soil physicist, ecologist focused on global carbon cycling and probabilistic vegetation modeling. Uh oh. Is this conference going to be all about graphs, equations, and incomprehensible hypotheses presented with wild enthusiasm? (Yes.) A fire ecologist announces himself as “Discoverer of the Previously Unknown.” Everybody laughs.

“The whole town’s here to paint the fence,” says Lorrie Flint, a hydrologist from the u.s. Geological Survey. “And David’s our Tom Sawyer.” The tall, slim master of ceremonies is Dr. David Ackerly, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley. In buoyant terms Ackerly dubs the assembly a “Mensastyle” group and calls on everyone to help figure out what climate change is doing to nature here in the Bay Area, with eyes on the prize beyond. Their goal is to combine the expertise from all of these disciplines to develop a climate change adaptation framework that can actually be used by resource managers. By the following year, the group had been winnowed down to a still-large corps of scientists christened the Terrestrial Biodiversity Climate Change Collaborative (tbc3). Since then the group, with funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, has produced all manner of work that has deepened, widened, and illuminated our knowledge of what’s going on out there, a kind of living map that encompasses not only

Looking up close and personal at California means taking into account both our Mediterranean climate—warm, dry summers and cool, wet winters—and our beautifully varied landscape of hills, mountains, rivers, creeks, and marshlands, with the myriad microclimates this topographic diversity produces. As species are having their habitats pulled out from underneath them, the good news is that our heterogeneous landscape means a cooler or wetter spot might exist for a species just a bit to the left or the right or up or down from where it is now. Where exactly those climate refugia are likely to emerge is a big question for conservation, since we need to make sure we protect—and connect—these places, to give time and space to plants and animals to rejigger their relationships and adapt. But where will they be? Even as the ensuing years of nose-to-the-grindstone research and analysis go forward, tbc3 retains a palpable sense of questioning, of poring over the complexities and dynamics of nature with an attitude, yes, of discovering the previously unknown.

Solid as a rock

“As much as we are all interested in the biological effects of this, there was a broad consensus to start with the abiotic,” explains Dr. Lisa Micheli, referring to the primary products delivered by tbc3 thus far. The star so far is a set of “high-resolution climate hydrology scenarios” for the San Francisco Bay Area. Micheli is the executive director of Pepperwood Preserve, the co-leader of tbc3 with Dr. Ackerly, and more. She is both a scientist contributing to the research and a land manager keenly interested in applying it to the landscape for which she is responsible. Micheli is a geomorphologist, so while strolling the grounds of Pepperwood, she is likely to point out a rift in the terrain and tell you how old it is. By “abiotic” she’s mostly talking hydrology—that is, how water moves through the precipitation cycle and also through the landscape. Other big abiotic factors include soil and sunlight, and putting those two together with water, we arrive at the piece of the puzzle that has absorbed these scientists for four years, “the climatic water deficit.” It turns out to be a central signal in understanding the effects TBC3 co-leaders David Ackerly and Lisa Micheli inspect the project’s master fog and weather monitoring station in the grasslands of Pepperwood Preserve. of climate change on biodiversity. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 4

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Pepperwood Preserve technician Joel Cervantes and volunteer Sam Herniman measure water levels and stream flow on Rogers Creek for the preserve’s Stream Flow Monitoring Project.

stuart weiss, tbc3

to “know your watershed! You may not have to worry so much about some parts of your lands.” She emphasizes that the models don’t tell managers exactly what will happen on their land, but present a framework within which they can ask themselves if it will make sense in the future to continue to manage their land as they are now.

The TBC3 team has augmented online vegetation maps is short term. Over the long haul it has climatic water deficit data into a comproduced by the Conservation Lands Network to show the been the purebreds that have persisted, prehensive interactive mapping model impacts of climate change on key landscape characterisbased partly on the power of conserved called the Conservation Lands Network tics. The above maps show the projected increase in the traits, the genetic raw materials that old (cln). What in other hands might have remained academic models are thus lineages have passed on for millennia. But climatic water deficit (the amount of dry-season water with climate change, the evident flexibili- stress on the vegetation) in the region around Pepperwood provided through tbc3 for virtually Preserve from “recent” (1981–2010) to “end of century” anyone who wants to use them to help ty of hybrids to adapt to novel conditions (2070–2099), based on the “hottest, driest” model from grapple with climate change impacts on in relatively short order may trump other the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The the ground. survival strategies. changes projected at Pepperwood are 100–150 mm (4–6 Pepperwood itself, all wired up The group stops. “I love this spot,” inches) of water, which will drive transitions to more arid with probes, sensors, and transects, says Ackerly. Appreciative growls convegetation types through fire and drought. has become a “sentinel site” through cur but I’m flummoxed. It’s all beautiful which regional climate change impacts to me. “You see these grasses?” says can be glimpsed in microcosm. Micheli envisions a Bay Area a postdoc along for the tour. “These are native perennials. network of such sites, including related work being done by This is a snapshot of pre-Mission California, before cattle uc Berkeley and the Nature Conservancy on Mount Hamgrazing and imported European grasses disturbed the enviilton and Stanford researchers at Jasper Ridge Preserve. At ronment.” He draws my attention to the delicately hued tips the rollout to land managers, participants take mini field of purple needlegrass (Stipa pulchra, the state grass of Calitrips to various habitats on Pepperwood. I follow a group fornia). Its long root systems hold water in the soil, which led by Stu Weiss. Weiss points out a clump of invasive creates drought resilience and specifically supports the oak grass; a rancher opines that he loves the stuff because it’s forest around us, keeping oak seedlings hydrated. We are rich fodder for his cattle. A conversation ensues about the looking at an ancient relationship that’s still functioning. juggling act of applying generalities on specific landscapes. Bringing Adaptation Home Although tbc3 has provided new tools for grappling with Change on this landscape is not new, after all. The question gonature, the road map for what lies ahead is of necessity a ing forward is, how well will the ecosystem continue to function, collaborative work-in-progress. Rich Burns, field manager of and to what purpose? In the end, it is people who will have to the Ukiah office of the Bureau of Land Management, tells adapt to the resulting changes. From its inception, tbc3 has been me, “Lisa’s group just stands out as a community-based tieabout developing cutting-edge science not just for its own sake, in to academia that you can’t find in many places. Pepperbut with the express purpose of making it useful for people. wood and tbc3 are an incubator, bringing people together and guiding creative thinking.” He pauses and adds, “I guess Micheli sees her task is “to not just give land managers this I’d call that leadership.” climate future information, but to work with them to integrate it in actual places.” On this score, conversations are just beginning. You can find a subset of TBC3 findings on the Climate Commons, hosted by the In November 2013, a subset of the tbc3 group presented initial findings to local North Bay land managers. “Today we California Landscape Conservation Cooperative: http://ow.ly/xNzrR. The are here to get feedback,” Ackerly began. “Things are fresh out Conservation Lands Network map-based tool is at bayarealands.org/explorer/. of the oven here.” Offerings include high-resolution data sets from the past 100 years that make it possible to project scenarMary Ellen Hannibal is an award-winning environmental journalist ios for the next century, given a doubling of atmospheric CO2. and author of The Spine of the Continent: The Race to Save America’s Last, Best Wilderness (Lyons Press, 2012). Her Dr. Stuart Weiss, of the Menlo Park–based Creekside Center forthcoming book on citizen science will be published in June 2015. for Earth Observation, presented his integration of the Flints’

dennis fujita, pepperwood preserve

On the watchtower

I’m Thirsty

Wildlife camera traps document the diverse wildlife at Pepperwood Preserve, such as this adult mountain lion, and provide data about changes in wildlife movements over time.

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courtesy pepperwood preserve

Lorrie and Alan Flint are U.S. Geological Survey scientists. Married for 38 years, they’ve worked together nearly as long, and they don’t so much finish each other’s sentences as toss the conversational baton back and forth between them. The Flints developed a model that is exciting because it produces a value representing the amount of water available for use by a plant, discernible not by making big generalizations from space, but by measuring the capacity of the soil to hold water, right where the plant grows, and also measuring the amount of that water the atmosphere sucks away from it (evapotranspiration). Because of this tension between the soil’s ability to hold water and the atmosphere’s ability to evaporate it, even if we get more rain in the future (the ipcc models differ on this), we will still experience more drought due to the increased heat in the system, which will evaporate the water at a higher rate. The plant winds up with a debt—the amount of water it would have used for growth and reproduction had the water been available. “Instead of a blanket look at the Mediterannean climate,” Lorrie says, “we can characterize [the landscape] right down to the level of creeks at Pepperwood.” At one meeting she demonstrated by showing graphs of the lower Laguna de Santa Rosa and Franz Creek. Pepperwood contains the headwaters for both. “They have different soil and storage capacities,” she notes. “The Laguna can hold water longer and thus has less accumulated deficit. Franz Creek gets more rain but experiences a longer deficit anyway.” Flint counsels land managers

The climatic water deficit at Pepperwood is measured partly by soil probes the Flints have strategically placed across the landscape. The long metal spears stuck in the ground are joined by weather stations, fog sensors, and wildlife cameras arrayed to capture animal movement. In addition, David Ackerly has demarcated 50 plots of oak trees to capture physiological and life-cycle responses over time. All these data points collated together will create a “biophysical knowledge base” from which to track how species respond to climate change as it unfolds. Micheli and Ackerly will watch keenly to discern where and when a vegetation “transition” might occur —for example, where Pepperwood’s oaks may be at the edge of their range and so more likely to disappear from it as temperatures ratchet higher and soils get drier. Many other complexities are at play, and one sunny spring day I tagged along while Ackerly showed a group of plant ecologist colleagues “some crazy hybrids.” These are people obsessed with the minutiae of green growing things, so we don’t move very far very fast. Micheli explains that oaks are rampant interbreeders and the genetic resilience of hybrids poses an interesting question vis-à-vis-climate change. The hybrids seem to capitalize on the best of two sets of genes, but as ecology has unfolded thus far, their flashy dominance

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(continued from page 23)

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Alison Rein uses one word to describe the state of Alvarado Park—the northern, urban tip of Wildcat Canyon Regional Park—when she started working there in 1989: scary. It was a hot spot for drug dealing and theft. Public drunkenness was common. The facilities were vandalized. The landscape suffered from neglect. It was a sad sight for a park whose infrastructure had been so beautifully crafted by Works Progress Administration workers in the 1930s. Reclaiming urban parks isn’t what entices most people to work for the park district, but as cities grow it’s an increasingly important part of the job. Rein was no stranger to watching towns balloon in size. She grew up in Houston and on family vacations in state and national parks developed a taste for the outdoors. Not long after completing her undergraduate degree in park and recreation administration at Texas a&m, Rein moved west and took a groundsperson job with the park district in 1981. She began at lake-oriented Del Valle Regional Park south of Livermore; a year and half later she was transferred to the Tilden Nature Area, where the job at that time included helping out at Wildcat Canyon Regional Park. After the park district took over the Alvarado area from the city of Richmond and connected it to Wildcat Canyon in the late 1980s, regular patrols were instigated to address the serious security issues. Meanwhile, Rein and the other rangers set about removing a derelict playground, ultimately replacing it with a new one and adding picnic sites and a gazebo. Because of the wpa stone masonry the park was listed on the National Register of Historic

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Places in 1992. A major effort was undertaken to shore up the creek walls and add boulders and logs to restore its natural look. Rein says watching that transformation unfold over more than two decades with the Wildcat crew has been “wonderful; it makes me feel really proud.” Other than her early days at Del Valle, Rein spent the rest of her 32-year career in Wildcat Canyon and adjacent Tilden Nature Area, starting as a ranger and rising through the ranks to become park supervisor in 2005. The chance to observe the land’s ebb and flow over decades— explosions of wildflowers, the evolution of open meadows into chaparral, saplings growing tall, and creeks carving new paths—is what drew her to a career in the outdoors. “If you watch long enough and closely enough, you’ll be rewarded with some answers” about the workings of nature, says Rein. “But some things will always remain a big, beautiful mystery.” She has also watched the parks’ popularity swell. “It’s a mixed blessing. People have flocked to the park. It’s packed now.” In the early days, during the week, you wouldn’t see a soul, she recalls. That has changed, and she estimates Alvarado Park’s revitalization has increased the number of visitors more than fivefold in the past two decades. Rein considers making and keeping the park accessible among her most important achievements, even when it has meant spending many hours at public meetings on matters such as adding additional parking spaces without impacting local residents. It was perhaps not the most fun part of the job, but it advanced the public’s ability to use the park, a fundamental tenet of the district’s mission. “What the district and its staff provide is sanity for the people of the Bay Area,” says (above left) Alison Rein, then a ranger at the Rein, gesturing to Wildcat Little Farm in Tilden Regional Park, visited a Canyon. “If you have this goat farm in Livermore in 1987. (above) Rein and can walk around for four at the Alvarado entrance to Wildcat Canyon Regional Park, 2014. hours and feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere, when you’re really just 15 minutes from home, that’s everything.” victoria schlesinger

A lison Rein

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california dept. of fish & wildlife

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Scientists went back to collecting rainwater after the Coast Guard stopped delivering fresh water in the late 1990s. But Bradley says he hasn’t seen water levels this low in a decade, and there are not a lot of alternatives to what nature brings. “The prospect of having to move all our water onto the island—it would be difficult to think we could sustain our operations out there if we didn’t have the water that we collect.” The researchers monitor the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States (more than 300,000 birds of 13 species), as well as five species of pinnipeds and an accompanying swarm of white sharks and other species. They are also collecting long-term data on climate change and its effects on the marine ecosystem. “We’ve been conducting research and monitoring efforts on the Farallon Islands every day since April of 1968 —that’s 46 years of continuous effort,” Bradley says. “[We have] some of the longest-term data sets on wildlife in the world. Disrupting that could have major negative implications.” [Alison Hawkes]

Scientists Report a Link Between Oil and Fish Heart Health

When the Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of fuel oil into the Bay in November 2007, the toxic toll on wildlife came as no surprise. More than 6,000 birds died after the spill, with grebes, cormorants, and murres among the hardest hit. Within two years the herring population collapsed, too. The cause of death for the oil-coated birds seemed obvious. But the cause of the fish mortality wasn’t as clear. Scientists suspected the fish had heart problems. After other oil spills, scientists had seen fish with barely beating hearts. But until this spring, no one knew why. Now, seven years after the Busan spill, a group of scientists led by Barbara Block at the Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey has discovered the exact chemical pathway that makes oil such an insidious toxin—and it has implications not just for fish but for humans as well. “Other scientists showed that oil causes the heart damage,” Block says. “Now we’ve shown how that oil exposure

grou n d

It’s spring and tule elk are on the move in the South Bay. It’s not a migration, though. Instead, a herd in the San Antonio Valley Ecological Reserve, east of Mount Hamilton, is being augmented with the help of wildlife experts, some sturdy trailers, and a relocation plan for excess elk from the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge in Los Banos in the San Joaquin Valley. Although moving can be stressful under any circumstances—for man or beast—the fact that there are too many tule elk any-

for household water, the scientists rely on rainwater collected in a large cistern with a 100,000-gallon capacity. They use about 25,000 gallons a year, roughly onequarter the amount used by the average family home. Gray water is collected, filtered, and used in toilets. California’s drought is certainly not making life easier. In fact, another year of low rainfall could shut down the research station, Bradley says. “The rains we got in February helped us get back to the bottom end of where we’d be comfortable. It’s lower than where we wanted to be. But in January it was pretty scary not being able to collect significant water at all.” The dependence on rainwater is not a new thing. In the late 1800s, commercial harvesters of murre eggs sustained their operation from rainwater collection, and a foghorn relied on cistern water to cool its coal-fueled boilers. When the Coast Guard took over in the mid-20th century, it shipped water out to the island and temporarily ended the reliance on what fell from the skies.

th e

Tule Elk Relocated as Numbers Rebound

took a liking to the elk despite his role in having converted their prime marshland foraging areas into profitable farmland. By cdfw accounts, there are now about 4,200 of the elk in 22 herds grazing on state-run preserves and national parks. But the elk have shown no reverence for fence lines or private property. “They’ll go wherever they want,” says Hobbs. So over the years, herds have been shuffled around the state to maintain harmony between elk and rancher. At least 1,500 of the roaming ruminants have been relocated since 1975, according to cdfw records. The most recent reshuffling of elk herds happened at the end of March. For two long days, teams that included wildlife workers from the cdfw and the u.s. Fish and Wildlife Service used helicopters, nets, and on-their-feet expertise to capture 15 bulls, 16 cows, and five calves

on the Los Banos reserve. Before the animals were trailered to new grazing grounds, biologists recorded body weights and collected samples of blood, hair, skin, and teeth. Among other things, that data is used to monitor herd health and analyze dna for evidence of interbreeding. Then the animals were trucked to one of three suitable areas within a reasonable driving distance: the San Antonio Valley Ecological Reserve in Santa Clara County, the Carrizo Plains Ecological Reserve in San Luis Obispo County, and the Wind Wolves Preserve in Kern County. “We try to spread the elk around,” Hobbs says. “Before their numbers went up, we were down to a handful of animals, so genetic diversity was really low to start with. If we let herds continue to grow in isolation, it would cause increasing genetic loss.” Nine bulls were delivered to San Antonio Valley, where they’ll mingle with an existing herd of about 150 tule elk that were reintroduced to the area a few decades ago. As part of a smaller herd, the new bulls will have an easier time getting enough to eat, despite drought conditions that have made it harder for grazing animals to find good forage all across the state. San Antonio Valley Ecological Reserve is not generally open to the public. The San Luis National Wildlife Refuge in Los Banos is open year-round and tule elk can be seen via the auto-tour route. You can also observe tule elk at cdfw’s Grizzly Island Wildlife Area east of Fairfield, the Tupman Tule Elk State Preserve in Buttonwillow, and Point Reyes National Seashore. [Elizabeth Devitt]

where in California is cause for celebration. Not so long ago, there were almost too few of these native elk to count. “These animals take up a lot of room,” says Joe Hobbs, a senior environmental scientist for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (cdfw). “Although it’s a big state, it also has a large population [of elk]. When an animal that big goes from the brink of extinction to living on the landscape in herds, it’s a huge achievement.” A half million tule elk, native only to California, once roamed from Mendocino to the Tehachapi Mountains near Bakersfield. But when the Bay Area population spiked in the mid-1800s, tule elk were hunted until very few remained. Oddly enough, the remaining elk were spared largely through conservation efforts started by cattle baron Henry Miller, who

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together,” she said. “And it’s working well for the habitat and [for] the environment as well. It’s a great illustration.” After visiting the peak, Jewell and an entourage of ebrpd and federal agency staff set off on a short hike through the adjoining Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve, with Kopchik and Doyle leading the way past mining-pocked sandstone and thickets of manzanita. (Doyle chatted with Jewell about mountain lions and stopped to point out a white-and-magenta mariposa lily. “Robert,” Jewell joked later, “is a man of few words, and I think he’s used them all up.”) In a tent set up for a short program near the entrance to Black Diamond Mines, Jewell called the hcp “prescient” and took notes as officials of the member agencies praised Kopchik’s leadership and commented on the plan’s effectiveness. “It really does take a village to keep a community sustainable,” Jewell told the audience. “Habitat conservation plans are a way to get together and say, ‘What do we have in this landscape? What do we have that we need to preserve? What do we have that makes us unique? Where are the areas where we really have an opportunity to develop, that help keep our communities vibrant and our economy strong? What are the areas that should never be developed?’ “I want to congratulate you all,” she added, “on what you’ve done, and to say you are charting a path to the future that we are all learning from.” [Eric Simons] (continued from page 7)

Love redwoods?

Drought Could Harm Farallones Research

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As you might imagine, life out on Southeast Farallon Island is pretty rustic for the half dozen or so research scientists who live out there. “We only shower every four days. There’s a schedule,” says Russ Bradley, the Farallon program manager and a senior scientist at Point Blue Conservation Science. Situated 27 miles offshore, the remote research station has to be largely self-sufficient. More than 90 percent of the power comes from solar panels. And

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delays the timing of the on-off switch in the heart.” At first, even “fingerprinting” the tanker oil as the cause of herring problems in the Bay was a huge challenge, says John Incardona, a toxicologist with the fisheries division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Bay Area has lots of potential sources of oil in its water, such as storm water runoff, local refineries, and automobile exhaust. The Richmond–San Rafael Bridge looms over one of the biggest herring spawning sites. Researchers at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory had been studying herring populations in the area for years, though, and knew what to look for when the Busan spill happened. “We had sites that had healthy spawning within the last 10 years, so we could show that immediately after the oil spill there was a dramatic drop in herring numbers,” Incardona says. Experts estimate that up to 29 percent of the herring spawn was lost in the first

winter after the spill (2007-2008). The following year (2008–2009) the spawning biomass was the lowest on record, prompting the California Fish and Game Commission to close the commercial herring season. The Bay’s herring biomass finally started to recover in fall 2010 and has continued to rise each year through winter 2013, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Clues to the origins of the heart maladies caused by oil have been floating around for a long time. In 2000, Gary Cherr and a team of researchers at the Bodega Marine Laboratory showed that creosote (an oil-based wood preservative) causes slower heartbeats and swelling around the heart in herring eggs

stuck on creosote-treated pier pilings. Then, scientists who studied the salmon population after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound found fish embryos there also had slower heart rates, a condition called bradycardia. Many of the embryos also developed heart chambers with the wrong shape. Not surprisingly, these fish couldn’t swim as fast as the others and became easier prey as they matured. When the Deepwater Horizon oil well ruptured, spewing sweet crude oil into prime spawning grounds for tuna in the Gulf of Mexico, Block was studying tuna and their highly efficient use of oxygen. As questions cropped up about damage to fish in the Gulf, she turned to the big fish for answers. “Tuna are the Olympians of the sea,” Block says. “They can go from cruising speed to hunting in an instant, all under the stress of cold water.” Because of their athletic capabilities, tuna turned out to be just the right fish to study. With a special microscope, researchers watched the inner workings of (continued on page 43) individual heart cells

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Elusive Black Rails Adapt Well

Two summers ago, a black rail turned up dead under a wind turbine in the Delta. The bird was probably whacked by the rotating blades, and while its death was a sad event, there was a scientific upside to it. The bird had been banded in the Sierra foothills and had traveled some 80 miles or so before meeting its maker. That’s a very long way for a species that in some ways acts more like a mouse than an animal with wings. “That was really interesting. It’s

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not what we were expecting to find,” says Steven Beissinger, a conservation biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, whose research team banded the bird. “Maybe they’re a lot more mobile than we gave them credit for.” Black rails are elusive birds, spending most of their time scurrying around marshes under tall vegetation. They are so hard to spot, in fact, that they’re a highlight on many a birder’s life list. They are about half a foot long, the smallest of the rail family, and mostly black, except for a brown collar and white speckles on the back. The bird that was whacked by the wind turbine was headed toward its ancestral home in the San Francisco Bay. Beissinger has been studying the species’ movements for more than a decade after the surprising discovery that this demure little bird had been quietly living in the Sierra foothills in small marshes created by irrigation canals and accidental leaks. How and when the black rails originally got there from the San Francisco Bay has been a bit of a mystery. Beissinger’s team has been collecting blood and feather samples from banded birds and testing the dna. They have determined that the Bay rails and the Sierra population diverged about a thousand years ago, when some rails adopted spring-fed wetlands in the Sierra foothills. The banded bird added certainty to what the genetic tests showed—black rails could, indeed, take to the skies for long distances. The Sierra foothills, specifically Nevada and Placer counties, turned out to be an ideal spot to research the black rail because the study areas are so discrete, only about half an acre in size. The sites are scattered across private lands, many of them ranches. By comparison,

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th e

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in the Bay Area, black rails inhabit wetlands that are hundreds of acres (such as China Camp State Park, Napa-Sonoma Marsh, and the wetlands around Point Pinole Regional Shoreline). Only a few breeding pairs occupy each marsh site in the Sierra foothills. “We could go to a lot of these sites and see how many of them are occupied by these rails, and we can go from one year to the next and see how many occupied ones remained occupied or went locally extinct. And we can see new patches,” Beissinger says. In the foothills, Beissinger’s team heads out during the day with nylon mist nets that they peg down into the soil. They clear a path in the vegetation heading directly at the net. Then they hide in the vegetation and play recorded rail calls in the hopes of luring a bird, which will hopefully try to defend its territory, into the net. They have caught 339 black rails this way. “It really works,” says Laurie Hall, a researcher on Beissinger’s team. “They’re hard to catch. I’m not going to lie. They’re definitely a challenging species to work with.” In the San Francisco Bay marshes, researchers use a different technique, rustling up birds at night with a marine spotlight and a rope that they drag through low-standing pickleweed. The research is helping to provide insight into how a species can disperse under environmental stresses like climate change. In the San Francisco Bay, the genetic findings have shown that the South Bay and North Bay populations rarely mix, perhaps because the habitats are large enough to keep them happy in home territory. But the foothill rails move easily between patches of marshland as one spot dries up and a new spot is created. The banded bird found dead in the Delta had traveled farther than anyone had ever documented. “They are capable of this flexibility and that’s good news,” says Hall, “especially when we talk about sea level rise and the redistribution of wetland habitat in the Bay Area. I think the story of black rails is going to be a good one. It’s a viable population even in the face of climate change.” [Alison Hawkes]

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 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 March 4 and June 2, 2014. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Circle and receive invitations to special events and outings.

in developing bluefin and yellowfin tuna. They compared normal young fish with those that were exposed to the breakdown products of oil, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (pahs), and discovered that these smaller chemical compounds block the pathway linking the electrical impulses in heart cells to muscle contractions. Without that link, called excitationcontraction coupling, cells literally can’t conduct a beat. The tuna’s need for speed means that it’s built with more of these pathways than most fish—and most other species. So when the scientists peered into the heart cells of young tuna, they found enough of the right channels to study. “If we’d looked at a mouse we might have missed this mechanism,” says Block. pahs also create another problem for heart cells. Block and her colleagues discovered that once the pathway is plugged, lower calcium levels inside the cell lead to weaker contractions—a double whammy for a heart cell that’s already slowing down. Seven years after the spill, herring numbers in the Bay are soaring, well above where they were even before the spill. But Block’s work is not done. She’d like to not only figure out more about fish cardiac cells, but also to find out what happens in other species—like people. The same sorts of oil breakdown products that are toxic to fish in water also cause air pollution. And while there are well-known associations between human heart disease and air pollution, Block says that no one is hunting—yet— for a similar mechanism. [Elizabeth Devitt] (continued from page 40)

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ally tell where she is located as well. Snakes, like other herptiles (lizards, turtles, alligators), and also like birds, have a single urogenital opening. Defecation, urination, copulation, and egg laying are all done through this one opening called the cloaca (Latin for sewer). There is a little sexual dimorphism in snakes; that is, the sexes look the same, with the only minor difference being that the tail of males is often just a bit longer to store their larger genitals. Indeed, all male snakes have two penises, with each hemipenis connected to one testis. The hemipenes often have barbs, spines, or knobs. These unique shapes fit right into the female’s anatomy, like a lock and key. This prevents mating with a different species and ensures that the couple will remain engaged during all that rolling and tumbling. When mating, the male uses only one penis, and once the

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sperm from that testis is used up, there is a refractory time. However, if another mating opportunity arises with the same or another female soon thereafter, then the other hemipenis is available for action. And that is apparently the reason for having two. Perhaps that male gopher snake managed to use both of his hemipenes during the long frolic in the grass that I witnessed. Female snakes can stow sperm in a special oviduct sac for long periods of time often until the next spring, but sometimes for five years or longer! This enables them to release the sperm for fertilization at an opportune time, when conditions for offspring survival are advantageous. Some species of snakes—such as gopher and ringneck snakes—lay eggs, while others are ovoviviparous, which means they give birth to live young—like our local rattlesnakes and garter snakes. Generally speaking, there is very little parental care; baby snakes are on their own. What they lack in parental attention, however, is made up for in numbers: garter snakes can give birth to up to 80 young at a time!

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