Bay Nature October-December 2015

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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

Mount Diablo from Burn to Bounty

A A Tule Tule Elk Elk Conundrum Conundrum in in Point Point Reyes Reyes Untangling Untangling Spider Spider Evolution Evolution

The The Ancient Ancient Oaks Oaks of of Russian Russian Ridge Ridge $5.95

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c o n t e n t s

october–december 2015

Features 24

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evolution’s tangled web A Closer Look at Local Spiders Eight-legged critters in the Bay Area offer a glimpse into our ancient past…if you know where to look for them. On a “spidering” adventure in several East Bay parks, reporter Alisa Opar learned to find spiders with traits—unusual claws, fangs, and lungs—that first evolved in spiders tens and hundreds of millions of years ago and have survived thanks to California’s diverse and dynamic geology and climate.

by Alisa Opar

Carlos Porrata

Scott Hein, heinphoto.com

Jack Owicki, symbiote.smugmug.com

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harvest of fire Two Ye a r s o n M o u n t D i a blo In September 2013, the Morgan Fire burned through 3,200 acres of chaparral, woodlands, and grasslands on the east side of Mount Diablo. Over the next two years, journalist Joan Hamilton visited the mountain time and again to watch the remarkable and dramatic changes taking place as the landscape rebounded, revealing long-dormant wildflowers, never-before-seen insects, and hillsides previously hidden behind impenetrable vegetation.

by Joan Hamilton

on the fence A Tu l e E l k C o n u n d ru m at Po i n t Reye s An iconic inhabitant of Point Reyes National Seashore, the tule elk, is in a peculiar predicament. Once near extinction throughout the state, the elk population on Point Reyes has recovered spectacularly yet recently experienced a troubling decline. This situation has raised concerns for ranchers and environmentalists alike and highlighted the park service’s challenge in balancing the needs of native wildlife with those of the park’s historic working ranches.

by Alison Hawkes

Departments 4

Bay View

7

Ear to the Ground

News from the conservation community and the natural world 8

Conservation in Action Going on a plant safari on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais

by Mary Catherine O’Connor

10 Signs of

On the Trail

12 Among the Ancient Oaks on

Letter from the publisher

the Season

Sandhill cranes put on quite a show in the Central Valley

by Joe Eaton

Russian Ridge A Midpeninsula Open Space for the Ages From the ancient canyon live oaks on a west-facing slope to the 360-degree views and wildflower blooms atop Borel Hill, plus a brand-new staging area, Russian Ridge Open Space has more than its share of high points.

by Kathleen Wong

17 Elsewhere . . .

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First Person Reviewing 50 years of environmental action with Phyllis Faber Interview by David Kupfer

53 Ask the Naturalist

Do Bay Area snakes hibernate?

by Michael Ellis

54 Naturalist’s Notebook

Is that hawk a red-tailed or a redshouldered?

by John Muir Laws

Pine Lake, Tolay Lake Regional Park, Keller Beach

visit us online at www.Baynature.org

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by david loeb

bay view letter from the publisher

co ntr i b u to r s Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton (p. 47) is UC Berkeley undergraduate and former Bay Nature intern.

Berkeley-based environmental journalist Joe Eaton (p.

10) writes frequently for the San Francisco Chronicle, Estuary News and Bay Nature.

Michael Ellis (p. 53) is a Santa Rosa–based naturalist who leads nature-based tours with Footloose Forays (footlooseforays.com) and waxes eloquent for KQED’s Perspectives series.

Melanie Hess (p. 17) is a Bay Nature editorial intern.

David Kupfer (p. 38) is an environmental journalist and activist based in Marin. His work has appeared in The Sun, The Progressive, and Bay Nature.

Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 54) is the

b ay n at u r e

Diane Poslosky

L

et’s talk about volcanoes for a minute. I know this magazine is about nature in the Bay Area, and we don’t have any active volcanoes in our midst, not even dormant ones. (Round Top in the Oakland hills is a volcano, but it’s long dead, lying on its side, and covered by communications towers and eucalyptus trees.) And perhaps that’s a good thing; between earthquakes and wildfire and drought, we’ve got our hands full when it comes to potential natural disasters.

But I was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest this past summer and the great volcanoes of the Cascades—Shasta, Hood, St. Helens, Rainier, Baker—were oh so visible. I didn’t get particularly close to them. But I sure did notice them.

And stare at them. And take lots of photos of them. I think it’s a question of scale. You come around a corner in Seattle, and bam! right there, staring down at you like God him/herself, is lordly Mount Rainier. I love admiring our iconic local peaks—Tamalpais, Diablo, Hamilton, St. Helena—from vantage points around the region. But their scale is entirely different, so the visceral impact is just not the same.

Am I jealous? Yes, a little bit. But as I’m reminded whenever I spend time in the natural world of other regions, each place has its own treasures and pleasures.

And if you feel more at home in one

versus the other, well, then listen to that voice and go there. That’s how and why I ended up here in the Bay Area 42 years ago and never left.

I was reminded of that “why” recently on a late afternoon bike ride up Railroad Grade on Mount Tam, at a point not too far below West Point Inn where you can look west, out to the Pacific (if the fog isn’t rolling in); and then south across the dark green hills of the Marin Headlands down to the Golden Gate, with San Bruno Mountain and Montara Mountain rising up behind the city, looking all golden itself in the light of the setting sun; and then southeast to the sparkling blue sheet of San Francisco Bay and over the East Bay hills to the double peaks of Mount Diablo. Yes! This is a fine home, even without volcanoes.

There are some who think Mount Diablo must be a volcano, rising as it does so prominently over the surrounding landscape. But it’s not; not even an extinct one. Yet as we explore in this issue, it does have the capacity to explode, if not in eruptions of lava then in sheets of flame.

The most recent wildfire on Mount Diablo was two years ago, in September 2013. Above I called wildfire a potential natural disaster, but it’s only a disaster when human lives or infrastructure are lost. In fact, wildfire is a kind of natural reset button for our Mediterranean landscapes. Fortunately, the 2013 Morgan Fire was one of those “perfect” fires that didn’t take any lives or homes. So as author Joan Hamilton describes in the ultimate article of her (continued on next page) author of The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds and teaches nature observation and illustration. Info at johnmuirlaws.com.

Chelsea Leu (p. 44) is a research fellow with Wired magazine and former Bay Nature intern.

Mary Catherine O’Connor (p. 8) is an award-winning reporter whose beats include environmental issues, technology, and recreation.

Ann Sieck (p. 17) 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.

Brett Simpson (p. 42) is a Princeton undergraduate and former Bay Nature intern.

october–december 2015

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

Volume 15, Issue 4 October–December 2015 Publisher David Loeb Editor in Chief Victoria Schlesinger Editorial Director Eric Simons Associate Director Judith Katz Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Contributing Editor Alison Hawkes Technology Manager Peuan Thinsan Development Associate Katy Yeh Design Susan Scandrett Advertising Director Ellen Weis Copy Editors Cynthia Rubin, Kathleen M. Wong Research Editor Sue Rosenthal Board of Directors Carol Baird, Christopher Dann, Catherine Fox (President), Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, David Loeb, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Volunteers/Interns Julia Busiek, Samantha Cook, Paul Epstein, Robert Gardiner, Avihai Guzy, Melanie Hess, Lauren McNulty, Destiny Palacios, Elizabeth Rogers, Kimberly Teruya Bay Nature is published quarterly by the Bay Nature Institute, 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 Subscriptions: $53.95/three years; $39.95/two years; $21.95/one year; (888)422-9628, baynature.org P.O. Box 92408, Long Beach, CA 90809 Advertising: (510)665-5900/advertising@baynature.org Editorial & Business Office: 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 (510)528-8550; (510)528-8117 (fax) baynature@baynature.org baynature.org issn 1531-5193 No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission from Bay Nature and its contributors. © 2015 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.

Front Cover: A fence lizard rests on a charred log in Perkins Canyon just weeks after the Morgan Fire on Mount Diablo in September 2013.

[Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel]

letters Dear Editor, I have recently observed the destruction caused by rogue mountain bikers in Mount Tamalpais State Park. On the Matt Davis Trail, below Pantoll, and on Stapelveldt, also below Pantoll (both trails closed to bikes), bikers have created gouging shortcuts between switchbacks in numerous places along the tranquil trail.

When it does rain, the erosion will be devastating and the mud will flow down to either Redwood Creek or the ocean. Such disrespect for the natural environment will win no new supporters for increased access to single track trails or the creation of multi-use trails in our open spaces.

Before such discussions can even continue, I believe that mountain biking advocates need to unite to raise funds for the repair of the damage that has occurred and begin to police their own. I write this as someone who loves to ride my mountain bike on sanctioned trails in Marin County.

9-primaried species to be affected by mirror-image misorientation. We regret the editorial error. The corrected version of the story can be found on baynature.org.

against other organizations opposed to the tradition and sport of hunting food for our families (“conservationists”) and trail riding (the equestrian community) to represent our love of our Bay Area lands.

So I’m writing to say THANK YOU for the careful and fair treatment of these contentious issues. Thank you for being balanced and allowing us to have our voices heard in a highly respected publication focused on ecology and nature.

Thank you for not bowing to biased and sensationalized views that hunters and trail riders are bad/dangerous/destructive/etc. and should be banned.

( bay

view: continued from page 4) two-yearlong coverage of the impacts of the Morgan Fire, this blaze cued a thrilling drama of a fast-changing landscape, complete with crazy wildflower displays, never-seen-here-before insects, and openings into previously hidden parts of the park. The mountain put on quite a show, and local researchers and naturelovers had a ringside seat.

Now we’re delighted to share a small part of that show with you in this issue and spilling over onto our special Mount Diablo web page (baynature.org/diablo), which features “time lapse” slide shows, accounts of field trips with researchers, a habitat map of the fire zone, and an interactive version of the original chaparral illustration on page 28. Check it out! And then go check out the mountain itself, where the changes keep on coming, even if they’re not volcanic.

Bryan Hains Redwood City cor rection The article “The Lost Birds of Point Reyes,” which appeared in the July– September issue, incorrectly stated that ducks, hawks, shorebirds, and some songbirds with 10 primary feathers do not experience vagrancy. Such birds do appear out of range but are not as likely as

Karen Jer nstedt Mill Valley Dear Editor, My guess is that you have received more negative than positive feedback on recent pieces covering waterfowl hunting (“View From the Blind,” Oct-Dec 2014) and mountain biking (“Ride on the Wild Side,” July-Sep 2015).

I approached these articles with great interest as a PhD biologist and former professor at Yale, birder, hiker, and (!!) passionate waterfowl hunter and avid mountain biker. I live in Redwood City and hunt at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, and bike all over the Peninsula, North Bay, and East Bay parks. As I’m sure you are aware, we expect and regularly encounter challenges and physical hostilities (not limited to wires strung across biking paths, vandalism of vehicles, etc.) by people opposed to the ways we love to interact with and enjoy our Bay Area parks and preserves. Our advocacy groups work

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Death of a Sea Otter

The most appropriate response when you hear a report of a sea otter in San Francisco Bay is, “Are you sure that wasn’t a river otter?” Sea otters were once relatively common in the Bay, but extensive hunting for otter pelts in the 19th century nearly rendered the entire southern sea otter population extinct.

While the population has been recovering around Monterey Bay, there have been only 16 confirmed sea otter sightings in San Francisco Bay since 1979, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So it was cause for excitement when a juvenile male sea otter appeared to take up temporary residence in the upper reaches of Richardson Bay near Mill Valley in June and July. And it was likewise cause for sadness when, roughly three weeks later, the otter died.

According to California Department of

Fish and Wildlife pathologist Melissa Miller, who conducted the necropsy, the otter likely died of a “one-two punch” of domoic acid poisoning and infection from the possum-borne parasite Sarcocystis neurona.

Domoic acid showed up in the otter’s urine, and minor hemorrhaging in the hippocampus region of its brain suggested domoic acid intoxication, Miller says. The inflammation was still in an acute phase, meaning it had occurred recently—almost certainly after the otter entered San Francisco Bay. Miller wasn’t able to actually see the Sarcocystis parasite in the otter’s brain, so she sent samples to a lab for further study. But she saw evidence in the heart and skeletal system, as well as a pattern of inflammation in the brain that’s typical of Sarcocystis.

Sarcocystis parasites live in possums and

are excreted in feces that then wash into the water, where otters eventually ingest them. Bays in particular can be a problem for both Sarcocystis and domoic acid. “With limited tidal exchange in bays, once things get in there it takes a while to flush them out,” Miller says.

“So they can be higher-risk areas for animals because of the concentration.”

Both domoic acid and the parasite can also cause seizures, which observers reported seeing in the otter before it died. Possums, which are widespread but not native to California, are the definitive hosts for Sarcocystis neurona, but aren’t generally affected by it. “This parasite is really common in otters,” Miller says.

“What it shows you is how connected land and sea really are. Whenever you put anything on the ground or in the water along the coastline, it’s going to make its way down to the ocean.”

It’s not the first time Miller has seen a dead otter with symptoms of both domoic acid poisoning and Sarcocystis infection, which raises a research question about whether the poison and parasite are somehow related. In April 2004, nearly 40 southern sea otters died in a mass stranding near Morro Bay. More than 90 percent of those otters tested positive for the parasite. In an article in the journal Veterinary Parasitology, Miller and her co-authors wrote, “Concurrent exposure to the marine biotoxin domoic acid may have enhanced susceptibility of affected otters to S. neurona and exacerbated the neurological signs exhibited by stranded animals.”

Miller is now planning a major study, going back through the necropsy records of 500 otters, to look at other (continued on page 42) incidences of otters

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by mary catherine o’connor

Iconic Mount Tamalpais (left) is home to at least 950 plant species, and the hairy bird’s beak, endemic to

conser vation in action

Come on a Safari with Me There are at least 250 plants known to have grown on Mount Tamalpais yet that have not been seen in recent years.

Trudging along the mountain’s northern flank in 90-degree heat, a motley crew of bona fide botanists, plant enthusiasts, and me, the neophyte, hope to check a few more species off that list. We’re part of a Marin Municipal Water District “plant safari,” a citizen science effort to document every kind of plant growing on the mountain. Wiping away rivulets of sweat, we file in behind Andrea Williams, a vegetation ecologist with the MMWD and leader of our party. I’m considering all the plants I’ve overlooked in the past 15 years while running, mountain biking, and hiking on Mount Tam. Poison oak—more precisely, avoiding poison oak—is all I’ve ever really thought about.

Suddenly, Williams is down on bended knee, inspecting a wiry, drab green plant. In no time Robert Brostrom, a fellow citizen scientist on our expedition, is sprawled on the ground, propped up on his elbows with his nose buried in the 1,500-page Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California. Along with this tome, we’ve b ay n at u r e

lugged along a pickax and a field bag filled with cardboard sheets ready to hold the plant pressings we collect.

Williams thinks the plant is Cordylanthus pilosus, also known as hairy bird’s beak. I may be the novice in the group, but even to me the name makes sense— the fuzzy, mauve sepals look like two halves of a long beak gulping down a white flowery morsel. Although Williams is stoic and focused in the field, I later learn it’s one of the best discoveries of the day. “The Cordylanthus we found is in the only location I know of in Marin outside of China Camp,” she’ll tell me.

Cordylanthus pilosus grows in the mountains and foothills of Northern California, and the subspecies we found—subspecies pilosus—grows only in the coast range region. “There are old vague records—ones that reference Fairfax or Mount Tam,” Williams says.

“That’s the point of the safaris!”

Indeed, the plant safaris, organized by

october–december 2015

MMWD and the California Academy of Sciences, aim to produce the first-ever complete catalog of the more than 950 plant species botanists believe grow on the 18,000 acres of the mountain under MMWD’s purview. With that baseline information, the district will be able to monitor changes in the vegetation over decades to come and better manage the property. The project, now in its fourth year, is Williams’ brainchild. And it has nearly reached fruition.

The idea took root in 2012, the water district’s centennial. “Some of us in the natural resource department wanted to celebrate the natural history of the mountain,” Williams recounts. “I thought it would be good to have a snapshot in time, a baseline [of plant life].”

Williams reached out to the academy, with its long, rich history of botanizing Mount Tam, to inquire about collaborating. Turns out, her timing was great. The academy was already in conversation with the S.D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation, which was eager to fund just such a citizen science program. While the MMWD runs the project on the ground, the academy provides a permanent home for the plant specimens (known as an herbarium) and botanical expertise.

Even though Mount Tam has drawn botanists for more than a century and many of them have extensively studied and collected entire families of species, no one has endeavored to make a complete collection of the mountain’s plants. It’s an important project, given that over the next 100 years the effects of climate change (higher temperatures, changed precipitation patterns, etc.) are likely to impact the botanical mix.

Already, the suppression of fire and introduction of nonnative species have Ken-ichi Ueda, inaturalist.org/observations/8330

Matt Cerkel, MMWD

Northern California, is among them (below).

MMWD volunteer coordinator Suzanne Whelan and SFSU botany graduate student and volunteer Tanya Baxter examine two snowberry specimens.

Mary Catherine O’Connor

altered the species composition as compared to several hundred years ago.

“Fire suppression has been introduced to the mountain since the 1800s, which means it is losing open meadows” and perhaps some of the plants that thrive in them, says Alison Young, the citizen science engagement coordinator for the academy. “In the higher elevations, there might be plants that are no longer there because of warming.”

Without a baseline, it’s difficult to know which plants are gone and which have moved in; this project will make it easier to track such changes.

The program began with Williams, Young, and MMWD volunteer coordinator Suzanne Whelan organizing five to six “bioblitzes” each year. These involved roping off 30-foot-diameter sections of the mountain’s woodlands, grasslands, chaparral, and wetlands, then deploying teams of citizen scientists to identify every type of plant inside, collecting one flowering or fruiting specimen of each species. By 2015, bioblitzes had found 600 specimens, which were logged into iNaturalist, an online identification resource (and smartphone app). But when it became clear the bioblitzes were not turning up many species to check off the list, the water district launched the plant safaris—where plant-savvy volunteers team up with expert botanists once or twice a month to search for the most elusive species.

Even before we find the hairy bird’s beak, all signs point to a good day of plant hunting. Two minutes onto the trail Williams finds a flowering Bromus, a type of native grass. But is it Bromus hordeaceous, as she suspects, or something else?

Brostrom leafs through Jepson. “The teeth are generally not translucent,” he calls out, scanning the manual’s description. The sun is already fierce and beads of

sweat are rolling down his cheek. “Is the lemma papery or leathery?” he asks. I silently ask myself, “What the heck is a lemma and how would I know if it’s papery or leathery? Also, grasses have teeth?”

But Brostrom knows what he’s doing.

For his day job, he sets and inspects traps for Alameda County, looking for the crop-destroying Mediterranean fruit fly.

But off-duty he’s a seasoned botanist, involved in this project since its inception, and one of 189 committed citizen science volunteers who have contributed more than 3,600 hours in the bioblitzes and safaris. Later, when we head to MMWD headquarters to log our haul along with five other safari teams, Brostrom points out Doreen Smith, one of a handful of experts on another safari team that day: “She is probably the top botanist in Marin County,” he says.

With my lack of botanical acumen I am named team photographer; for each new plant we collect, I snap a few shots of its leaves, flowers, stems, and root. My teammate Robin Truitt is tasked with filling out each plant identification sheet.

“It’s like taking a college course without having to pay tuition,” she says as we eat lunch in the shade of tall live oaks along Alpine Lake. A former National Park Service ranger, she joined this project partly to get better acquainted with the wealth of public land within the MMWD, including 150 miles of trails and fire roads: “I’ve lived in Marin County 20 years and I’ve never been on this trail before.”

As we scan a flat, dry section just uphill from Bullfrog Creek, Williams spots another plant she’s been hunting: Dianthus armeria ssp. armeria, or grass pink.

(While it’s a non-native, the objective of the safaris is to document all species.) It’s an unusual find—the first instance of this plant in the whole of Marin County, as far as Williams knows. She easily distinguishes it from the large cluster of Centaurium erythraea just inches away. To me, they look virtually identical. “The Centaurium has yellow reproductive parts,” she tells me, pointing to the small flower and comparing its smooth petals to the jagged edges and telltale white pattern on the Dianthus. It’s amazing what a trained eye can see.

Nearly two-thirds as large as the landmass of San Francisco, the lands owned by MMWD would be a bear to manage even if they did not supply drinking water for 186,000 customers in central and southern Marin. Directing trail users—keeping hikers from swimming in the enticing lakes and dissuading mountain bikers from riding outside of marked trails—makes it even harder. But Whelan sees her job as a good way to promote appreciation of these public lands by the people who use them. “It’s good to have an educated constituency,” she says.

Count me as one of those constituents. By day’s end the five safari teams have collected 26 plant specimens, among them a hard-to-find wetland species and a handful of species that are rare in Marin.

We’ve brought the baseline a step closer to completion, and the hours we spent baking in the sun-exposed grasslands and dodging poison oak in the steep ravines were well worth it.

To participate in MMWD citizen science projects, visit marinwater.org/193/ Citizen-Science.

Bay Nature subsequently learned that Cordylanthus pilosus was recorded on Mt. Tam in 1994 and 2010, according to Calflora.

october–december 2015

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by joe eaton

signs of the season

A Festival of Cranes From high overhead comes the rattling cry that conservationist Aldo Leopold called “the trumpet in the orchestra of evolution.” Riding the autumn winds, the sandhill cranes are returning to the California Delta. Every year they converge here, part of a living wave that also includes swans, geese, and ducks arriving from the north to spend the winter. Among the vineyards, orchards, housing tracts, and dairy farms, the

Lon Yarbrough, ShareTheRoad Productions

cranes in their thousands gravitate to a handful of roosting areas: Cosumnes River Preserve, Woodbridge Ecological Reserve, Staten Island, and other sites on private land. Their arrival is one of California’s supreme wildlife spectacles, a major draw for Delta visitors—and, like the migration of the monarch butterflies, a phenomenon we risk losing.

Sandhill cranes of three subspecies—the lesser (Grus canadensis canadensis), greater (G. c. tabida), and Canadian (G. c. rowani)— spend the winter in the Delta and the Central Valley. Lesser sandhills are to greater sandhills as grizzly bears are to Alaskan brown bears. They have followed separate evolutionary paths since Pleistocene glaciers divided their ancestral populations 1.5 million years ago, with some interbreeding since: Greater-lesser mating pairs continue to be, on occasion, observed in the field. As for Canadians, they weren’t recognized as a separate entity until 1965, and some ornithologists don’t accept them as a separate group given their similarity to the greater. Even experts have trouble distinguishing them in the field.

The cranes differ in size (as the names suggest), migratory behavior, food and habitat preferences, and protected status: In California, greaters b ay n at u r e

In the early morning, greater sandhill cranes at the Cosumnes River Preserve prance, bow, call out, and touch beaks in an elaborate dance that often develops over years between mated pairs.

are listed as endangered; lessers, a species of special concern; Canadians have no legal protection beyond the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Greaters are more abundant north of the Delta, lessers to the south, while Canadian sandhills are far outnumbered by both subspecies in the Delta.

Although they didn’t differentiate among subspecies, observers in the 1850s mentioned abundant wintering cranes in California’s grasslands. Market hunting thinned their ranks, but they slowly recovered during the 20th century, with their winter presence in the Delta increasing over the past 50 years. An estimated 50,000 cranes, four-fifths of

october–december 2015

them lesser, now winter statewide. The Delta, offering isolated shallow wetlands for night roosts and grain fields for foraging, may have compensated for lost habitat elsewhere. In a 2007-08 survey, Delta counts ranged from 6,421 in November to 27,213 in February.

Distinguishing a greater from a lesser sandhill lies in the details. In a mixed group, the size difference is obvious, greaters standing almost a foot taller.

In flight, lessers appear relatively longwinged, equipped for an epic trek from the far north: They migrate 2,400 miles from the Alaskan tundra. Greaters breed closer by, from British Columbia to Northern California as far south as Sierra Valley, with their highest concentration in Oregon.

Lessers and greaters behave differently in the Delta. Greaters arrive earlier in the fall and leave later in the winter, some lingering into March. Lessers forage in alfalfa; greaters avoid it.

“Lessers move around the landscape more, focusing on maintaining their flight muscles by eating protein,” says Gary Ivey of the International Crane Foundation, who has studied cranes in California for years. They consume the larvae of orange sulphur butterflies in those alfalfa fields, earthworms, beetle grubs, crayfish, voles. The diet of greaters has a higher vegetable content, mainly waste grain, and they don’t travel as far from the roost to feed.

On the other hand, many behaviors are common to all sandhills. Their body language is eloquent. Waves of dancing propagate through winter flocks, and some birds may practice their crowddrawing courtship moves (although the majority of courtship takes place in spring farther north). The extent of a patch of bare red skin on a crane’s head signals its emotional state. A relaxed bird shows only a small area of red, but excitement or anxiety increases blood

c r a n e ta l k

Sandhill cranes use dozens of sounds and body postures to communicate. 1 Flight Intention: A stiff, horizontally held neck portends flight.

2 Ruffle Threat: Ruffled feathers followed by a bowed neck can suggest arousal or a mild

threat. 3 Crouch Threat: Briefly dropping to the ground with slightly spread wings can precede an attack. For more, see the pocketsized “Sandhill Crane Display Dictionary” at AlaskaSandhillCrane.com.

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A pair of greater sandhill cranes leaves their roost at the Woodbridge Ecological Reserve in the morning to

Lon Yarbrough, ShareTheRoad Productions

flow and activates muscles that expand the patch to cover most of the top of the head. These intensely social birds have strong family ties. Pairs may stay together for life, but some break up after nest failures. Parents tend their offspring, oddly called “colts,” for nine or ten months after hatching and lead them south on their first migration.

With luck, they’ll make many other journeys: Wild sandhills have survived into their third decade, with 40 the longevity record.

On the first full weekend of November, the Central Valley city of Lodi honors these winter visitors with a Sandhill Crane Festival. For almost 20 years its dual aim has been to attract tourists and promote awareness of the birds. Some festival-organized tours visit crane-viewing locations not normally accessible to the public, and tour leaders

forage in the fields.

stress viewing etiquette: Don’t walk out into the fields toward the birds; keep your voice down.

Cars make good blinds for crane-watching.

“They hate motorcycles and bicycles,” Ivey observes.

Not far from Lodi, Staten Island provides a fine buffet for wintering cranes. Owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed by its affiliate Conservation Farms and Ranches, Staten is a wildlife-friendly working farm, growing corn, triticale, and other crops the birds favor. Laura Shaskey, conservation program manager at Staten Island, says up to 8,000 cranes foraged on the island last fall, and a record high of 11,700 used night roosts there. Of particular conservation importance, Staten hosts one of the densest winter populations of the state-endangered greater sandhill.

In its present iteration, the proposed Delta Twin Tunnels water diversion project would run directly through Staten Island. That route, announced in 2013, drew fire from environmental groups and other stakeholders; construction plans were modified last year. Ivey, who works with an advisory group, notes that the original version would have used the island for storage of dredged materials, affecting almost a quarter of the 9,200-acre tract. “We appreciate that overall impacts on Staten Island from the original proposed project have been substantially reduced both during construction and with regard to project operations over time,” says Jay Ziegler, TNC’s director of external affairs. “However, it is imperative that we protect habitat for sandhill cranes at Staten Island and create additional habitat [for them] in the Delta.”

Changing land-use patterns in the Delta have made places like Staten Island all the more crucial to the survival of Pacific Flyway sandhills. As

far back as 2000, Ivey and veteran crane researcher Carroll Littlefield called conversion of grain fields to vineyards and orchards “the most serious factor threatening sandhill cranes wintering in California.” The trend has accelerated, with vineyard acreage in San Joaquin County alone more than doubling in the last 25 years. “How much can you lose within the core area before affecting the capacity of the landscape to hold the population of cranes?” he asks. Farther north, around Galt and Elk Grove, urban sprawl is a significant threat.

Literary celebrations of the sandhill crane stress the species’ antiquity.

“His tribe … stems out of the remote Eocene,” wrote Leopold. In The Birds of Heaven, an account of his travels in search of cranes, the late Peter Matthiessen mentions the discovery of a nine-million-year-old leg bone of “today’s sandhill crane,” which seems to refer to a fossil found in Nebraska. But “it’s a leap of extreme faith” to assume the bone belongs to a sandhill, writes R. George Corner of the University of Nebraska State Museum, which houses the fossil.

To crane-watchers, though, the truth in the ancient bones may be less important than the feeling summoned by the bugling of the great birds.

Eocene, Miocene, or Pleistocene, it seems primordial enough. “I can tell that people love hearing that sound,” says naturalist David Wimpfheimer, who has led many Delta crane tours. “It’s evocative of wild places. It transports listeners from plowed-over corn stubble to Alaska or the Canadian Arctic.” If the sandhill’s trumpet is ever silenced, our loss will be immeasurable.

Mattais Lanas, mattiaslanas.com

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arrival in the Bay Area in the late 1700s.

by Kathleen M. Wong follow the spine of the Peninsula along Skyline Boulevard, and you’ll pass ten preserves belonging to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. Roughly halfway down its winding route you’ll encounter the expanse of dense oaks and sunswept grassland that is Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve.

Perched atop the windward western side of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Russian Ridge appears much like the other preserves from the road.

But beyond the drive-by sights lie b ay n at u r e

spellbinding views and a grove of monumental, centuries-old oaks.

District senior resource manager Cindy Roessler is intimately familiar with the glories of this park.

Exuberant and tremendously knowledgeable about the area, Roessler has spent the past 13 of her 30 years as a professional biologist with the district. She now lives on district property adjacent to Russian Ridge. The experience has given her a wealth of insight into this landscape and its wild residents.

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Russian Ridge likely date back as far the Spanish

“It’s subtle things,” Roessler says, “like what the favorite food of the deer is at this time of year: brown buckeye leaves. I had no idea. Every night I hear them crunch-crunch-crunching, even the fawns. They won’t touch them when they’re green.”

Roessler aims to showcase Russian Ridge this midsummer afternoon by taking me on a four-mile hike through the preserve that includes old growth forest, colorful wildflower meadows, and views extending from the Diablo Range to Monterey. For the past six years, the district has been developing valuable additions to the preserve: two extended trails and a new staging area, all on lands recently acquired from a former cattle ranch.

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royal purple will emerge in spring; the creeping stems of California blackberry; and the lacy fronds of wood ferns.

We approach a canyon live oak growing next to the trail, its stout lower branches furred in moss. The green nap on the upper surface of one branch looks crumbly and worn. Roessler’s eyes light up. “On a big branch like this where the moss is smoothed off, if there are no people there regularly, it was probably made by a gray fox. I run wildlife camera traps in the parks, and I get pictures of them jumping into trees all the time.”

This tendency toward tree climbing is unique among canids, as is the gray fox’s ability to retract its claws like a cat.

Roughly a mile from the trailhead, leaving the newest section of trail, we enter the realm of the ancient oaks.

Stationed like guardians at the windward edge of the forest, these trees are colossi of their kind. Most have multiple

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the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), the nonprofit organization that purchased this former ranch for the district. Interpretive signs describe a human history that ranges from the coastal Ohlone to modern ranchers and identify major vista points. And what a sweeping panorama this is—grasslands in the foreground give way to unbroken forest, from the Pescadero watershed north to Butano Ridge directly ahead and to the fog-shrouded waters of Monterey Bay to the south.

Back at the parking lot we start down the preserve’s newest hiking route, a one-mile extension of the Ancient Oaks Trail. Winding gently past the headwater streams of Mindego Creek, the trail is a microcosm of the Santa Cruz Mountains, traversing oak-bay woodlands and wildflower fields, and leading past centuries-old heritage oaks and jaw-dropping vistas.

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At Mindego Gateway, the new entrance and parking lot to the preserve, which sits just a mile past the intersection of Skyline Boulevard and Alpine Road, Roessler recounts a favorite discovery at the site. While the Open Space District was cleaning up the ranch yard, Roessler was tasked with relocating the snakes and tarantula-like Calisoga spiders that had been sheltering beneath the rubble. As she walked back and forth to the small meadow where she released her rescues, she began to realize that the selection of plants was subtly different from elsewhere in the park.

Here, native bunchgrasses such as blue wild rye, purple needlegrass, and California brome were intermixed with soap plant, mariposa lilies, brodiaeas, and yampa. “All these are plants that were used by the native people, and they’re denser here than I’ve seen anywhere else in our preserves,” Roessler says.

This observation agrees with what is known about the human history of the Alpine Road corridor. In centuries past, coastal Ohlone used this route to travel between San Francisco Bay and the coast. “Along the way, they would often plant and tend some of the native plants they used so when they stopped for the night there would be some food available,” Roessler says. The district has opted to manage this meadow with particular respect, asking volunteers to hand-pull invasive species such as yellow star thistle to maintain the blend of plants recalling the presence of the area’s original inhabitants.

To get an overview of this dramatic landscape, we follow a paved, wheelchair-accessible pathway extending west from the lot. The route curves through waving grasses to a wide patio. This is the Audrey C. Rust Commemorative Site, named for the retired executive director of

Within steps of the trailhead, a mixed evergreen broadleaf forest filters out the bright overhead sun. These bay laurels, oaks, tanoaks, and other trees engineer their own environment, cooling the air and keeping soils visibly moist.

Alongside the trail we spot the slender, straplike leaves of Fernald’s iris, whose butter-yellow flowers with a splash of

The wildflowers of Russian Ridge put on a spectacular show each spring. A blanket of California poppies frames Mindego Hill in the background.

trunks; one giant sports ten, each at least two feet in diameter. The trunks spread out (and out, and out) before turning skyward. Their canopies arc above like domes, covering an expanse that could envelop a good-size house. Some trees

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add daubs of color to an otherwise tawny brown landscape.

The district is working hard at Russian Ridge to return native forbs and bunchgrasses to these fields. After years of experimentation, Roessler and her colleagues have reached the point where they can shift monoculture fields of invasive annuals into meadows of lupine, tidytips, owl’s clover, California poppy, and purple needlegrass.

To achieve these results, they rely on techniques ranging from prescribed burns to mowing and herbicide. “You can’t weed every single invasive plant.

Not only can’t we afford it, there aren’t that many volunteers in the world. So we have to use other tools and be smarter,” Roessler says.

Historic land use also affects the district’s restoration plans. Areas long tilled and colonized with invasives might require reseeding, using the same type of no-till drill seeder developed for prairie restoration in the Midwest. “It’s a lot of effort and you can’t do it all at once so you need to pick the best sites, get successes, and build on that,” Roessler says. The goal is to give natives a chance; “the locals will

protect their “granary” trees, where they drill holes for

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have even grown buttresses at the base of their trunks to help support their tremendous mass.

Virtually all of these ancients are canyon live oaks. Geography must play a large role in the grove’s formation, Roessler says. The trees stand directly in the path of Pacific storms, atop a ridge that slopes into open grassland.

Blasted by both winter rain and summer fog, they collect an extra allotment of moisture year round. That extra water, together with abundant sunshine undimmed by other trees, has supported a grove of giants.

Roessler, however, has a second theory. She thinks human selection shaped the makeup of this grove.

As San Francisco rebuilt after the 1906 fire and earthquake and the Bay Area attracted more residents, the Peninsula’s forests were denuded for housing materials and firewood. “They cleared almost everything from these hills, but they skipped these trees,” Rossler says. “Maybe the wood was too hard to harvest.” The canyon live oak is also known as the maul oak. Its exceptionally hard, dense wood was once used to make maul heads for splitting lumber. “There were other, bigger trees in the area, like redwoods, that grew straight and would yield a lot of board feet. If your business is to get as much cordage from these hills as you can, why spend your time cutting down the maul oak?” she asks.

If Roessler is right, the ancient oaks

of Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve are first-growth trees never felled by settlers. It’s a conclusion supported by the exceptional girth of these oaks.

Previous research suggests canyon live oaks from 10 to 18 inches in diameter can be up to 150 years old; the 16-or-so big trees in the ancient oaks grove have trunks ranging from 24 to 56 inches in diameter, which likely makes them at least three hundred years old.

Continuing on, we emerge from the grove of ancients into a broad meadow and turn east along the Charquin Trail. It’s hard to tell in midsummer, as the empty stems of European annual grasses rattle around us in the breeze, but the grasslands of Russian Ridge are renowned for having some of the most spectacular spring wildflower blooms in the Bay Area.

A few tenacious natives can be seen between those grasses even now. The hot pink blooms of clarkia; the yellow, daisy-like flowers of gum plant; and the tomato-red tassels of Indian paintbrush R

Bruce Finocchio, brucefinocchio.wordpress.com

and store thousands of acorns.

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Acorn woodpeckers live in complex social groups that

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Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel

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Karl Gohl

then duke it out among themselves and find their own micropatches,” she adds.

These manipulations might sound like meddling, but here in California, Canyon live oaks (top) produce clusters of acorns that will turn brown as they ripen and develop fuzzy, landscape golden caps. Unlike the acorns of coast live oaks, these management is an acorns take two years to mature. The tree’s dense age-old practice. wood has earned it the name “maul oak.”

For millennia, the Ohlone and other tribes periodically set next year, the nuts will elongate and the landscape alight to encourage the dry to a rich chestnut brown before growth of the plants they relied on for dropping in autumn of 2016. By food and baskets. Fire also cleared forest contrast, coast live oaks are jackrabbit undergrowth, making oak acorns, a reproducers: Pollinated in one spring, dietary staple, easier to harvest. their acorns ripen the same fall.

Acorns pollinated this year on the At the intersection with the Bay Area canyon live oaks have just attained Ridge Trail, we head south on a path button size. Growing in pairs along roughly parallel to Skyline Boulevard. In leafy branch stems, the green nubs of less than half a mile, the incline steepens the nuts are just beginning to emerge briefly as we ascend the loftiest perch in from the center of thick golden caps the park: Borel Hill, the highest point lapped by triangular scales. Over the in the middle reach of the Santa Cruz

Mountains at 2,572 feet.

Clear days here offer breathtaking 360-degree views. To the east can be seen the multi-hued salt ponds and blue-green waters of San Francisco Bay, massive Mount Diablo, and even winter snows atop the Sierra Nevada; to the southwest, 60-mile views over the Santa Cruz Mountains, across Monterey Bay, and the verdant northern tip of the Santa Lucia Range. To the west lies Mindego Hill; in spring 2016, a new trail will lead hikers to its 2,137-foot summit.

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(above) The view west from the top of Borel Hill includes

cankers—classic symptoms of SOD. The district’s consultant SOD specialist, Ted Swiecki, suspects people emerging from the bay forest tracked the spores of the pathogen onto this tree as they climbed it.

To protect the ancient oaks at Russian Ridge, the district has removed any bay trees and branches within 15 feet of the ancients and taken the extra precaution of asking visitors to resist the temptation to climb the alluring old oaks.

“We have a very strong connection with trees, especially oaks. I’m glad people want to be around these trees; it’s part of their appreciating the reserve and getting a feeling of peace with their surroundings,” Roessler says. “But it might be better to just enjoy the sunset by standing next to the trees here rather than climbing them.” That’s a small price to pay to ensure future generations can travel along the path of the ancients.

Mindego Hill (upper left), which will be open to the public in 2016. (below) The trails through the preserve’s open grasslands are popular with mountain bikers.

disease that has been ravaging true oaks and other California native plants.

As we come up through the oak grove, we can see the bleached and skeletal remains of a canyon live oak that succumbed to the disease. Until five years ago, scientists had believed canyon live oaks were impervious to the disease.

Then this tree and another in nearby Los Trancos Preserve died, showing rapid leaf browning and weeping blood-red bark

Kathleen M. Wong is the science writer for the University of California Natural Reserve System and coauthor of Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press).

the oaks and views of the russian ridge preserve

Karl Gohl

Saturday, October 17, 10:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.

b ay n at u r e

october–december 2015

Join Bay Nature and MROSD resource manager Cindy Roessler and program manager Renee Fitzsimons for a four-mile hike through Russian Ridge Preserve. Space is limited, registration required. Sign up at baynature.org/field

Karl Gohl

Beyond Mindego, forest and grassland are visible down to the blue line of the Pacific, except when shrouded in fog (a common occurrence).

Hiking down the other side of the hill, we turn north briefly on the park’s Ridge Trail to the Bo Gimbal Trail, which takes us west and downhill.

We dip into the shade of another tall woodland, populated solely by bay laurels. Located directly below and adjacent to the ancient oaks themselves, the grove is a cause of worry to Roessler and the district. Bay laurels are notorious carriers of sudden oak death (SOD), a

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Pine Lake Situated in the midst of a quiet San Francisco neighborhood just south of the Sunset District, Pine Lake has an unassuming air. But past the park’s low-key entrance awaits a raucous gathering of wildlife around the two-acre watering hole.

The lake is one of only three natural freshwater ecosystems in San Francisco, fed by the same aquifer that fills nearby Lake Merced. A number of birds live there year-round; others seek refuge during their migrations. In midsummer, swallows dart, mallards swim serenely across the water, and red-winged blackbirds rustle in the reeds. In the fall, this is a stop on the Pacific Flyway, hosting warblers, grebes, ducks, and sparrows. Cloistered from city noise, the lake is a symphony of hums, chirps, and warbles. On fog-free evenings, the sun casts a muted, dappled glow through the trees on the slopes that frame the park and sparkles off the surface of the water.

A paved, half-mile perimeter trail circles the lake and connects to a large grassy area and Stern Grove at the east edge of the park. The east shore has a small, sandy beach with stone benches that look out onto the water through a natural canopy of rushes and reeds. The path continues winding through the willows near the water’s edge on the south side of the lake, where the paved path turns to dry, packed dirt and a higher vantage point gives you a panoramic view of the park. getting there: Parking lot at the end of Vale Ave. Muni K line stops at West Portal/Sloat, a 15-minute walk away. Restrooms available. Dogs permitted on leash. [Melanie Hess]

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Tolay Lake Regional Park A marshy wetland in the open hills north of San Pablo Bay, Tolay Lake was once much larger, as well as sacred to native peoples who brought charmstones from as far away as Yosemite to cast into the water in healing rituals. Later, 19thcentury European farmers used dynamite to partially drain it, but now, though ranch activities continue, the 1,769-acre property is a Sonoma County park, managed for recreation and wildlife. In summer the lake recedes, leaving acres of freshwater marsh that support a rich array of wildlife, including California red-legged frogs, horned larks, and tricolor blackbirds. Several trails explore the surrounding grasslands and sparsely wooded streambeds, where hikers may see resident burrowing owls and golden eagles, to say nothing of coyotes and other predators large and small. One route follows a causeway that divides the lake bed, crosses farm fields, and climbs to Three Bridges Vista Point, looking out to San Francisco and its Bay; an alternate five-mile loop traces Tolay Creek and then visits two upland ponds where water does last out the summer. The annual Tolay Fall Festival (October 1518 and 21-25) brings thousands of people to this remote valley for old-time, nature-based fun connected to its human history and to wildlife. getting there: Hikers need to obtain a day use permit from the Sonoma County Parks at parks. sonomacounty.ca.gov. Leashed dogs and bikes permitted. Fees for parking and festival. Toilets provided. [Ann Sieck]

Keller Beach, Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline All around San Francisco Bay, even in parks and preserves, earthen levees and riprap seawalls define the water’s edge, asserting human authority. But here and there are special places where a marshy inlet somehow didn’t get filled in or a few yards of drifted sand escaped improvement. Just south of the Point Richmond tunnel lies Keller Beach. Here, where pines, cypress, and oaks hug the hillside, shading a pleasant picnic area and an easy path down to the water, the sandy shore invites you to take off your shoes and splash in the Bay, or, if you’re part polar bear, even go for a swim. Less hardy visitors bring children to play in the small breakers that come up on windy afternoons or build castles in the expanse of wet sand exposed at low tide.

The beach is only about 100 yards long, but it’s rarely crowded, possibly because the litter of seaweed and upriver flotsam is thick at the high water line, and when the tide is in there’s little space to play Frisbee or volleyball. But even then the view across the water is fine, from San Francisco to Mount Tam to the San 2 Rafael Bridge, plus, over the shoulder of Angel Island, 3 one tower of the Golden 1 Gate Bridge. Boat traffic passes Red Rock, while cormorants and pelicans fly low. Perhaps a harbor seal will raise its head to look back at you. getting there: Park on Dornan Drive, or walk from AC Transit 72M stop. Picnic tables, barbecue pits, restrooms with showers; no fees; no lifeguards. [Ann Sieck and Dan Hill] 2

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isha Leong cannot find what she’s looking for. She’s crouched beneath a stand of tall eucalyptus trees in the Tilden Nature Area, the ground around her littered with dozens of bark scrolls that she has spent the last half hour unfurling.

She pries open yet another tight, threefoot-long tube, peers inside, and sighs.

“I’m starting to suffer from performance anxiety,” jokes the California Academy of Sciences entomologist.

Leong and Tilden Nature Area naturalist Trent Pearce are hunting spiders. It’s not that this morning’s expedition hasn’t turned up any of the eight-legged creatures—we’ve surprised members of three different genera hiding in the scrolls, the sudden burst of sunlight sending them darting for cover. But none of those creepy-crawlies are on our list. We’re after Segestria.

The small, cagey arachnid is known for evolutionarily primitive characteristics not seen in modern spiders. Segestria has retained two openings, called spiracles, near its lungs, whereas most modern spiders only have one. The spiracles likely helped spiders in their tricky transition from living in water to living on land more than 400 million years ago.

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Why do so many of our local spiders have traits from the earliest stages of spider development?

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on the dime-size spider while we’re in the field, so we’re looking for other telltale signs—it’s got six eyes, instead of the usual eight, and its legs are odd. The “tube-web weaver” (as this spider is also called) has appendages adapted for living in cylindrical spaces, with the first three pairs, instead of the typical two, directed forward. This arrangement keeps more legs in front to better capture prey. At night it waits near the tube’s edge, threads dangling from its three pairs of forward-pointing legs ready to detect insectivorous passersby. When an unlucky bug trips the alarm, the Segestria shoots out and snags its dinner, bringing it inside the tube to devour.

All spiders are predators with eight legs, a body divided into two regions, and poison-laden fangs. Spiders also all spin silk. Approximately 3,000 species of them occur in the United States; the Bay Area is home to more than 1,500 of those. Their voracious appetites help keep insect populations in check, and they themselves provide sustenance for a bevy of larger animals, including lizards, frogs, birds, and mice.

Today we’re seeking out some of the Bay Area’s most noteworthy eight-legged inhabitants: Segestria and a host of other arachnids that have maintained primitive

Dave Strauss, DSCOMPOSITION.COM

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exploring the east bay regional parks

This story is part of a series exploring the natural and cultural history and resources of the East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). The series is sponsored by the district, which manages 119,000 acres of public open space in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

features seen in the earliest spiders, including strange claws, a rare silk-spinning organ, and unusual fangs. More than two dozen such species occur in the Bay Area alone—a region that is the world capital for both trapdoor spiders and spiders that produce woolly webs, a silk-spinning strategy that dates back at least 200 million years. California’s triumvirate of rugged topography, geographic isolation, and mild climate during the last ice ages account for the preservation of so many primitive attributes statewide and in the Bay Area. Surrounding us are vestiges of an ancient time, if you know where to look for them.

That doesn’t mean individual spiders scuttling over the hills and coast are exact replicas of their ancestors. “Everything that’s alive today, even if we call it primitive, has changed from what it was like millions of years ago,” says Darrell Ubick, a renowned entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences and Leong’s colleague. “Life is constant change.”

People rarely see most of these spiders, says Joe Ledford, an entomologist at the University of California, Davis. “They’re odd little spiders that live in specialized habitats.” Still, with a few pointers, Ubick reassures me, it’s relatively easy to locate several of these unique species in the outdoors.

Ron Wolf

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ound one!” cries Pearce, standing beside a towering redwood.

After failing to find any Segestria in the eucalyptus-bark scrolls, Pearce has already switched to a new quarry. He’s pointing to a hand-size, fuzzy web with a gaping hole in the middle that’s strewn across the rough bark. We rush over excitedly and see…nothing.

There’s no spider in sight.

That’s because this web belongs to a Callobius, Pearce explains with a naturalist’s seemingly endless enthusiasm and patience (most spiders mentioned in this story are referred to by genus name only, because it can be difficult, even for experts, to identify them without a microscope). These nocturnal hunters, six species of which inhabit the East Bay, hide behind the bark during the day. At night they emerge, lurking by the hole in their web, waiting to pounce on insects that get tangled in the trap. Pearce gently pries back the bark, revealing a plump, three-quarter-inch brown beauty tucked in the wrinkly wooden folds.

This might be a good time to mention that Pearce and Leong are self-proclaimed scaredy-cats when it comes to handling spiders. Black widows are the only spider in the Bay Area that can send a victim to the hospital for antivenin treatment, but plenty of arachnids found here deliver a bite painful enough to warrant caution. “So we won’t touch,” Pearce explained before we set out this morning. “We’ll poot.” A pooter, technically b ay n at u r e

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known as an aspirator, consists of a three-inch-long hard plastic cylinder, a screen, and a long rubber tube. The user places the rubber tube to her lips, positions the cylinder near the spider, and sucks it up with a poot-poot-poot inhalation (the screen ensures there’s no risk of swallowing the prey). The captive is then deposited into a vial for closer inspection.

So when Pearce exposes the Callobius, Leong whips the pooter from around her neck and hoovers up the target into the clear tube. As she goes to release it into the vial Pearce is holding, however, it skitters down the outside edge. They both shriek and Pearce drops the container. After a bout of nervous laughter, they quickly find the spider on the ground. Poot attempt number two is a success.

Seen through a magnifying lens, the captive’s beady eyes pop.

But the structure we’re looking for is underneath on its abdomen: the cribellum. This flat spinning organ arose early in arachnid evolution, but has been lost in the majority of spiders.

Most arachnids produce glue that makes their webs sticky, whereas Callobius and other so-called cribellate spiders have plates covered in tiny spigots that produce thousands of strands of silk. Instead of relying on glue, cribellates produce a mass of “woolly” web strands to entangle their insect prey—like the gauzy webs guarded by plastic spiders during Halloween.

Callobius’ fuzzy snares have an almost bluish tint and are easy to spot on redwood trunks, even as their makers remain safely concealed from daylight and prying eyes.

Most of the other spiders on our list of primitive species are similarly night stalkers. But Pearce has an idea where we might find another, even while the sun is still high in the sky. We follow him to an irrigation valve box buried in the ground.

We squat, Leong at the ready with a specimen box and pooter, as Pearce, lit flashlight in his mouth, lifts the lid. A fat spider makes a break for it, but the duo swiftly captures it. The two-inch-long arachnid, which is an almost translucent mauve color with a gray abdomen, is a Titiotus. Its claws, Titiotus claw tuft Leong explains, are its peculiar ancestral feature.

The most primitive spiders vestigial have three claws at the end of claw each leg, while more advanced Titiotis is ones have two claws and losing its usually a “tuft.” The tuft is third claw—a relic of early comprised of tiny bristles, spiders—as it called setae, which each have develops thousands of microscopic tufts. hairs that generate a stickiness on the molecular level, allowing spiders to climb smooth surfaces (this is also how geckos cling to glass by a single toe). Titiotus has tufts and a muchdiminished third claw, suggesting it is in a state of transition between the old and the new. “It is one of the few rachel diaz-bastin

victoria schlesinger

eucalyptus bark scroll found in the park’s nature area.

spider genera in the world that has claw tufts and vestigial third claws,” Ubick tells me later. To find a Titiotus, he suggests flipping over logs or big rocks. Or, he adds, check your cellar.

T

Marshal Hedin

o understand why California is so rich in spiders with primitive features, you have to go back in time—way back, to the geologic upheaval that sculpted the state’s rugged landscape.

When the supercontinent Pangaea broke up some 200 million years ago, the western edge of North America began to expand and enter a period of tremendous geologic activity. “The growing mountains and river valleys opened up new habitats for some species” over millions and millions of years, says Ubick, “but also acted as barriers to others,” greatly increasing the number of species. As a wealth of plant and animal diversity evolved in this richly complex landscape, it was sustained by the increasingly Mediterranean climate that emerged over the last several million years.

During roughly the same period, glaciers grew and contracted through ice ages, freezing out animals across much of the continent. But areas of California, including pockets west of the Sierra and along the coast, remained mild and ice-free, acting as refuges. When the glaciers retreated, some of the survivors stayed in their niches, while others spread—though natural barriers checked their movement. “California is very much like an island,” says Andrew Fowler, a geologist at the University of California, Davis. “Surrounded by ocean, desert, mountains, it is

Callobius

Jack Owicki, symbiote.smugmug.com

rachel diaz-bastin

cribellum

very challenging for species spigots to cross.”

The result is more plant and animal biodiversity in California than in much of the rest of the lower 48 Located at the back of the states. “These large-scale abdomen, the cribellum forces clearly affected the produces a mass of “woolly” web strands to trap its prey. whole biota,” says Ubick.

“In each group, there’s some weirdness.” He points to a variety of primitive creatures, including the coastal tailed frog; the mountain beaver, the only living rodent with certain ancestral cranial and muscular features; and Timema walking sticks, which have no wings and reproduce asexually. The same holds true for some spiders, he adds. California may be home to the world’s largest number of cribellate species, which create the woolly webs—with more than a half-dozen found in the East Bay alone. “The cribellum has been lost in spiders in many other parts of the world, except Australia and New Zealand,” Ledford says.

The state is also one of the world’s hot spots for mygalomorphs, a primitive suborder of spiders that includes tarantulas.

Tarantulas are among the evolutionarily oldest arachnids, and their partially segmented abdomen is a holdover from tens of millions of years ago. Among their fascinating features are their fangs, which point straight down. While more advanced spiders use their fangs like pincers, these creatures take a pickax approach, swinging the weapons downward to pierce their prey. The East Bay is home to other mygalomorphs that build ingenious houses.

To see them, Ubick says, it’s best to venture out at night.

A

coyote howls as the last daylight drains from the sky in Briones Regional Park near Orinda. The impending darkness is exactly what Pearce, two friends who are also naturalists with the East Bay Regional Park District, and Ken-ichi Ueda, october–december 2015

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Go a-spidering! For tips on how to look for spiders and a mini-guide to identifying types of spider webs, visit us on the web at baynature.org/spiders

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october–december 2015

Ken-ichi Ueda, inaturalist.org/observations/8330

rachel diaz-bastin

Kyron Basu, bugguide.net/user/view/65781

headlamps focused on the movement, which sends vibrations down the structure, alerting the spider that a tasty insect might be lingering outside. Seconds tick by.

Suddenly, a gasp from the group as a dark blur bursts from the tube, grabs briefly at the stick, and darts back inside. “That,” says Pearce, “is a turret spider.” This particular individual couldn’t be coaxed into a repeat performance, but a few of its neighbors were willing to hang out in their entrances for longer, their eyes shining, like a cat’s, in the dark.

Still, the glimpses were too fleeting to make out the turret spiders’ primitive features. They have the mygalomorph’s downward-pointing fangs, but their respiratory system is unique. Turret spiders have two— instead of just one—pairs of book lungs, each lung with a set of thin overlapping flaps, like book pages, stacked inside a cavity in the abdomen. The inside of each flap is filled with blood and the outside is exposed to air, allowing the exchange of Segestria oxygen and carbon dioxide. While book lung the marble-size spiders might be small, they’re long-lived. They take several years to mature, and females may live for many years beyond spiracle that.

Amid an apartment complex of Spiracles likely helped spiders turret spiders (females stick close to transition from water to land more than 400 million years ago. home, while males wander), Ueda Here the spiracle is near the book spots a trapdoor spider (Promyrmekilung at the beginning of the co-founder of citizen science reporting site iNaturalist, aphila or Aptostichus). Another abdomen; in modern spiders it is at the end. have been waiting for. The members of the posse, who mygalomorph, it builds a house regularly conducts nighttime biodiversity surveys, don similar to that of the turret spider, headlamps and descend from the Bear Creek parking lot into a but capped with a leaf or other camouflage. When a potential nearby ravine. meal passes by, the occupant lifts the trapdoor and snatches it.

Sierran chorus frogs dart about in the leaf litter, underwing “They are practically impossible to see,” says Ueda, pointing out moths float past our heads, and gooey slug slime glints in the what at first glance looks like nothing more than a leaf on the light cast from the group’s foreheads. Pearce points out the ground. He tries the tickle trick. After a moment the spider partly clever home of an Antrodiaetus riversi. Commonly called a turret raises its leaf-door to check for its ersatz dinner, then quickly spider, this mygalomorph uses silk and woody debris to build a drops it shut. It slams so quickly that we couldn’t see the vestiges turret, or hollow cylinder, atop its burrow. It sticks out of the steep bank like a short, dirt-colored chimney—easy to Trapdoor Spider miss if you aren’t looking for it. This ingenious construction protects the burrow from flooding and provides the inhabitant with a built-in dinner bell.

“Let’s see if anyone is home,” says Pearce.

“Tickle time?” asks Ueda.

“Tickle time,” Pearce agrees. (They’ve spent a lot of time spidering together.)

Pearce picks up a twig off the ground and gently rubs it along the edge of the turret. Everyone waits in silence,

post-doc Misha Leong deploys a pooter to capture a spider for examination in a small vial.

of unfused segments on its abdomen, similar to that in tarantulas.

Some trapdoor spiders are named after famous folks, including Edward Abbey, Stephen Colbert, and Angelina Jolie (and Antridiaetus Ubick says there are still many not-yet-described species), but determining what, if any, name belongs to this particular one would require capturing it for inspection in a lab, which the naturalists are reluctant to do. “Trapdoor spider,” says Pearce. “Good enough for me.”

By the time we climb out of the ravine, the moon is high in the sky. As we walk back to the cars, our headlamps pick out the eyes of wolf spiders, shining like glitter in the grass. A big, black spider catches Ueda’s attention. He shows it to the rest of us with a laugh: it’s a plastic toy, probably dropped by a child, and the only specimen collected by a bunch of spider hunters that night.

Pearce hasn’t always been enamored with arachnids. As a kid, he once came across a fishing spider in his grandmother’s house in Tennessee. “It was as big as a dinner plate,” he recalls. And, though he didn’t know it then, the piscivore wouldn’t have hurt him. “She squashed it, and guts went everywhere.” Pearce says that instinctual response, to crush the eight-legged creature, is something he aims to subdue in the spider classes he teaches to park visitors.

One of the eight-legged creatures his students are sure to see is the impressive Calisoga he keeps in his office. At first glance, this silver-gray mygalomorph is easy to mistake for a tarantula.

It’s that big. On the upside, that makes them simpler to see in the wild, says Steve Lew, an entomologist at the University of California, Berkeley. “They’re huge. Males are out wandering around most of the year—unlike tarantulas, which only come out to mate in the fall,” he says. “You can often spot a female’s burrow. If you see a big hole, maybe there’s a Calisoga in it.”

Females tend to stick to their burrows, which they dig themselves, or they’ll take up residence in an empty rodent hole or rotting tree root. Mating season usually begins after the first fall rains, and courtship is the fella’s duty. His wooing consists of quivering his legs as he enters a burrow and gently touching the female with his forelegs. If she’s game, she’ll indicate her consent by raising her forelegs and spreading her fangs. In summer the female constructs her lone egg sac, attaching it to the roof of her burrow; the spiderlings hatch two months later.

But the female never leaves—unless her burrow is disturbed.

That’s likely what happened to the one living in Pearce’s office.

Nearby homeowners found her in their basement a couple of

victoria schlesinger

Ken-ichi Ueda, inaturalist.org/observations/8330

California Academy of Sciences

years ago, amid a big road construction project.

As Pearce, in his office, relates her history, he lifts the terrarium lid so we can get a better look. “They have a bad reputation as being vicious, and I’m sure a bite would hurt like hell,” he says, “but she’s pretty calm.” As if on cue, she rears back on her hind legs and bares her fangs. We instinctively take a step back. “Maybe that bad reputation isn’t so undeserved after all,” muses Pearce.

I decide not to find out. Count me in on team scaredy-cat: fascinated to learn more about these incredible creatures, but from a safe distance.

Alisa Opar is the articles editor at Audubon magazine, the western

correspondent for onEarth.org, and newly appreciative of all things arachnid. bay nature evening spider walk Sunday, October 11, 6:30-8:30p.m.

Join Bay Nature and Tilden Nature Area naturalist Trent Pearce for an evening of looking for spiders in Briones Regional Park. Meet in the Bear Creek Staging Area with sturdy shoes, long pants, and a bright flashlight.

Space is limited; registration required. Sign up at baynature.org/field.

october–december 2015

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n a h o t a f t e r n o o n in September 2013, a spark from a gun fired on private property on Mount Diablo ignited a foothill pine. The pine exploded, and soon the east and south sides of the mountain were on fire. By that night, flames and smoke filled the sky. From Walnut Creek, it looked as if a volcano was erupting.

What came to be called the Morgan Fire spent five days roasting 3,100 acres of wild open space, an area almost three times the size of Golden Gate Park. On the sixth day, a friend and I went out to see what was left. We parked along Morgan Territory Road beside a blackened meadow at the base of Perkins Canyon, near where the fire had originated.

The air felt hot, heavy. A post had burned through, taking down a fence. Across the meadow, a few ashen oaks were still smoking. Above them were barren slopes pierced by crooked sticks—the remains of thousands of torched chaparral shrubs.

Attracted by the smoke, black charcoal beetles bit our necks and arms as we headed up toward North Peak for a better view. But after half an hour, I stopped and sat down, woozy from heat and smoke—or maybe just sadness. I tried to remember what had been along the trail before. Chorus frogs in the creek, yes. But

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what were the crooked black skeletons around me? Charred chamise? Or were they manzanita or buckbrush? Where had the rare Brewer’s flax grown? And how about the delicate Mount Diablo globe lily, found almost nowhere else on earth?

For the previous two months, I’d been visiting this littleknown east-side corner of Mount Diablo State Park, working on a guide to Perkins Canyon. Now my project was toast—and so was my favorite mountain. Or so it seemed.

T h i r t y - f i v e m i l e s east of San Francisco, Mount Diablo is rich biologically, with plants and animals representative of coastal, Central Valley, Pacific Northwest, and even desert habitats. It’s a refuge for 10 percent of California’s native plant species. It’s wild enough to host wide-ranging wildlife such as mountain lions and golden eagles. It has months-long, rotating displays of wildflowers worthy of impressionist paintings.

In that first visit following the fire, I worried about torrential rains stripping soil from steep slopes, about the fate of the blackened old oaks and the foothill pines, about the survival of the mountain’s rare plants, including two that don’t grow anywhere else on earth.

M ay 2 0 1 5

Scott Hein, heinphoto.com

October 2013

A journalist spends two years documenting the dramatic changes that the Morgan Fire brought to Mount Diablo

Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel

But soon rodents began turning the meadow soil from black to brown. The first grass came up, followed by soap plant and mustard. Woodpeckers and hawks returned. Within weeks, the mountain’s dominant chaparral species, chamise, was re-sprouting from stored energy in its root crowns.

Toyon, elderberry, yerba santa, coffeeberry, coyote bush, poison oak, bay laurel, and other stump-sprouting native shrubs were, too, securing the soil and pushing up new stems and leaves.

Suddenly, the mountain was alive again. Far from the “toast” I had feared, it had become the most exciting natural laboratory in the Bay Area.

Every hike offered something new; every observation seemed worth pondering. Even the most knowledgeable biologists and land managers didn’t know exactly what to expect. (top) These three views of North Peak and Prospector’s Gap from the Mary Bowerman Trail near the summit of Mount Diablo show the effects of the Morgan Fire on the chaparral, from the thick green vegetative cover before the fire (May 2003) to the ashen gray immediately following the fire (October 2013) to the recovery in progress (May 2015).

“There was an interesting shift in people’s attitudes in the first six months,” says Seth Adams, the land conservation director for Save Mount Diablo. “We went from tragedy to excitement. It wasn’t a tragedy in any way.”

In November 2013, Save Mount Diablo called a meeting with California State Parks and invited more than a dozen biologists to encourage and plan post-fire research efforts.

Save Mount Diablo staff explained a new mini-grant program, which would later aid the efforts of a handful of biologists in attendance. This was the “perfect fire,” some said—no significant damage to people or property. In a region where fires have tended to come every 40 to 70 years, it also might be a once-in-a-lifetime chance to watch the mountain respond, as well as learn some valuable lessons about California’s fire ecology in the process.

“Nature is pulling back the curtain,” said Nomad Ecology botanist Heath Bartosh at the time. “Let the play begin. We’ll see who shows up and gives the best performance.” october–december 2015

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2014, when botanists Steve Edwards and Chris Thayer decided to hike cross-country above Perkins Canyon.

“The slopes were treacherously steep and I had to follow Chris, who is a better mountaineer than I am,” Edwards recalls.

“We kept seeing big swaths of wind poppies, but no fire poppies. We decided to go just a little bit farther, and we emerged on a spur that was loaded with interesting plants. Chris said, ‘Ah, the promised land.’ I thought, ‘Well, darn

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Joan Hamilton

Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel

Joan Hamilton

C h a m i s e w a s c e n t r a l to the drama. Deep-rooted, with an affinity for hot, rocky slopes, it had once covered more than a quarter of the area burned with mile after mile of impenetrable shrubbery. Now, though, the sight of its wiry green shoots poking up at the base of the black stumps was cheered as a sign of rebirth, a measure of the mountain’s recovery.

While chamise sprouts were still tiny, adventuresome hikers could roam all over the mountain, not just on the usual wellworn trails. Bartosh, who’d studied the Basin Complex Fire in Big Sur a few years earlier, predicted “a fleeting abundance” of colorful wildflower displays, including many rare plants. The resurgence and eventual takeover of chamise would signal a return to normalcy, he said.

But he didn’t know how long the process would take, nor how it would unfold.

Lindsey Hendricks Franco, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, lost no time scooping up soil samples inside and outside areas of burned chaparral. Within each handful of soil were hundreds of chamise seeds. She took the samples to a greenhouse and watered them three times a week. As expected, chamise sprouted vigorously in the burned soils. But it refused to sprout in the unburned samples.

“Chamise requires cues from fire to repopulate,” Hendricks Franco says. “Some like it hot!”

A dry fall stunted the mountain’s nonnative annual grasses. When rains finally came in February, herbaceous plants had plenty of sunshine and space. Some species were familiar, but others hadn’t shown themselves on the mountain for a long time. Their seeds had lain dormant since the last fire nearly four decades ago, just waiting for the smoke, char, or ash they needed to germinate. Called “fire followers,” these plants are part of the fleeting botanical abundance that flourishes after a fire and then disappears.

After extensive surveys that spring, Bartosh and his botanist colleague Brian Peterson found 17 such fire followers on the mountain. These were the hallowed plant species that everyone involved was looking for. Finding a knee-high blanket of pale yellow whispering bells was no problem. They were everywhere. A little sparser and more difficult to spot were the golden eardrops, with their bright yellow flowers on tall stalks. But the biggest prize for fire-following humans, the Holy Grail, was the fire poppy.

A fire poppy has an open orange blossom like the wind poppy’s, but without the purple center. Fire poppies famously blanketed the mountain’s northside slopes after a big fire in 1977.

But they hadn’t been seen on the mountain since—until May 3,

Immediately after the Morgan Fire North Peak looked like a moonscape. But by spring 2014 California poppies and green shoots were growing between the blackened stalks of chamise.

Researchers Heath Bartosh and Brian Peterson documented the many of the dramatic changes.

it, if this is the promised land, then fire poppies ought to be here.’ I looked down at my feet. I was standing right beside one!”

Word traveled like, well, wildfire. A few days later Bartosh found a big patch of fire poppies higher on the mountain. On May 17, a message from Seth Adams of Save Mount Diablo popped up on my phone. It contained no text—just a photo of him triumphantly crouching beside a big orange clump of the elusive flower.

W h e n I a s k e d biologists how the fire might change the mountain, a surprising fact emerged. No one had a complete picture of what had been there before the fire. No comprehensive baseline studies had been done. Mary Bowerman’s 1944 classic Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo (revised and updated in 2002) provided a good list of plant species to expect after a fire, but little indication of how abundant they might be. As to mammals, nobody knew whether reclusive ones like the Berkeley kangaroo rat or the ring-tailed cat were still present. Insects are an even greater puzzle, with new species being recorded in Contra Costa County with some regularity. “We are still very ignorant about life,” says UC Berkeley entomologist Kipling Will. “Right here and now, even in our own backyards.”

Will hopes to develop baseline information on Mount Diablo’s insects and other arthropods—creatures with external skeletons and no backbones.

Each month around the time of the new moon (when the darkness makes arthropods more active), he traps arthropods for four days. In five years, he hopes to have the best record yet of which ones live on the mountain and how they’ve responded to the fire.

Will’s first year of post-fire work yielded 16 species of moths never before recorded in Contra Costa County. One was a moth that feeds on manzanita. With a wingspan of almost four inches, the “elegant sphinx,” Sphinx perelegans, is likely the mountain’s largest insect. Probably present on the mountain all along, Will says, it hadn’t been recorded because no one had looked consistently.

Will found that beetles were twice as numerous in burned as in unburned areas, regardless of whether he was looking at grassland, woodland, or chaparral. Many beetles were no doubt killed in the fire, but insect activity boomed soon after, probably a result of newly available resources, including fresh new growth, fallen branches, and charred wood. Also, “the fire created open canopy areas, so there is probably a lot of shuffling going on as open- and closed-canopy species seek their preferred habitats,” Will says. He was especially pleased to have collected a “minute moss beetle,” which hadn’t been seen on the mountain for almost 40 years.

Even 18 months after the fire, habitats were still changing.

s om e l i k e i t h o t The Morgan Fire brought a fleeting abundance of wildflowers, including many “fire followers” whose seeds had lain dormant for decades (1–5). Other plants and animals also flourished in the fire-cleared landscape.

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8 (1) Fire poppy, the Holy Grail of fire followers. (2) Golden eardrops. (3) Kellogg’s snapdragon unseen on Diablo for 80 years. (4) Fremont’s

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bush mallow. (5) Whispering bells grew thick above Perkins Canyon. (6) Western fence lizards reappeared on the charred landscape almost immediately. (7) The endemic Mount Diablo jewelflower. (8) The elegant sphinx moth was found on Diablo for the first time. (9) Mariposa lilies. (10) Red-legged frog larvae returned 15

10

months after the fire.

october–december 2015

Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel (4, 5, 6, 9); Stephen W. Edwards, PhD (1); Scott Hein, heinphoto.com (3, 10); TJGehling, flickr.com/photos/tjgehling (8); Robert Sikora (7); Joan Hamilton (2)

The next spring, Bartosh helped his 10-year-old son clamber across the same slope to see the fire poppies. He figured he himself might be too old to see them with his son the next time they appeared. “It was a tough hike,” Bartosh says, “but we were determined to see them together.”

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september 2013

m o u n t d i a b l o r e b o u n d : f r o m c h a r to c h a pa r r a l | a r t b y l a u r a c u n n i n g h a m

chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) b ay n at u r e

charcoal beetle (Melanophila consputa)

tarantula (Aphonopelma sp.)

october–december 2015

California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

ash-throated flycatcher (Myiarchus cinerascens)

Fremont star lily (Toxicoscordion fremontii)

Brewer’s calandrinia (Calandrinia breweri)

spring 2014

California pocket mouse (Chaetodipus californicus)

spring 2015

Mount Diablo fairy lantern (Calochortus pulchellus)

whispering bells (Emmenanthe penduliflora)

California thrasher (Toxostoma redivivum) morning glory (Calystegia purpurata)

fire poppy (Papaver californicum)

Alameda whipsnake (Masticophis lateralis euryxanthus)

Kellogg’s snapdragon (Antirrhinum kelloggii)

f u n d i n g p rov i d e d b y l s a a s s o c i at e s , m o u n t d i a b l o i n t e r p r e t iv e a s s o c i at i o n , n o m a d e c o l o g y, a n d s c o t t & c l au d i a h e i n

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“About six large dead trees have fallen in our sample site in the last two months,” Will reported at the time. “It’s a very dynamic process. As these sites change over the seasons, I expect we’ll learn a lot about the insects of Mount Diablo.”

Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel

Scott Hein, heinphoto.com

I n l a t e w i n t e r 2 0 1 5 , 18 months after the fire, chamise was coming on strong. The stump sprouts were significantly taller, and seedlings were numerous too. But the spectacular wildflower displays continued, with exciting new twists.

Bulb plants, such as Fremont’s star lily and globe and mariposa lilies, had seemed larger and more numerous the first year. Golden eardrops and fire poppies, on the other hand, were more abundant the second. Wild cucumber dominated some slopes the first year. Other vines took over in the second: clematis, poison oak, and—festooned among the chaparral skeletons—acres and acres of native morning glories. In fact, the morning glories made off-trail botanizing so hazardous that Bartosh and Peterson dubbed them “trip vines.”

On one jaunt near Rhine Canyon, I explored a year-round creek, a part of Mount Diablo’s circulatory system that had been invisible behind the dense chaparral curtain before the fire. Its banks hosted a mini-forest of giant chain ferns—some burned to the ground, some sporting graceful new five-foot-long fronds.

Along the creek itself were yards and yards of the delicate red and yellow seep monkey flowers. This was hot, dry Mount Diablo? I felt as if I’d been transported to a rain forest in the Pacific Northwest.

The previous year, Bartosh and Peterson had produced a list of 28 herbaceous native plants benefiting from the fire. These opportunists didn’t need fire to germinate, as the fire followers did. But they flourished in the extra space, sun, and nutrients that the fire provided. I found numerous examples on my own— including a huge swath of Mount Diablo’s endemic sunflower, The endemic Mount Diablo globe lily bloomed profusely during the spring following

Sally Rae Kimmel, flickr.com/photos/sallyraekimmel

the fire.

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which generally shows up in parsimonious bunches. The hairy purple blossoms of Mount Diablo’s rare endemic jewelflower were unusually easy to find that second year. So were the violet-blue flowers of another “rare” species, Kellogg’s climbing snapdragon, which hadn’t been recorded on the mountain for 80 years. The biggest surprise of all was sleepy catchfly, a flowering plant that traps insects with sticky resin.

Discovered by Susan Bainbridge of the Jepson Herbarium, the species hadn’t been recorded in the area for 125 years.

More rain arrived that second year, but most of it came in two big events in the fall and winter. Apparently that was no problem for Mount Diablo’s “seed banks,” which have evolved to take advantage of a wide range of conditions.

“Some plants have tough-coated seeds that show up only after a fire. Some seeds with different characteristics only show up in a light-rain year—others in a heavy-rain year,” Save Mount Diablo’s Seth Adams says. “I used to think of rare plants as fragile. Now I think of them as tough.”

Chamise chaparral is especially good at seed banking; Bartosh and Peterson found more rare plants there after the fire than in any other plant community. They’re not sure why, but Bartosh has some theories. Perhaps chamise’s dense cover reduces erosion from rain and wind, keeping seed banks intact. Perhaps seeds in its rocky soils are less likely to be eaten or disturbed by small animals. Or perhaps it’s less hospitable to nonnative grasses and other plants, so there’s more room for natives, even if it takes 125 years for them to come out of hiding.

As I moved from chaparral to woodlands, I was happy to see that most of the craggy old oaks were awakening. Twigs on the ends of their branches were dead, but the trees themselves There’s more to the story! For in-depth coverage of Mount Diablo’s dramatic rebirth since the Morgan Fire in 2013, visit our collection of posts, stories, maps, and multimedia features at baynature.org/diablo/

height of the dry season. The first spring, however, the ponds where they would normally go to mate and lay eggs were alarmingly dry. Fortunately a big rain in December 2014 filled those ponds and by April researchers’ dip nets were wriggling with tiger salamanders and red-legged frogs (both federally listed as “threatened” species), as well as more common native amphibians, such as western toads and chorus frogs. “Our amphibians survived and are thriving,” declared state park environmental scientist Cyndy Shafer. “It’s another example of how quickly nature rebounds.” at the close of what Save Mount Diablo’s Adams calls “two of the best wildflower seasons we have ever seen on Mount Diablo,” I made one last walk through the burn. As usual in early June, grasses and most leafy plants were crisp and brown. But a large stand of pearly everlasting was sending out the plant’s characteristic maple-syrup scent, likely taking advantage of the bonuses provided by the fire. A firefollowing shrub called bush mallow was in full bloom, too, with large pink flowers topping towers of felted gray leaves. More humbly, a few wizened whispering bells were making a valiant last stand. With less char in the soil, fewer of these fire followers had germinated in the second spring.

Where the bells once rustled, chamise was flourishing. Since last summer, its bright green, foot-high stump sprouts had doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled in size. And there were numerous seedlings, forming thick stands almost a foot high in some places. There was still room for other plants, but the chamise curtain was closing.

Friends and I have joked about becoming “fire chasers,” like those people of questionable sanity who follow tornadoes or other kinds of storms. “Anyone who has experienced regeneration after a fire is ready to run to the next fire,” Adams says, “because it’s such an amazing show.”

But I’m not ready to run just yet. Visits to Mount Diablo are still intense and engaging: “wild, loud—like in a city,” as Peterson describes it. The pace of change has slowed, but there’ll still be mysteries to ponder next spring; I’ll brave the trip vines and wander as widely as I can.

And when the chamise curtain finally closes, I’ll nod appreciatively as I walk by. Because we know what lies behind it.

I n e a r ly J u n e 2 0 1 5 ,

(above) Amid the charred stalks of chamise, arroyo lupine, California poppy, and morning glory carpet a slope above Perkins Canyon (March 2015). (left) White morning glories (dubbed “trip vines” by the researchers) cover one of botanist Heath Bartosh’s survey plots.

Heath Bartosh

were vigorously sprouting from the trunks and thickest limbs.

On the other hand, many foothill pines were dead.

Unable to stump sprout, they reproduce from seeds, which is a slower process. But in some places where cones had landed, blue-gray pine seedlings already were inching up from the ground.

The future of those seedlings will depend on the future of fires in this area. If fires keep coming every 40 to 70 years, the pines will probably reestablish themselves. If the fire cycle speeds up, however (as is happening elsewhere in California, likely due to climate change), seedobligate trees and shrubs could be at risk. Even stump-sprouters could be hurt by too-frequent fires. When wildfire hit some areas in San Diego County two years in a row, for example, even hardy chamise was overcome by invasive weeds.

The Morgan Fire came at a good time for amphibians, most of which would have been underground in September, the

Joan Hamilton is an environmental writer and editor who produces Audible Mount Diablo (audiblemountdiablo.com), a series of mobile audio tours. Click on “Perkins Canyon” for her post-fire tour of the area.

explore mount diablo’s changes since the morgan fire Sunday, November 22, 10:00 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Join Bay Nature, Joan Hamilton, and Save Mount Diablo’s Seth Adams and Scott Hein to hike the Oak Knoll Trail to Green Ranch and explore the area’s rebound from the fire. Space is limited.

Sign up at baynature.org/field.

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on the fence

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by Alison Hawkes

How the recovery of the nearly extinct tule elk has become a dilemma for the park service, ranchers, and environmentalists at Point Reyes

Carlos Porrata

d

ave Press slides on a pair of aviator glasses and begins hiking up a hill, only to cast them aside at the top for binoculars, shielded by a National Park Service baseball cap.

He scans an adjacent hillside for the tule elk that are browsing beyond a stand of eucalyptus trees, the tallest foliage on a landscape dominated by low-lying coastal scrub. Off to his right gleams Tomales Bay, and before him lies Tomales Point, the northernmost tip of the Point Reyes National Seashore.

“We’ve got a group up there in a kind of tricky spot,” says Press, the wildlife ecologist for the park, who grew up in western Marin County and knows the territory like the back of his hand.

“We can’t see them all from here.”

“Some are bugling down there,” says Caitlyn Bishop, a PRNS summer intern.

“Yeah, I thought I heard that,” Press replies. He pauses and plots his next move, realizing though that the elk are going to smell us coming. “Unfortunately, the direction I want to approach them from is also the direction of the wind; such is life.”

On this day in late July, I’m accompanying Press and his team of four as they fan out across the windswept hills to find and count every elk within the 2,600-acre Tule Elk Reserve, where the elk are separated from the rest of the park—and its historic cattle ranches—by an eight-foot-high fence. Press and his crew typically tally the population once a year in December, but since 2012, the elk population has plummeted by nearly half—from 540 animals to 286 in December 2014—so the park service has been hit with questions and concerns from the public about the steep decline.

Some wildlife advocates have termed the situation a “dieoff ” and accuse the park service of allowing the elk to perish Two young bull tule elk jump the fence at Historic D Ranch, where they regularly spend their days.

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Point Reyes National Seashore wildlife ecologist Dave Press tracks tule elk numbers for the park service.

from the park‘s enabling legislation that allowed the park service to acquire the dairies and ranches within the park boundaries while issuing permits to nearly a dozen longstanding ranch families to continue operating in designated pastoral zones that comprise about a third of the park’s total acreage. This arrangement saved a national treasure from development but created the potential for ongoing tension between those trying to make a living on the land and those who view the park as a place primarily for wildlife protection and public recreation.

Managing the wild at the Point Reyes National Seashore is more complicated than simply protecting the park‘s many natural assets. This is the only national park to combine wilderness areas with ranching, and the debate over the elk is the latest example of the difficulties that can arise from incorporating a legacy of working landscapes into a national park. Recently, a decade-long political and legal battle over an oyster farm’s use of Drakes Estero in the central section of the park ended with the park service removing Drakes Bay Oyster Company from the area designated to become a marine wilderness. Ranchers at the seashore have an arguably more secure position than the oyster company, though one that also raises issues when it comes to managing wildlife. Currently, the most salient issue is the conflict between the ranchers and a more recently established free-roaming elk herd that is grazing on pastures in the central portion of the park.

Since its creation more than 50 years ago, PRNS has straddled its dual—and sometimes incompatible—mission of protecting wildlife while ensuring the survival of historic ranches in recognition of their cultural significance. The arrangement stems b ay n at u r e

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Alison Hawkes

Carlos Porrata

behind the fence that prevents them from finding enough food and water. Park service officials have a different view of what caused the population drop, and are hoping that new data will help address these concerns, especially as visitor interest peaks during the fall rutting season. “We have a docent program on weekends during the rut,” says Press, “so we’d really like to share updated population data with the public because this has gotten a lot of media attention and we get a lot of questions.”

Counting elk, by the way, isn’t easy. Elk don’t let you get too close and the herd has a habit of partially disappearing over the undulating hillsides like a mirage. Sometimes the native ungulates are so still and blend so well into the landscape with their tan-colored hides it’s hard to know whether you’re looking at an elk or a boulder. “Oh these guys. I’m not happy with where they’re hanging out right now. This is why I want a drone,” Press deadpans.

We trudge around to the far side of the hill, following his game plan to nudge the herd into a valley for better visibility, but the elk are getting nervous. Two cows raise their heads and look directly at us for a minute, then suddenly run back up the hill. Press strikes off to flush the herd back downhill where he wants them. He disappears into the distance, a lone figure trying to make the wild do his bidding.

In an effort to better thread the needle between these sometimes conflicting aspects of its mission, the park service will release a long-awaited ranch management plan in 2016 intended to guide both future ranch operations and management of the free-roaming elk in the pastoral zone.

Tule elk, the smallest of the four surviving elk subspecies in North America (compared to Roosevelt elk, Rocky Mountain elk, and Manitoba elk), are endemic to California. A dominant grazer wherever they set foot, tule elk once numbered 500,000 across the coastal regions and inland basins of California, with a thousand alone on the Point Reyes Peninsula. They are majestic animals, particularly in the rutting season, when the normally reclusive bachelors, sporting impressive racks, make high-pitched whistling sounds, called “bugling,” as they duke it out for harems of females. Following the mating season the males drop their antlers and go into velvet, then break away into small, tight groups.

Hunting and agriculture had eliminated all but a handful of tule elk by 1874 when, as the story goes, cattle baron Henry Miller discovered a pair on his huge Kern County ranch and set up the state’s first tule elk reserve. For the next century, the species faced extinction until the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1976 directing federal agencies to make lands available for reintroduction of tule elk into their historic range. Point Reyes was identified as a potential site and in 1978 ten elk from the San Joaquin Valley were relocated to Tomales Point, which was fenced off to separate the elk from the ranch operations in the park.

Daniel Dietrich, pointreyessafaris.com

spreading this potentially fatal pathogen to disease-free herds.

That’s left the park service to try arguably less effective techniques: contraception (too labor intensive); hazing the animals away from pastures (they return); and relocation to wilderness areas in the park (again, they return). Elk are lovely yet stubborn creatures.

“They’re just being elk,” says Hobbs. He explains that once they establish a home range it can be extremely difficult to break them of their patterns, so no rancher wants elk to home in on his or her pasture. “I think they get into trouble because of their size. They can break a fence, and they do eat a lot.”

David Wimpfheimer, calnaturalist.com

However, by 1990 the “new” herd at the Tomales Point Tule Elk Reserve had grown large enough to spark concerns about its potential impact on other protected species and habitats.

With no natural predators on the point, except for the occasional mountain lion, all that appeared to keep elk numbers in check was the availability of forage. Following the release of a 1998 elk management plan, the park service ultimately moved 28 animals from the reserve to a wilderness area further south in the park, inland from Limantour Beach, founding the first free-roaming herd at the seashore. Much to everyone’s surprise, soon after the relocation, two radio-collared females turned up on the pastures above Drakes Beach, on the other side of Drakes Estero. They returned briefly to the Limantour herd for the rut but then went back to the new Drakes Beach territory to calve. In 2001, a young male joined the pioneers and a small third herd was established.

Great for the elk, but not for the ranchers, because these elk were no longer in a wilderness area but in the designated pastoral zone leased by the ranchers to graze their livestock.

At last count in 2014, the herd there had grown to 92, to the consternation of the ranchers: An adult male can eat up to 15 pounds of forage a day. “If it hadn’t been for those two females that unpredictably bolted from the release site, we might not have ended up in this situation,” says Press, but then concedes, “it could have been just a matter of time.”

The rebound of tule elk from near-extinction is one of the state’s great species recovery stories—some 4,300 inhabit public reserves and private land throughout California—but those at Point Reyes present a particular conundrum. “It’s very different at Point Reyes because you don’t have the population management tools you would use on any other elk herd,” says Joe Hobbs, the elk and antelope coordinator for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Elsewhere, when elk populations get too large or

troublesome, hunting tags are issued (California has 24 elk hunting zones), or the elk are relocated to faraway spots. But hunting (particularly in a national park) is not going to fly in Marin County. And relocating animals to another area of the state has been nixed because the Point Reyes elk have a history of harboring Johne’s disease and CDFW doesn’t want to risk

Elk and cattle share pastures above Drakes Estero, and that’s become a problem for ranchers.

Some believe the debate has been framed entirely wrong. According to Jeff Miller, a Bay Area spokesperson for the Center for Biological Diversity, the park’s priority should be to conserve wildlife, not provide space for agriculture.

In April, the Arizona-based nonprofit sent out a press release alerting the public to PRNS survey data that showed a 47 percent decline in the Tomales Point herd from 2012 to 2014. CBD posited that the elk had died “likely due to lack of access to year-round water” after some of their watering holes dried up and they october–december 2015

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couldn’t roam to ponds outside the fenced reserve. Conversely, CBD pointed out, the free-roaming herds were booming.

“The only real management difference there is the fence [at Tomales Point],” says Miller. “In a drought, elk are going to move around to find the water and forage they need—if

Point herd could have declined by nearly half in just two years.

And based on their research and observations, they don’t believe that dehydration, or even adult mortality, is the full story. “People have this impression that animals were pushing at the fence and piles of bones were lying about. But neither of those things were happening,” says Gunn who sports a Smokey the Bear hat. “It’s a fenced-in herd, but it’s not like they’re in a corral.”

There were no signs of elk trying to escape the reserve, Gunn says, and in fact one group has remained up at the northern tip of the reserve, far from the fence, with seemingly little interest in leaving.

Point Reyes National Seashore: Tule Elk and Ranches

Phillip Burton Wilderness

Tomales Point Tule Elk Reserve

Other Park Area (State and Federal) Ranches Elk Range

eric simons

Drakes Estero

they’re allowed to move.” CBD wants the park service to let the elk herds roam where they will. “It’s time to start having a conversation about taking down that fence,” says Miller.

Others picked up the cause. WildCare, a San Rafael-based animal rescue center, contends that the Tomales Point elk are essentially living in park service confinement and with that comes the responsibility for the service to keep them alive by ensuring they have enough water. “It’s not okay to provide insufficient care for confined animals,” says Kelle Kacmarcik, WildCare’s advocacy director. “If animals were to die in a zoo setting because of lack of food or water it would be criminal.”

But taking down the fence would disturb the uneasy peace with the nearby ranchers and supplementing water to the Tomales Point herd could unleash a new set of problems.

The park service’s practice is to let nature take its course, and notwithstanding the presence of the fence, that means not creating artificial conditions that could influence the herd’s size or behavior. “It’s a delicate balance,” says Melanie Gunn, a PRNS spokesperson. “We want the elk to self-regulate, but if it gets as dry this year as it has the last couple of years, we will bring in water.”

In the meantime, park service officials are trying to understand, and communicate to the public, how the Tomales b ay n at u r e

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On a morning in late June, Press, Gunn, and I stood out on the elk reserve watching a group of females, one nursing a calf. Calf numbers had dropped from 101 in 2012 to 23 in 2014, an indication that the females weren’t giving birth. Press has a theory that the animals could be suffering from a mineral deficiency, a possible drought-related lack of copper in the forage that could make them more susceptible to disease and parasites, or cause reproductive disorders. Recently, a necropsy on an elk that had died in a road strike revealed a copper deficiency, a phenomenon that had also been noted in the Point Reyes herd following its introduction in 1978.

But while the drop in the birth rate would lead to a lower population over time, it doesn’t account for the steep decline in the number of adult elk in such a short period. “I think the best way to say it is, it’s drought related,” says Press. “People are saying they died of dehydration or starvation, but the exact cause of death we don’t know.”

Park service officials maintain that, whatever the cause, the herd‘s eventual decline was to be expected, although not necessarily its rapidity. With 540 animals on Tomales Point in 2012—that’s more than 100 elk per square mile—the herd could well have exceeded the reserve’s carrying capacity. Three decades of elk survey data show that every time the herd has risen above 500 animals—in 1998, 2008, and 2012—it has dropped back down (although the 1998 decline coincided with contraceptive trials and the relocation of animals to Limantour).

“A die-off might be perfectly natural and wild. That’s often what happens when you don’t have enough resources,” says Laura Watt, a Sonoma State University professor in cultural resource management who has written a forthcoming book about the “paradox of preservation” at PRNS. But it can be a difficult scenario for the public to swallow, she says. “People seem to want elk to be both wild and managed simultaneously.”

One thing’s for sure: A carrying capacity hasn’t been reached for the free-roaming herds. Ten miles to the south of Tomales Point, the Drakes Beach herd is booming on pastureland, even in the midst of the drought.

Delve deeper into the story of tule elk and join our conversation about the future of wilderness and working landscapes on Point Reyes by visiting baynature.org/tuleelk.

from the park altogether.

As for the Drakes Beach herd, the park service is looking for workable solutions. But a new elk fence along the Inverness Ridge—as ranchers have proposed—-probably doesn‘t qualify. “It would be too easy for the elk to get around,” says Press.

Instead, the park service has been trying to steer elk to where it wants them by sprucing up a section of retired pasture and keeping a pond that had been going dry filled with water.

Meanwhile, park staff are also hazing the elk off pastures.

There are some promising signs in radio collar data that this approach is working, and the elk are spending less time in the pastures, says Press.

But there’s still the issue of population growth.

So in the new plan, the park service is considering a cap on the number of elk in the free-roaming Drakes Beach herd, among other alternatives, according to Gunn and Press. How that might be maintained— professional culling, or convincing CDFW to translocate animals off the seashore, or some other option—is still very much up in the air. No doubt, the conversation with the public won’t be easy, says Press: “I think there are some tough days ahead.”

While this is a national conversation, involving many of the people who regularly visit the popular park, the resolution of the issue may well arise from the West Marin community itself. Amy Trainer, the executive director of West Marin Environmental Action Committee, is one of the rare birds who has straddled the fence lines on this issue.

She initiated an ad hoc working group composed of local environmentalists and ranchers (at a recent meeting people from all six dairies showed up) to find some middle ground on the elk and keep the conversation civil. “We’re very solutions focused and it’s been good in so many ways,” Trainer says. “It’s helped heal the community after the oyster battle… We have a great opportunity at Point Reyes to show how protecting national park values and the tule elk population is a success story that can absolutely coexist with small-scale sustainable farms and dairies.”

It’s a hopeful tone, one that places great faith in the West Marin community and its diverse set of voices to sort themselves out—if only they take into account that the elk, wild as they are, will always be elk.

(above) Tule elk and cattle sleep within several feet of each other on Historic D Ranch above Drakes Estero. (right) Elk are lovely but stubborn creatures.

ranch, in an email. “Our ranch does not have the resources to support these increasing numbers of elk that feed and water themselves in our rented cattle pastures, especially during this horrible drought.”

Spaletta declined to be interviewed directly for this article, as did other ranchers, citing bad experiences with the media. Besides, they are waiting for the park service to release the long-awaited Ranch Comprehensive Management Plan in 2016, which will spell out a strategy for managing the free-roaming elk as well as provide for continued ranching. Among the topics: allowing ranchers to “diversify” to chickens and row crops, even B&Bs. Ranchers will almost certainly be granted new 20-year leases, a concession made to assuage fears that the fiercely contested closing of the Drakes Bay Oyster Farm was the first step in ousting agriculture

John W. Wall

Carlos Porrata

The grazed pastures of the coastal hills that rise up behind Drakes Beach are where elk and cattle mix it up the most. On any given day, they bed down feet from each other, seemingly at peace beside their fellow ruminants. But less so with the ranchers, who complain that the elk break through cattle fences, eat too much from the pastures, and jeopardize the ranches’ organic status, which requires that one-third of a cow‘s diet be foraged material (limiting how much supplemental feed the ranchers can provide).

“There is a large herd of [elk] cows, calves with two large bulls, and other groups of bachelor bulls that are present daily,” writes Nichola Spaletta of C Ranch, perhaps the most impacted

Alison Hawkes is a contributing editor for Bay Nature.

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first person

Phyllis Faber: Bold Ideas, Enduring Legacy Interview by David Kupfer Veteran environmental activist, writer, editor, publisher, educator, and coastal wetlands scientist Phyllis Faber has made countless contributions to the Bay Area environmental movement. With the late Ellen Straus, she cofounded the nation’s first agricultural land trust, Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT). She was a leader in the campaign for the California Coastal Commission in 1972 and subsequently served on the North Central Regional Commission, including as chair for two years.

Faber was born in New York City, graduated with a B.S. in zoology from Mount Holyoke College, and received her M.S. in microbiology at Yale. She first moved to the Bay Area for a few years in the early 1960s, then moved back to stay in 1971, settling in Marin with her husband and three children. She combined duties as a mother, a consulting coastal wetland biologist, a teacher of biology and natural history at the College of Marin, and an environmental advocate. She was also one of the founding instructors at the Environmental Forum of Marin.

She began her publishing career in 1982 when she wrote and published Common Wetland Plants of Coastal California. She has since worked on numerous books about California flora and ecosystems and served as editor of Fremontia, the journal of the California Native Plant Society, from 1984 to 1999. At age 87, she remains active in publishing as the coeditor of the Natural History series for University of California Press.

Bay Area environmental journalist David Kupfer recently sat down with Faber at her home in Mill Valley to reflect on her long career. bay nature: What initially brought you to the

Bay Area?

Oakland, as his father had immigrated here from Scotland around 1880. He eventually moved east, to New York, in 1927, which is where I was born. But he used to tell me wondrous tales about going up to Cooley Ranch in northern Sonoma every summer, so I learned about old-growth redwoods, oak forests, vineyards, and all the wildlife. My dad moved back to the Bay Area after he retired, as my sister and her family had moved out here earlier. When my husband, who worked for Xerox, was offered a transfer to the Bay Area in 1962, we jumped at the opportunity to come as well. bn: What caused you to devote your life’s work to the environment? pf: Having young children at home prevented me from taking a lab job doing what I had been trained to do, which was unraveling the structure of DNA. So I accepted a job teaching science at a private school in Connecticut. And the teacher I Phyllis Faber at the Gale Ranch in Chileno Valley being interviewed by filmmaker Nancy Kelly.

b ay n at u r e

Rebels with a Cause, rebelsdocumentary.org

phyllis faber: My father was born in

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was replacing, Joy Lee, made it a point to inform me that we were losing our marshes and needed to protect them. She also made the connection between science and politics. She told me, “Do you know the world is going to fall apart because we’re losing our wetlands? You must pay attention to the wetlands.” It made a huge impression. I became fully engaged in the environmental movement through this issue of the loss of wetlands. So when we moved out to California, I was primed.

I started teaching with a group of biologists who taught out at Audubon Canyon Ranch near Bolinas Lagoon, and that was fun for me. I learned the flora of Marin County and what a wonderful place it was. And then, because of my concern about losing wetlands, I started working with Janet Adams on the campaign to create the Coastal Zone Conservation Act, Proposition 20. There were 10 miles of coastal beachfront that

Art Rogers, artrogers.com

f i r st p e r s on

the developers of Sea Ranch on the ers had been attracted northern Sonoma coast had blocked to West Marin by the from public access. There were huge creation of the Point gravel mines being sited along the coast.

Reyes National And oil companies were gearing up for Seashore and the extensive offshore drilling. Exploitation tremendous populaof the coast was well under way. But tion growth in the there was no regional planning, and region. Ranchers, decisions were made by local governparticularly those who ments that were largely interested in were third- and enhancing their tax base through fourth-generation, development. That’s why the campaign were reeling from the to save the coast was essential. After the changes and many Coastal Act was passed by the voters, our were selling their land; local state senator, Peter Behr, appointed there were “For Sale” me to the regional Coastal Commission. signs up and down Phyllis Faber and her friend Ellen Straus on the Straus That was life-changing for me. It was Tomales Bay. Ellen and I talked about Ranch above Tomales Bay in 2000. They cofounded the incredible to see how legislation can this situation and felt we had to do Marin Agricultural Land Trust in 1980. happen and to see what a change that something. In 1978, we interviewed a number of local ranchers and heard from impose what seemed unjust to much of legislation could make in the prospects Boyd Steward in Olema that land the ranching community. So they agreed for the coast. It changed California. And security was what enabled his family to to let us try a land trust. Now, 35 years it was a citizen initiative; I’m really proud later, almost 50 percent of Marin’s ag stay in agriculture. He had sold his land of the citizens of this state for having land has been protected by easements, to the Point Reyes National Seashore passed it. bn:Why do you think environmental consciousmeaning that development rights have with a long-term lease-back. That’s how ness has flourished here? Has the relative material been extinguished in perpetuity. We his family could count on a future in prosperity of the Bay Area influenced the chuckle today about the likelihood of a agriculture. conservation movement?

West Marin dairy woman and an East So we realized that a land trust might pf: The Bay Area has a rather excepMarin biologist starting such a venture. work by taking away the pressure for the tional population of people who love the It was a brand-new concept; no one had rancher to sell his land. We went to the environment. It might be ever done anything like it. But now expensive to live here but people “The freedom that women the idea has been replicated across are willing to pay the price. The the nation! have in California, the bn: Tell us about your work in the educational opportunities and self-confidence, opportunity, mid-1970s to help restore Muzzi Marsh in the beauty of the region attract Corte Madera. activist types. The affluence and idealism that women pf: The 1976 restoration of the means people have money and have compared to other Muzzi Marsh was the result of a time to support nonprofit mitigation measure required for the groups and the energy, educaparts of the country, has really creation of the Larkspur ferry tion, and understanding to driven the movement.” terminal. It involved breaching the direct them. Also, the freedom bayfront dike, allowing tidal access that women have in California, to 120 acres that had been cut off in the Trust for Public Land, which had the level of self-confidence, opportunity, late 1950s for commercial development. experience with land trusts, and they and idealism that women have compared It was the first Bay marsh restored endorsed the idea. Timing is everything. to other parts of the country, has really MALT developed at a particular moment without any new plantings, just leaving it driven the movement. bn: Can you tell us how you and Ellen Straus when all the right people just happened to nature. It was uncharted territory, and started MALT? to be working on related issues. And it now we know how to do it even better. pf: Ellen and Bill Straus were West turned out that an experimental land The model has since been replicated Marin dairy ranchers who opened up trust was an appealing alternative to the elsewhere; a lot of lessons learned at their ranch to me to bring out students Coastal Commission staff ’s suggestion Muzzi have been applied in Sonoma, from Drake and Redwood high schools to require a higher ratio of land to Napa, and the South Bay. It’s been as part of their school program. That’s houses as a way of slowing development. exciting to see the end of the mass how Ellen and I became great friends. At This had been very controversial and the destruction of the Bay’s wetlands and the the time, in the late 1970s, land developcounty supervisors were reluctant to restoration of the Bay tidelands. Now, october–december 2015

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Paige Green

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however, we’re worried about erosion of the marshes and how to hang on to and defend what’s been restored. The Bay is not receiving the sediment coming down from the rivers as it once did. It’s all been bottled up by dams slowing the flow from the Sierra. As a result, the marshes are not receiving the sediment they need to keep up with anticipated sea level rise. bn: With your editing and publishing work over the past two decades, you’ve become a bridge between the scientific community and the public.

Was that your intention? pf: No, in a way I’ve been an opportunist. It was the choices and opportunities available to me at the time. I had the responsibility for my children. It was not the same then for men and women. But there was also the influence of my father early on and later Joy Lee, teaching me that to prevail, science has to fit together with policy in a political world. bn: What are your favorite nature spots in the Bay Area? pf: I am quite thrilled to be living here in

Phyllis Faber leads a wildflower walk for MALT at Leiss Ranch in Chileno Valley.

Mill Valley next to the Bothin salt marsh, where I live with the daily tidal cycles and the myriad birds that visit the marsh.

It is a treat to see the marsh plants when they have been enhanced by a recent rain.

And I love walking out at Stinson Beach and up on Mount Tamalpais, on the Matt Davis and Nora trails. And I always love to stroll along the Bear Valley Trail at Point Reyes. Really, almost anywhere in Marin offers opportunities for adventure and delight.

This Fall, get up close and personal on a raptor tour in Solano County

Solano Land Trust Raptor Tours: Because the Sky’s the Limit Come see amazing eagles, hawks and other birds of prey on conserved lands. For more information: Click “stay in touch” at solanolandtrust.org.

We run conservation programs year-round, manage miles of trails, and assist landowners to voluntarily conserve their land. For additional information call 707-432-0150. All programs are free or low cost thanks to the support of our community members. b ay n at u r e

october–december 2015

GET AROUND TOWN ON TWO WHEELS WITH

BAY AREA BIKE SHARE Bike Share stations are located in San Francisco, San Jose, Redwood City, Palo Alto and Mountain View.

24-Hour, 3-Day and Annual Memberships Available The first 30 minutes of each trip are free for members.

bayareabikeshare.com Brought to you by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission

coyote valley open space preserve awaits you!

The South Bay’s newest preserve is set in the famed Valley of Heart’s Delight in South San Jose. opening in early summer • visit openspaceauthority.org for details photo credit: stephen Joseph

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death in 1992, this land operated as a sheep farm and rock quarry. Since then, MALT has fought to protect the ranch.

Its abundant water sources—Millerton Gulch Creek, several natural springs, and two large reservoirs—contribute to a fascinating, diverse natural ecology. And for MALT, the ranch is the connecting piece for 8,454 contiguous acres of protected land, between Millerton Point (part of Tomales Bay State Park) and the

Blitzing Millerton Creek Ranch

Michael Woolsey, MALT

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with symptoms of both afflictions. “We’re trying to learn from what we’ve done in the past so we can do a better job going forward to help the otters,” she says.

The Richardson Bay otter might have been a little unlucky: It arrived in the Bay in the midst of an extensive domoic acid outbreak. But the bigger picture isn’t bad news. From near-extinction the otters have recovered to a population of nearly 3,000 individuals along the California coast, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson Ashley Spratt says they’ve reached carrying capacity on the Central California coast. They need new places to live, in other words, and San Francisco Bay, part of their historic range, could be one of those places. “Range expansion for southern sea otters is absolutely essential for their recovery,” Spratt says.

“This report is not an indication of range expansion, but it is an indication that there are the resources [in the Bay] that would support otters.” [Eric Simons]

( continued from page 7)

MALT-protected Giacomini Dairy and Panfiglio Ranch. But its size, beautiful landscape, and ample water—the very reasons to protect it—also make for prime real estate. Developers’ plans for upscale homes threatened MALT’s hopes for conservation.

The large group of people standing on the rocky hillside of Millerton Creek Ranch arguably have some of the best views in Marin County. It’s 9:30 a.m. and the low-hanging fog has just lifted, uncovering a dramatic vista of rolling yellow hills dusted with wildflowers. Turkey vultures ride the thermals in upward spirals, and a northern harrier takes off over the hill toward the distant glint of Tomales Bay. The scene of this 864-acre ranch is staggeringly beautiful, and none of these people has ever been here before.

However, not one of them is looking at the view. Instead, heads down, phones out, they scour the hillside for life as part of an organized effort to understand the biodiversity of this ranch, which the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) has just acquired.

A bioblitz on agricultural land is unusual. MALT Conservation Director Jeff Stump sees it, though, as redemptive: a chance to document the life of a piece of land almost lost to development. “This time, we’re going to give this land what it deserves,” Stump says.

Until former owner Bob Borello’s b ay n at u r e

october–december 2015

In 2009, MALT had a conservation easement in the works with local producers Mike Giammona, who raises cattle for grass-fed beef, and Andrew Zlot, whose water buffalo provide milk for Double 8 Dairy. But a private developer bought the ranch before terms could be finalized. Then, earlier this year, the developer’s plans fell through, and MALT leapt at the opportunity. With a loan from the Packard Foundation, MALT purchased the property and leased it to Giammona and Zlot. Now, they hope to learn as much as they can about the land before selling it to Giammona and Zlot in four years. With a conservation easement, MALT will set the terms for the agricultural use of this land in perpetuity.

Standing in front of the volunteers before the day’s activities begin, Stump rubs his hands together in excitement.

“Information leads to conservation,” he says. “This land has suffered years of abuse, and if we’re going to restore it, we need to know what’s (continued on page 44)

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( continued from page 42) out there.”

MALT has specific goals as well: to get

a better sense of the distribution of invasive woolly distaff thistle (as part of the conservation easement, MALT will advise Giammona and Zlot on long-term thistle control) and to learn more about the different plant species around the creek, to aid Giammona’s plans for creek restoration. Over three hours, 50 observers upload more than 1,360 individual data points to iNaturalist, including more than 170 different species.

“I’ve said this time and again: This land is a diamond in the rough,” Stump says. “We’re lucky to have you guys help us learn more about it.”

Suzanne Marr, who has made the drive in the early morning from her home in Berkeley, feels like she is the lucky one.

In the midst of her documenting efforts, she squats among the grasses on the hillside and swigs from her water bottle.

“Because it’s a private agricultural property, I’d never get to see this land if it weren’t for the bioblitz,” she says. “But I

get to spend my morning here. Just look at this place!” She gestures out to the acres of wind-rippled hills below her. “It only makes sense that I should give something back.”[Brett Simpson] Randall Museum On the Move

It’s moving day at the Randall Museum, and the animals are jittery. Most of the large cages that usually populate the live animal exhibit are gone; instead, the room is filled with the sounds of creature discomfort. Some loud, frantic scratching comes from a plastic kennel covered by a towel, which contains a crow and a blind raven, both flightless. “They haven’t left the Randall in 30 years, other than to get their nails clipped,” a staffer says.

A robin, sparrow, and cedar waxwing chirp nonstop, flurries of feathers in their cages. The museum’s tail-less raccoon, now housed in the largest wire cage, alternates between performing desperate acrobatics and clawing at its neighbors through the mesh. A rabbit sits stoically in a tiny carrier.

Staffers are preparing to move the 50-or-so species of animals to a temporary home at the Mission Art Center, where they’ll live for the next year while the beloved hilltop museum in San Francisco’s Corona Heights undergoes a thorough renovation.

The Randall, which opened in 1951, was conceived of and designed by Josephine Randall, San Francisco’s first Superintendent of Recreation, who hiked up to the top of Corona Heights in the 1920s and fell in love with its wildness. “Here was a spot in the very heart of the city,” she wrote, “where our young people could be carried away from the traffic and noise and spend a happy day in the country.”

Today, the Randall is a field trip destination for more than 15,000 children a year; holds arts, ceramics, and woodworking classes for kids and parents alike; and serves as the host of an annual citywide middle school science fair. And it houses a unique (in the city) collection of live animals, now on the move.

The new plan includes (continued on page 47)

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Algae Bloom Gone Bad

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grou n d

Bobbing along in water like a tiny canoe, Pseudo-nitzschia australis is a beautiful phytoplankton to observe under a microscope. This tiny organism, along with other species of the Pseudo-nitzschia genus and other genera of the unicellular algae called diatoms, produces a quarter of the world’s oxygen supply and is responsible for one-fifth of all carbon sequestration. But the attention Pseudonitzschia has been getting lately is not particularly positive.

to

entirely with drawers of pinned butterflies, corals, sponges, and shells.

There will soon be a cutting-edge science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) lab called the Garage, a hub for engineering, robotics, and physics classes. The Randall plans to develop its STEM programming for older kids and teenagers, an effort to get with the times. “The Randall presents science in such a hands-on, open-ended, exploratory way that to have a dedicated space for STEM is going to be phenomenal,” says Beth Roy Jenkyn, a board member of Randall Museum Friends. Of course, the Randall’s main attraction is its live animal exhibit, which draws scores of kids every day who pet, point, and pepper the animal care staff with questions. “I don’t even think they realize they’re learning,” Jenkyn says.

The animals and many of the museum’s other attractions are now open to the public at the museum’s temporary location, 745 Treat Avenue. [Chelsea Leu]

ear

a path that winds through the museum and adds an elevator for accessibility. Permanent exhibits will explore California nature topics, including one on seismology and tectonic plates, another on the ocean, and one on the ecology of redwood forests. There may be a fog machine. A spare classroom in the building’s east wing will be converted into a concession area, Café Josephine, so parents won’t have to trek down the hill for food.

The new exhibits will be stocked, in part, with specimens from the Randall’s own collections. Over the years, the museum has amassed a trove of geological and biological specimens, currently crammed into two locked rooms in the Randall’s basement, which is soon to be converted into exhibit space. One room contains taxidermied animals draped in blue plastic bags—a duck, a skunk, and an irate-looking great horned owl. There’s a selection of large nautilus shells, skulls of various sizes, and dentitions stacked on every surface. And one wall is filled ( continued from page 44)

That’s because it is being blamed for producing unprecedented concentrations of a deadly neurotoxin, domoic acid, in Pacific waters stretching (continued on page 48)

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from the central California coast to Alaska. As a result, numerous fisheries have been closed and marine life has suffered as the poison concentrates up the food web. By mid-year, the Marine Mammal Center in the Marin Headlands had already rescued more than 130 poisoned California sea lions. (The main hazard to humans is ingesting contaminated seafood; swimming and other forms of water recreation pose no threat.)

What makes Pseudo-nitzschia change from being a model of good work to being a deadly hazard? When ocean conditions are just right—caused either by ocean upwelling or pollution—the diatoms “bloom” in huge numbers. But the good times don’t last. The diatoms can quickly deplete the available nutrients in the water—especially nitrates and silica—that have allowed them to proliferate in the first place, and then begin emitting domoic acid as a stress response. This cycle can repeat as nutrient levels fluctuate in the ocean, ( continued from page 47)

further concentrating toxin levels.

The last two years have seen ideal conditions for immense algal blooms to develop, says Raphael Kudela, a phytoplankton ecologist at University of California, Santa Cruz, who has been monitoring the blooms. “You’ve got nice warm water, you’ve got a little bit of upwelling pumping nutrients in, and then, because it’s all trapped up against the coast, it’s ideal conditions to get that toxin up into the food web,” Kudela says.

Scientists ascribe the blooms to two years of unusually warm ocean temperatures in the northeastern Pacific. The warming has led to a suite of ecosystem changes, including a shifting of some marine species northward and a loss of primary productivity in the food chain.

The Pseudo-nitzschia mega-blooms are another consequence.

Kudela and his team monitored an especially toxic Pseudo-nitzschia bloom in Monterey Bay this May, with domoic acid levels 10 to 30 times higher than those of a typical toxic algal bloom. He predicts that

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such blooms will be a persistent feature of a warmer world. “As the water gets warmer from climate change, we would expect those are the exact conditions this particular organism likes,” he says.

Kudela and his lab are developing a “weather forecast” to predict toxic algal blooms using a statistical model based on decades of data about changes in ocean conditions. Currently in the test phase, the model has successfully predicted blooms up to three days before they occur, Kudela says. He plans to eventually transfer ownership of the model to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for public use so that the fishing industry, animal rescue groups, and others can get an early warning on impending blooms.

If you see a marine mammal having seizures or exhibiting other strange behavior, please contact the Marine Mammal Center at (415)289-SEAL or email stranded@tmmc.org (photos are especially helpful). [Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton]

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su pport f or bay natur e The Bay Nature Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes exploration and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area in print (Bay Nature magazine), online (Baynature.org), on the air, and in the field. Through tax-deductible contributions, the Friends of Bay Nature support this independent voice for local nature and conservation. The Friends listed below are individuals whose donations were received between June 1 and September 2, 2015. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Circle and receive invitations to special events and outings.

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q: Do rattlesnakes in the Bay Area migrate and hibernate in dens? a: My first response to this question was—really? Just how far can an animal without wings or legs migrate? But actually, the distance travelled is irrelevant. Migration is simply the seasonal movement to and from an area for the purpose of feeding and breeding.

In the Ozark Mountains, the U.S. Forest Service actually closes a road twice a year to allow copperheads, timber rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths to slither down from their wintering dens in limestone cliffs to summer feeding grounds in swamps.

The word for these dens is hibernacula— Latin for “tent for winter quarters”—and they are stable refuges from weather extremes, both the chill of winter and the heat of summer.

Garter snakes, an abundant and widespread genus of snake in North America, are well known for wintering underground in tremendous numbers—as many as 10,000 were found in a single den site in Canada! But they only do that in colder regions and that’s not necessary in our temperate Bay Area climate.

Still, the northern Pacific rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus oreganus), our local subspecies of the western rattlesnake— one of the 36 species of rattlesnakes found in the Americas (from Canada to Argentina)—does indeed overwinter in dens. And it migrates out from these dens in the spring to feed nearby, returning in October to spend the winter (though occasionally venturing out on warm winter days). How far they range is unknown, but it’s most certainly not as far as the rattlers in Wyoming. Those snakes travel up to five miles from the den!

In the last decade or so some exciting research has emerged on the social lives of rattlesnakes and their use of winter Mark Gary

Photo taken at Pepperwood by our Wildlife Picture Index monitoring system, the first in North America

e l l i s dens. For many years, scientists assumed that snakes were basically solitary animals and interacted primarily for mating. However, research on the timber rattler in the eastern U.S. and the black-tailed rattlesnake in Arizona presents an entirely different picture of these reptiles. The hibernacula provide not only refugia from the elements but opportunities for family interaction.

Thanks to DNA analysis and implanted tracking devices, we now know that these hibernacula are usually composed of extended family groups.

Within the den, female rattlesnakes prefer to sleep right next to, or even entwined with, their sisters. These rattlesnake mothers also exhibit a high degree of parental care and lay down scents that enable their offspring (and other family members) to find their way back to the denning sites.

Whether these behavioral traits apply to all rattlesnakes is unknown because little research has been done.

Fortunately I know the location of a rattlesnake hibernaculum on a serpentine outcropping on the north side of Mount Tamalpais. It apparently provides the perfect sun exposure and ideal rocky crevices to hide in, and it presumably has been used by generations of rattlesnakes.

I visit this one on a regular basis, especially when I want to impress out-of-town visitors by showing them our resident venomous snake.

The disadvantages of group living include easy transmission of diseases or parasites and a higher chance of predation. However, from living with your kin, there could be an improved likelihood that your brother or sister will survive and therefore your shared genes just may endure. Group living seems to be working quite well for the rattlesnake, which has been around a lot longer than we have.

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Cas a

A solar roof is one of many advanced feautres.

es y a nuestro personal político, y asegure de que se nos haya dañado o se haya uidado en los servicios de los individuos que abusado de nosotros mentalmente. un mundo viven y respiran la política durante este atrapados tiempo critico en la historia del cuidado •Merecemos el derecho de que e, nuestra del hogar a nivel Federal y Estatal. se nos pague bajo el esquema del os a otros CUHW, al salir de la burbuja, Seguro Social por una vida de trabajo dor, usted emerge con nuevas ideas ahora que por un miembro de la familia. manda que estamos en período electoral este Urban Ore Development Associates designed this nine-acre Zero Wasteestatales transfer station for Berkeley to recoverpagadas, •Merecemos vacaciones sted es un agosto.

Nuestras elecciones almost everything discarded.

It’s expandable, and the interior space is adaptable to changing resource de que se nos ed vive en incluirán dos semanas en las que merecemos el derechoprofiles. trate con compasión y respeto por las u relación puede votar en línea o llamando Resources are precious.

We can’t replace veedor de a un número sin costo, usando su nonrenewable materials that havenúmero already familiar, de celular o un teléfono fijo. diferente.

Una vez más nos salimos de nuestra been taken from the wilderness. Renewable años resources y burbuja, hemos lanzado un Programa will replace themselves, but only if we proveedor de Voluntariado de Incentivos harvest sustainably.

Landfilling them when we de marcar un hasta aquí, de nuevo, ar, pero ofrecer descuentos a nuestros discard things just turns them intopara pollution and sobre el rompiendo la burbuja del pasado, miembros en los negocios al mostrar creates gases. sus tarjetas del Sindicatolo cual siempreclimate-change avanzando acercándonos, ador de recover emas que Zero Waste isn’t optional. We must representa un ganar-ganar para todos. our discards and process them into feedstocks if endientes Hemos establecido oficinas extraño. en más de 9 de nuestros condados. we want new products.

UHW, ha Today’s garbage infrastructure La mayoríaand de obsolete. las oficinas Replacing tienen is aging it will open ya durante bancos de llamadas y capacidad opportunities to keep materials clean for their highest and best use. Facilities can be ención de de difusión de web y cuentan con designed to be operated by multiple niche specialists. If they are located on municipal gidos por grandes pantallas. Contamos con land, they can be run like airports otra to bring revenue. a Loretta accióncities que new es también otra The recycling industry is conforme construyendo already far continuamos bigger financially than burbuja the garbage industry. campaña que se rompe, y estasLet’s son lasfund it for growth! el “Puente Hacia un Mejor Futuro” ndado deUrban Ore salvages for reuse at Berkeley’s transfer actualizaciones station. Peoplepor email y mensajes dificultades que enfrentamos en nuestros reventando la conserve things and call for pickups. We dico y losalso bring usEstamos de textoabout que alertan a los miembros de trabajos por una paga justa, beneficios burbuja cuando nuestro tons a year and sell the reusableComité goods in retail sales. acontecimientos dores. En7,000 los últimos de IHSS. To End the Age of Waste médicos y oportunidades de educación, until 7:00PM (receiving at 5:00) 360 days at deopen Constitución sugiere un closes cambio un grupoWe’re Yo a year personalmente quiero al igual que las otras fuerzas de trabajo.

900 Murray, near Ashby @ 7th, Berkeley. sido los que combine el espacio de nuestro salirme de la burbuja en la que ht se tp: //ur banore.c om uecido sus Secretario Tesorero y que cree una nueva considera la reforma de IHSS en ¡No solamente lo merecemos, plan para posición, Vicepresidente segundo. El California y sugiero que empecemos con

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

URBAN RE