Bay Nature July-September 2017 by Bay Nature Institute

baynature.org—your portal to nature nearby

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A AN N EE X XP P LL O OR RA A TT II O ON N O O FF N NA A TT U UR R EE II N N TT H H EE SS A AN N FF R RA AN NC C II SS C CO O B BA AY Y A AR R EE A A

Dragonfly Migrations José González on Latino Outdoors The Crowded Bay Area: Housing. Roads. Are Parks Next? The Charmstones of Tolay Lake

Mount Umunhum A Mountain Made of Stories We welcome you to experience Mount Umunhum; to find perspective in its spectacular views and adventure on its trails, while discovering its unique biodiversity and storied history. This special place will be open to the public for the first time thanks to you, local voters, who passed Midpen’s Measure AA in 2014 making this project possible. Help create Mount Umunhum’s next chapter as one of the Bay Area’s great publicly-accessible peaks.

OPENING THIS FALL www.mountumunhum.org

Enhancing opportunities for agriculture and recreation in Sonoma County

sonomalandtrust.org

THIS IS HOME

ÂŠTeddy Miller 2017/ Fremont Older Preserve BayNature_Spring_2017_Half (1).indd 1

openspacetrust.org/ourhome 5/31/17 8:34 AM

Sometimes to save a river, you have to buy it. Northern California’s Scott River is the state’s most important river for wild coho salmon, which are threatened or endangered throughout California. Yet the Scott faces countless challenges, from diversion and diking to deforestation and drought. For its coho, the greatest stressor of all is lack of water. Although this year’s rains will help, the coho run is in rapid decline, and ample water remains a paramount concern. Western Rivers Conservancy has purchased a ranch on the South Fork Scott River, the largest, cleanest tributary to the Scott. In doing so, we have acquired a critical water right that will allow us to increase summertime flows in the South Fork Scott by up to 20 percent—water that is crucial to imperiled coho. Learn more and support our river conservation efforts throughout California at www.westernrivers.org.

contents

july–september 2017

Features 34

Kevin Fox

Alice Zhuk, zhukphoto.com

Lech Naumovich

ENDEMIC. ELUSIVE. RARE. The Mount Diablo Buckwheat Resists Extinction A historic discovery in the East Bay hills of the region’s rarest of rare plants challenges botanists. How did the Mount Diablo buckwheat get to Black Diamond Mines? Why is there suddenly so much of it? And how has it survived? by David Rains Wallace

ARE BAY AREA PARKS BEING LOVED TO DEATH? Waiting in traffic. Searching for a parking spot. An awful lot of parkloving people on the trail. Finding solitude in the Bay Area’s outdoors isn’t what it used to be. Or is it? Some say it’s a matter of perspective. by Jeremy Miller

PELAGIC BIRDS Twenty miles off the Northern California coast, where the shallow coastal plain falls off in a dramatic cliff, the ocean comes to life. In the summer and fall, birders crowd boats to catch glimpses of some of the least understood but most threatened birds on the planet. by Alison Hawkes

Departments Bay View

Letter from the publisher

Letters & Comments

Feedback from our readers

Opening Shot

BayWood Artists turn to Mount Tam painting by Christin Coy

Currents

14 Conservation in Action

22 Elsewhere

On the Trail

40 First Person

The Charms of Tolay Lake Historically a place of healing and renewal for California Indians, Tolay Lake today lies at the heart of Tolay Lake Regional Park, which officials hope to fully open to the public this fall. by Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris

What the proposed federal budget means for Bay Area nature. by Alison Hawkes

16 Sonoma County

• San Francisco’s natural areas • Shark die-off in the Bay • Run 4 salmon • Lupines and a mouse • Signs of the Season: Dragonfly migration

Bedwell Bayfront, Peninsula; Butano, South Bay; Dotson Family Marsh, East Bay

José González on growing Latino Outdoors by Victor Reyes

Ask the Naturalist

Can you tell the temperature by crickets? by Michael Ellis

54 Naturalist’s Notebook

Bay Area squirrels by John Muir Laws

VISIT US ONLINE AT WWW.BAYNATURE.ORG

Jerry Ting

BY DAVID LOEB

bayview letter from the publisher y first BayView letter, published in January 2001 in the premier issue of Bay Nature, describes my observations of life in the coast live oak outside my home office window during the extended four-year gestation period of the magazine. I was particularly taken with the pair of bushtits who built a nest (an elaborate but precarious-looking hanging contraption of twigs and other urban oak woodland detritus) in the tree and raised a small family there for two consecutive springs. Once the magazine was ready to launch, the three-person staff moved into a small office over Picante restaurant in West Berkeley—still the world headquarters of Bay Nature, even though the staff has grown to nine—and I lost my oak view. In fact, I lost any and all views, other than that of a wall covered with some of my favorite images from early issues of the magazine (a western bluebird; bright orange lichen on a boulder; summer evening light on Mount Diablo; a large map of San Francisco Bay tidal wetlands past and present). And even if I had sat at one of the three desks near a window, my view would have been of the cement plant next door, not of an oak woodland. So I probably won’t miss that aspect of working at Bay Nature when I leave my post as publisher and executive director on June 30, just as this 67th issue of Bay Nature is published. And that, in a nutshell, is one of the reasons that, after 17 years, I’m leaving this dream job. Not because of the office, per se, but because I’m ready to get back out into the world and do more observing of nature myself instead b ay n at u r e

Diane Poslosky

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of managing a forum to record the observations of others. Don’t get me wrong. Just because I haven’t been out in the field doesn’t mean I haven’t been learning and having a great time. This has been one long privileged learning experience, both about running a small nonprofit media organization and about the natural world of my home region. And about the people and organizations whose work is responsible for the incredible diversity of wildlife, protected watersheds, and natural landscapes in the Bay Area. I’ve learned about the reproductive strategies of barnacles and lichens. I’ve learned about the geologic processes that created the red rocks of the Marin Headlands. About the communal habits of acorn woodpeckers. And the resilience of river otters. And just as important, I’ve learned about the truly astounding number and variety of nonprofit organizations and civic initiatives and public agencies, large and small, that have arisen to restore this creek; build that trail; save the Bay; make a park accessible; remove invasive plants; study a tidepool; and so on. Yes, we’re remarkably blessed in this region to have such a stirring combination of natural beauty, moderate climate, social diversity, and human creativity. But the very same factors that make this such a desirable place to live and that lured me here from New York City in 1973 keep attracting more and more people. When I arrived, the population of the nine-county Bay Area was about five million. Now it’s 7.65 million, a 60 percent increase in 45 years, and a 14 percent increase since Bay Nature was founded in 2000. You can see the impact on our overcrowded roads and bridges and, more seriously,

in the insane housing prices that make it difficult for nonprofit workers and young biologists and environmental educators (and many others) to stay in the area and pursue socially valuable careers. And, as we discuss in this issue, the increasing numbers of visitors mean that some of our more popular parks are in danger of being “loved to death.” And, finally, looming over everything, is climate change, with its rising sea levels that will inundate low-lying areas around the Bay, wildland fires that will take an increasing toll on landscapes and human communities alike, and the paradoxical twin threats of prolonged drought and extreme flooding. So as a region, we have our hands full. Which means there is even more need now than in 2001 for a publication that tells the stories of our natural landscapes, and of the people who care for them, and of the challenges we face, and of the creative solutions to those challenges. I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to help tell these stories for the past 17 years and having the opportunity to share my thoughts with you in these quarterly letters. This I will miss more than I can say. But these compelling and inspiring stories will keep on coming to you from the next generation here at Bay Nature, because changing times call for fresh perspectives and new voices. So I leave you in good hands as the journey of exploration of the natural world and the Bay Area’s diverse landscapes continues. As for me, I’m looking forward to having more time for observations in the natural world: in my actual backyard, in my larger Bay Area “backyard,” and farther afield. And in another sign of change, perhaps I’ll record those observations on my iPhone with iNaturalist or submit an occasional post-from-the-field to Baynature.org. (Maybe old publishers can learn new tricks?) See you all out on the trail and out in the field! And thanks for taking this journey with me. I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—have done it without you.

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

Volume 17, Issue 3 July- September 2017 Publisher David Loeb Editor in Chief Victoria Schlesinger Editorial Director Eric Simons Contributing Editor Alison Hawkes Research Editor Sue Rosenthal Copy Editor Cynthia Rubin Art Director Susan Scandrett Advertising Director Ellen Weis Associate Director Judith Katz Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Office Manager Jenny Stampp Information Technology Manager Laurence Tietz Development Associate Laney Ennis Board of Directors Catherine Fox (President), Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, Reed Holderman, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Volunteers/Interns Alexander Fox, Jacqueline Gauthier, Shidonna Raven Johnson, Audrey McNamara, Clark Mosher, Phil Osegueda, Kimberly Teruya, Benjamin Whiting Bay Nature is published quarterly by the Bay Nature Institute, 1328 6th Street #2, Berkeley, CA 94710 Subscriptions: $62.95/three years; $45.95/two years; $25.95/one year; (888)422-9628, baynature.org P.O. Box 92408, Long Beach, CA 90809 Advertising: (510)813-1903/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. © 2017 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.

letters & comments Dear Editor, Wonderful to hear of the trout’s return to an East Bay stream after so many years, in the April-June issue. As kids growing up in the East Bay in the 1950s, we used to explore the houseless hills. We fished in local ponds and Lafayette Reservoir (I have to admit this was before it was open to the public). One time we fished in Las Trampas Creek not far from the Park Theater in Lafayette. I recall catching a variety of fish including a Sacramento sucker. Another fish was slender and silvery, and I recall it being a trout. Since then I suspect the trout (and likely other fish) are gone from that creek. How can they survive in channelized streams running through such an urbanized area? Could trout and even steelhead return? Maybe there is some hope. Barry Breckling, Greely Hill

Cover:The sky-blue, bulbous eyes of the blue-eyed darner (Aeshna multicolor) make it easy to recognize this large and common dragonfly on the west coast.

Dear Editor, I was dismayed to read that your writer about Bewick’s wrens in the April-June issue invites birds to nest in his yard by putting up a birdhouse when he also lets his pet cat roam freely. Feral and free-roaming domestic pet cats account for millions of bird deaths each year. Americans own 90 million cats. These numbers, in addition to the estimated 60 to 100 million strays, are devastating to bird populations. Domestic cats are an alien species, maybe the most common alien predator in the world. Birds are particularly vulnerable to cat predation as are the small mammals hawks and owls depend on for their survival.

contri butors Michael Ellis (p. 53) is a Santa Rosa–based naturalist who leads nature-related tours with Footloose Forays (footlooseforays.com) and waxes eloquent for KQED’s Perspectives series. Alex Fox (p. 12) is a Bay Nature editorial intern. Alison Hawkes (p. 14, p. 34) is Bay Nature’s contributing editor. Isaac Lane Koval (p. 40) is a photographer and cinematographer based in Portland, OR. He specializes in outdoor adventure and has worked with several magazines, including Outside magazine, Runner’s World, Men’s Health, as well as many commercial clients. isaaclanekoval.com

Audrey McNamara (p. 9 ) is a Bay Nature editorial intern. Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 54) is the author of The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds and teaches nature observation and illustration. johnmuirlaws.com. Claire Peaslee (p. 13) is a naturalist, writer, editor, graphic designer, and improvisational theater artist whose home is Point Reyes. Victor Reyes (p. 40) writes a biweekly column for West Marin’s Point Reyes Light newspaper in Spanish on Latin American issues of local relevance; an English translation of the column is also published. Molly Roy (p. 14) is a cartographer and artist whose projects include Unfathomable City and Nonstop Metropolis. She is co-founder of Guerrilla

The fledglings that managed to “avoid the resident pets” were lucky indeed. Those cat owners who are unwilling to keep their cats indoors should at the very least not attract birds to their yards by putting up birdhouses or birdbaths, or setting up bird feeders. Nancy Arbuckle, San Francisco Cormorants on the Bay Bridge As a follow-up to my article in the April-June issue of Bay Nature, I wanted to report that on June 9, I was privileged to join a survey of the double-crested cormorants on the new Bay Bridge with CalTrans personnel. From closed lanes on the shoulders, we peered down and viewed the “corm condos” I designed. My first response was total shock! The birds covered all the platform space and were engaged in all stages of nesting behavior, from courtship display to feeding medium sized chicks. What the heck!? When the Bay Nature article went to press in late March, the birds had been ignoring the new platforms, but when the last section of the old bridge was removed, they moved en mass to the new structure—they were primed for breeding and had no other choice. By April 17 a “handful” were reported; by May 15 an estimated 700 were present with the first eggs noted; by June 9 some 320 nests were active. Oh! What a relief it was to see the platforms fully adopted and productive; and they will be into the foreseeable future. CalTrans has made space for our avian neighbors, proving we can purposefully design structures for both nature and people. Mark J. Rauzon, Oakland

[rick lewis]

Cartography. mroycartography.com Brittany Shoot (p. 22), a freelance journalist and writer, lives in San Francisco. Her writing has appeared in Time, The New York Times, Fortune, The Guardian, The Economist, and NewYorker.com. Ann Sieck (p. 22) is dedicated to helping people with disabilities, including those using wheelchairs, find parks and trails they can enjoy. baynature.org/ asiecker. Eric Simons (p. 10, p. 22) is Bay Nature’s editorial director. Beth Slatkin (p. 12) is Bay Nature’s marketing and outreach director.

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opening shot

SUMMERY GLOW BayWood artist Christin Coy lives near Ring Mountain on the Tiburon

of the proceeds to the organization. This year, to celebrate its 20th

Peninsula and regularly walks its trails in the afternoon and early

anniversary, the collective has turned its artistic eye toward Mount

evening light. In the summer, when a fine mist of incoming fog

Tamalpais, Marin’s “west hill,” as translated from Coast Miwok.

hangs in the air around Mount Tam, the setting sun reflects the light

BayWood’s October gallery show in Ross will benefit One Tam, a

in a rose-gold glow. “The warm palette with the golden grass inspires

coalition of the four public agencies responsible for the mountain’s

me,” says Coy. “I’ve painted many views of Mount Tam.”

environmental health.

As have the other ten-or-so BayWood Artists, a collective of local

“I feel good that my art is helping open eyes to how beautiful

professional painters who spotlight a Bay Area conservation group

this place is,” says Coy, “and that the money goes to maintaining and

each year by creating landscape works of art and donating 50 percent

preserving it.” For more, visit baywoodartists.org.

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pa i n t i n g by ch r i st i n c oy

news & notes from around the bay

CURRENTS

San Francisco’s Natural Areas Program Springs to Life That’s how the plan became controversial. In the 1990s, several grassroots San Francisco environmental groups launched a pioneering plan to protect and enhance habitat in urban areas. “We were beginning to see that species were being lost,” says Sarah Madland, director of policy and public affairs at the SFRPD. “And this conversation wasn’t just to be had at Yellowstone and Yosemite. We understood that we in the urban environment

enjoy nonnative trees, such as eucalyptus? Through the early 2000s, as major cities like New York, Chicago, and Paris pursued commitments to urban biodiversity and natural areas, San Franciscans continued to debate nonnative tree removal, leash laws, and golf courses. Last year a final version of the environmental impact report (EIR) of the management plan that ranks the species and habitat value in the 31 natural areas—an approach settled on by SFRPD and commu-

Joe Hakim, najibjoehakim.smugmug.com

As we pause on the trail, Lisa Wayne unfolds two photos of the urban creek burbling past us. Taken eight years apart, the snapshots show that where a stand of eucalyptus trees once stretched along the creek, now willows, dogwoods, and elderberry grow. “You can see there’s actually a good amount of water in the creek now, and it’s supporting migratory birds and local wildlife,” says Wayne, who manages the newly anointed, and long embattled, Natural Areas Program for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department. The tranquil creek, riparian corridor bustling with birdlife, and open hillsides of Glen Canyon Park in southern San Francisco embody a plan to protect and restore the city’s few remaining native habitats and species in 31 “natural areas” within city parks and to help residents become stewards of San Francisco’s natural heritage. “The point of the program is to try to keep biological diversity around for future generations, keep ecosystems healthy, and keep people involved,” Wayne says. “And provide people with ways to interact with [natural areas], whether it’s on a trail, leading a school group, or taking a dog on a walk.” After a more than 20-year process, the Significant Natural Resource Management Plan jumped through its final regulatory hoops earlier this year. The plan aims to increase the biodiversity of about 1,100 acres in the SFRPD’s 3,500 acres of parkland over a mix of habitats—from streambeds and forests to coastal scrub and grassland meadows—with the help of community volunteers. The natural areas range in size from 0.3 acres of the 15th Avenue Steps park to 395 acres of Lake Merced Park. To help habitats and the roughly 140 sensitive species in the parks rebound, the plan prescribes removing invasive species and some nonnative trees and enforcing on-leash dog areas.

Glen Canyon Park sums up the idea driving the Natural Areas Program in San Francisco—places where the city’s remaining natural heritage is restored and people can enjoy it.

had a role to play.” But the effort bogged down quickly in the details: How do you preserve natural areas while also providing recreation for people and their dogs? Which areas are most important to preserve, and why? How far should the city go to bring back native habitats when people also

nity groups—was affirmed by the board of supervisors. Areas with high biodiversity, sensitive species, or significant potential for restoring biodiversity—including the possible reintroduction of species on the edge of local extinction, such as the mission blue butterfly on Twin Peaks—became priority sections within (continued on page 10) j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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CURRENTS

sea mysteries

the natural areas. In these critical sections, management will include removing invasive species—using herbicide as a last resort—and nonnative trees and reintroducing sensitive species. In less biologically critical parkland, sensitive species may be reintroduced, and there will be limited tree removal and maintenance of native plant communities. The least sensitive areas will be left as is with few restrictions on recreational use. A look around Glen Canyon is a glimpse of what natural areas elsewhere in the city will try to achieve: hilly grasslands where flowers bloom in the spring and red-tailed hawks soar, a seasonal natural creek that runs through willows and open meadows, outcroppings of Franciscan chert where snakes and lizards thrive. A trail that winds along the creek bed climbs up toward Portola Avenue and then to Twin Peaks, where mission blues fly in another natural area. The potential of Islais Creek as a natural water source made Glen Canyon Park an obvious choice for restoration even before the Natural Area’s Program existed, Wayne says. “Water sources themselves are pretty limited in San Francisco for wildlife, so these remnants—these little bits of creek that remain—are really important.” To help restore Glen Canyon’s habitat, the Natural Resources staff explored comparable Bay Area Franciscan landscape sites that have been comparatively undisturbed. For Islais Creek, the team looked at similar streams in San Mateo and Marin County. Now the creek bed and Glen Canyon’s 60 acres of natural area support common urban wildlife, such as ringneck snakes, gopher snakes, salamanders, skunks, and raccoons. As a hummingbird beats by, Wayne notes that sparrows and warblers, as well as dark-eyed juncos, visit the creek—resting on restored native plants like, wax myrtle, and the deciduous red alder. —Audrey McNamara

Courtesy of California Department of Fish & Wildlife

(AREAS continued from page 9)

Investigating the Bay’s Shark and Bat Ray Die-Off Several hundred leopard sharks and bat rays

that is a well-documented invader and killer

died of brain infections in San Francisco Bay

of hatchery fish.

this spring, California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists say. It’s the second straight year there’s been

The hope, Okihiro says, is that a better understanding of what killed sharks this year will also unlock the mystery of similar

a die-off in the Bay, but the largest since a

and still-unexplained mass die-offs in

similar event in 2011 killed more than 1,000

2006 and 2011, and perhaps even explain

sharks and rays. The die-off is concentrated

mass strandings that have been recorded

around Foster City, although reports of

as far back as the 1960s. As of mid-June,

stranded or dying sharks have been wide-

his investigation was continuing. “I look at

spread around the Bay. CDFW senior fish

it as a 50-year-old shark murder mystery,

pathologist Mark Okihiro, who has led a

and we are hopefully closing in on the

state investigation, collected 21 sharks and

killer,” Okihiro says. —Eric Simons

two bat rays in a single day from a five-mile

For the latest on the shark die-off, visit

stretch of shoreline near Foster City in April.

baynature.org/extra. If you see a stranded

Okihiro has performed necropsies on 10

shark, call or text the California Department

sharks. The first two sharks showed signs

of Fish and Wildlife’s CalTIP hotline at

of infection by a still-unidentified fungal

1-888-334-CalTIP (888-334-2258). You can

pathogen. But as he examined the other

also report strandings to the Pelagic Shark

eight he found infections caused by what

Research Foundation at psrf@pelagic.org.

Okihiro now considers his primary suspect,

Or take a picture and upload it to iNatu-

a ciliated protozoa called Miamiensis avidus

ralist, where it can be added to a project

A stranded leopard shark found on the beach in

tracking leopard sharks and bat rays around

Foster City by CDFW.

the Bay.

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Preserve & Protect for generations to come .

DONʼT RUSH TO FLUSH

PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT SAFELY DISPOSE OF UNWANTED OR EXPIRED MEDICINE San Mateo County Health System, in partnership with MED-Project, has expanded its Safe Medicine Disposal Program to include 28 kiosks located throughout the Peninsula.

Find a disposal site near you: smchealth.org/RxDisposal

@SMCHealth

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b ay n at u r e

CURRENTS

fish & mice

Every year, endangered winter-run chinook salmon enter San Francisco Bay and swim up the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta to spawn. But historically the fish traveled much farther, all the way north to the McCloud River near Mount Shasta. It’s an annual migration sacred to the Winnemem Wintu tribe living along the McCloud River, and one that’s been blocked since the Shasta Dam was erected in 1946. This September the tribe is raising awareness about the imperiled fish and their essential place in the tribe’s culture by staging a Run 4 Salmon, a two-week journey that begins in Glen Cove, Vallejo. Participants will walk, run, paddle, and bike the 300-mile historical route of the chinook to the McCloud River. Winnemem Chief Caleen Sisk calls it Chief Caleen Sisk’s adopted a “prayerful journey” that symbolizes grandson Netchi at a the connection between people and demonstration outside Bureau nature. For more information about of Reclamation headquarters in Sacramento during the first this year’s celebration visit Run 4 Salmon in 2016. run4salmon.org. —Beth Slatkin

Christopher McLeod, StandingOnSacredGround.org

A Run 4 Salmon

An Ecological Whodunit in the Dunes (it was us) In the shifting dunes and windswept scrub of Point Reyes, it’s easy to spot the common Chamisso bush lupine (Lupinus chamissonis). It can be

common lupine, Pardini says. So why, evolutionarily

harder to find the smaller, federally endangered Tidestrom’s lupine (Lupinus

speaking, would Tidestrom’s

tidestromii). Yet the two plants are closely related, live in virtually identical

lupine grow in a spot where

American Journal of Botany looks closely at the ecology of the two lupines

pantry? The answer, the

to try and answer a fundamental ecological question: Why are some plants

researchers say, involves a

common and some plants rare?

frequent friend of rodents:

Scientists often look to climate or environmental conditions to explain

people, who introduced an ex-

Steve Kroiss

habitats, and produce similar spears of purple flowers. A recent paper in the it’s serving mainly as a mouse

abundance, but in the mysterious case of the two lupines, Eleanor Pardini,

otic beachgrass (Ammophila

Melissa Patten, and Tiffany Knight identified and investigated a biological

arenaria) in hopes it would

factor. Their multi-year study focused on one more thing Tidestrom’s and

stabilize the Point Reyes dunes. It did just that and as a result eliminated

Chamisso bush lupine have in common: a native seed predator, the deer

habitat for Tidestrom’s, which is adapted to colonizing wind-churned

mouse (Peromyscus man-

sands. Forming continuous, dense stands, the grass also provides excellent

iculatus).

cover for the mice.

Eleanor Pardini

The researchers found

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Working in conjunction with the researchers, park staff removed the non-

that the deer mice take ad-

native beachgrass from 15.8 acres of dunes near a large patch of Tidestrom’s

vantage of the Tidestrom’s’

lupine in 2011. By 2012 the National Park Service counted more than 15,000

shorter, smaller size by

germinated Tidestrom’s lupine plants in the restored area, suggesting that

eating its seeds right off

the beachgrass had been limiting the lupine population. They also found that

the plant—something all

the deer mice were less likely to forage Tidestrom’s seeds when they grew

but the most intrepid mice

farther away from the beachgrass (raptors have taught mice a thing or two

won’t do with the taller

about venturing into exposed areas). “There are so many ways the grass intro-

(Left) Tidestrom’s lupine; (right)

duction affects this system,” Pardini says. “It was amazing to see things begin

deer mouse

to snap back once it was removed.” —Alex Fox

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signs of the season

Monarch butterflies aren’t the only insects that migrate

Don’t look now, but the air column rising directly over your head is a frenetic place. Myriad seeds and silk and pollen—and also living animals—are zooming around, hundreds and even thousands of feet above you. The bulk of aerial fauna are neither swifts nor sandpipers. They’re insects. A recent study in the U.K., using radar measurement, estimates the biomass of insects and arachnids hovering over southern England in the course of a year at 3,200 tons (seven times the mass of songbirds traveling Variegated meadowhawks (Sympetrum corruptum) emerge—aka south there in autumn). crawling out of their larval exoskeleton—in late summer in large Most insect voyagers are numbers and begin their migration south. weak fliers, adrift on the winds. But a few are large and strong, able to actively propel themselves on stiff wings. They can cover vast distances on favorable winds. They can refuel en route, preying on other insects such as mosquitoes. Some can even time their journeys in rhythm with the seasons. We might call this…migration. And we’d be talking about Odonata—dragonflies—that migrate. A remarkable subset of the world’s 6,200 known dragonfly species travels up and down the latitudes between warm, wet locales where they can reproduce. A dragonfly’s round-trip journey, like that of the monarch butterfly, takes two or more generations to complete. One famous example is the wandering glider, also known as the globe skimmer. Hordes of them cross the ocean between India and eastern Africa, riding monsoon winds back and forth over several generations. This species indeed skims the earth: Its worldwide distribution and extreme mobility suggest that it may have a single global population! Here in western North America, “odonate” migration is far sparser, but at least nine species of dragonflies travel through the San Francisco Bay Area in autumn. The variegated meadowhawk, a flashy beast, is foremost among them. On the eighth of October last year, citizen scientists with Golden Gate Raptor Observatory (GGRO) logged a peak number of 269 meadowhawks coursing south above the Marin Headlands. GGRO has conducted “bug counts” in September and October since 2014. Along with variegated meadowhawks it also documents, in smaller numbers, common green darners, blue-eyed darners, black saddlebags, flame skimmers, cardinal meadowhawks, red saddlebags, spot-winged gliders, and 12-spotted skimmers. Dragonflies are using the same flyway as hawks and falcons! Yet the details of dragonfly migration along the West Coast remain subjects of surmise. Where do the meadowhawks et al. begin and end their autumn journeys, and where on earth do they travel in spring? In a project led by the Xerces Society, best known for its butterfly conservation work, dragonfly experts and federal agencies from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada studied the common green darner, a chunky flyer, with green eyes and thorax (in the males), that travels in very large numbers up and down the Atlantic and central flyways (and in lesser num-

Jerry Ting, flickr.com/photos/jerryting

Dragonfly Journeys

CURRENTS

bers on our coast). Citizen scientists collected green darners at diverse locations and latitudes; then researchers chemically analyzed the hard skeletal remains. Dragonflies begin life as larvae living in ponds, where they take up isotopes of hydrogen that are permanently stored in their bodies. Particular ratios among stable hydrogen isotopes allow scientists to estimate the latitude where individual dragonflies originated. This process can provide a chemical signature of a dragonfly’s distance traveled. For example, an August specimen from Cape May, New Jersey, might be shown to have originated in upstate New York. This pioneering study, though it lasted only four years, established a viable method for determining localities of dragonflies’ emergence, in regions where the big insects are sufficiently numerous. Here in the Pacific Flyway, with our more arid climate, the seasonal flow of dragonflies is much sparser, and so is knowledge of their migratory patterns. Yet dragonflies have a firm hold on people’s attention, here as everywhere. Enthusiasts in the Bay Area are adding to regional knowledge about where and when odonate species occur. Their records take the form of gorgeous photos in Western Odonata, a public Facebook group, as well as sightings in the online database OdonataCentral.org. And this fall, a human visitor to the Marin Headlands might spot citizen scientists peering into the sky or scanning the land to document the dragonflies passing by or hanging out in the coastal scrub. Variegated meadowhawks and other migratory species tend to cluster, sometimes at ground level, in early autumn. If seen in a meadow or marsh, a bunch of big flashy dragonflies could well be long-distance migrants socializing at a rest stop. —Claire Peaslee

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BY ALISON HAWKES

conservation in action

Federal Funding Cuts Would Hurt the Bay Area Trump and his approach to environmental protection, conservation, and science—it’s about as antediluvian as anyone could have imagined. While there’s some comfort in knowing California will continue to blaze its own trail on environmental issues, Washington, D.C.’s financial tentacles into our state, though not always obvious, are important. Federal agencies and the funding they bring to the San Francisco Bay Area are critical to our local environment in myriad and veiled ways. More than 150,000 acres of land in our region falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, while our national marine sanctuaries help protect one of the most biologically productive shorelines in the world. The Bay Area is an easy mark for cuts in D.C. given our voting preferences. For example, a $4 to $7 million funding pool for San Francisco Bay restoration work is on the chopping block. “I’m not optimistic,” says Beth Huning, coordinator of the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture. “Given the political climate right now and the fact that we are very far away from D.C. And also, we don’t have any delegates that sit in the majority—we are a target.” A limited sample of at-risk federal funding tied to Bay Area environmental issues in the proposed 2018 federal budget is listed here. Congress will consider the budget this fall, along with the opinions of members’ constituents (hint, hint), before voting on a final version, usually approved in October. Bay Nature will continue to follow federal impacts on the Bay Area’s environment. Send information and tips to Alison@baynature.org. b ay n at u r e

Tomales Bay Around Tomales Bay, the Marin Resource Conservation District supports ranchers and farmers working to reduce runoff containing animal waste from their lands, a contributor to unhealthy levels of E. coli in the bay. The district has received more than $2M over the last decade through EPA’s nonpoint source pollution program—now slated for elimination—to help polluted water bodies meet federal Clean Water Act standards.

Cullinan Ranch Some 1,200 acres of tidal wetlands were reborn when Cullinan Ranch was completed in 2015 with $1.4M in help from the S.F. Bay Water Quality Improvement Fund. This pool of EPA money contributes an average of $5M annually to the Bay Area for watershed improvements, a valuable add-on to state and local money that has supported 61 projects since 2008. The fund is slated for elimination.

China Camp State Park Tidal marshes at China Camp State Park and Rush Ranch Open Space Preserve make up the S.F. Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, part of a national network of 29 coastal sites designated for the study and protection of estuarine systems. NOAA allocates $23M to the network of reserves, and cuts to the program would disrupt long-term monitoring of the effects of climate change and pollutants on the Bay, as well as education programs and scientific research.

Richmond Regan Patterson, a UC Berkeley graduate student, is developing a participatory method for mapping asthma-inducing nitrogen dioxide in polluted cities like Richmond. Her research receives a Science to Achieve Results grant from EPA, which is supplying $1M to Bay Area graduate students between 2015 and 2018. Eliminating the program would impact students like Patterson pursuing advanced degrees.

Redwood Creek Redwood Creek, home to endangered coho salmon, is a biodiversity “hot spot.” Thanks in part to a $1.2M grant from NOAA Fisheries’ Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund, the creek and Muir Beach watershed provide improved habitat for the salmon, species monitoring, and public access. Elimination of this average-$76M annual fund would curtail efforts to save coho and other salmonid species.

Pacific Ocean Off the Golden Gate, the EPA manages the discharge of dredged material at two ocean disposal sites under the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act to ensure the dumping does not endanger human health or the marine environment. Cuts to EPA’s $10M marine pollution control program would lessen the agency's ability to uphold the act or respond to sudden pollution issues that arise from emergencies, such as oil spills.

Ocean Beach Water-quality monitoring on Ocean Beach, and 290 other California beaches, is conducted by the state and counties with the help of $500,000 in annual EPA grants under the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act. Federal cuts could result in less frequent testing of water bacteria levels or a closing of monitoring stations that would affect public notification of unhealthy beach conditions.

San Francisco Bay John Largier, an oceanographer at Bodega Marine Laboratory, studies saltwater intrusion into San Francisco Bay and its effects on water acidification and hypoxic conditions with help from a $293,000 award from Sea Grant, a NOAA program that provides $5M annually for projects in California related to coastal issues, including climate change and techniques for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture. The fund is slated for elimination.

Port of Oakland Air quality around the Port of Oakland is regulated largely by the EPA. Locomotives at the busy rail yards, for example, emit toxic diesel particulate matter harming adjacent communities in West Oakland. Cuts to EPA’s core operations and changes in staff directives could slow or reverse agency efforts to control air pollution around large transit hubs. In the Bay Area that includes five ports and three international airports.

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Bay Trail Building the S.F. Bay Trail around the decommissioned Alameda Naval Air Station is part of the S.F. Bay Conservation and Development Commission’s mission to improve public access to the Bay and ensure that development adheres to environmental

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3 4 5 standards. More than $200,000 of the commission’s budget comes from NOAA’s Coastal Zone Management Program. Cuts to this federal program would also affect coastal agencies such as the California Coastal Commission, which stands to lose 10 percent of its budget.

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Rancho Corral de Tierra More than 4,000 acres overlooking Half Moon Bay are the newest addition to the GGNRA. “Rancho” was purchased with $13M in help from the interior department’s Land and Water Conservation Fund. The fund has contributed more than $2B toward land and waterway projects in California over its 50-year history and last year provided $8M to state and local parks.

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Diablo Range In the Diablo Range, 3,286 acres in Santa Clara County—home to highly vulnerable species, including the bay checkerspot butterfly, California tiger salamander, and red-legged frog—are slated for purchase with the help of a $2M grant from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Cooperative Endangered Species Fund. Cuts to the fund, as well as other agency programs that protect endangered species, would imperil similar efforts to save vulnerable populations.

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Seasonal Tolay Lake brimmed with water this spring,

THE CHARMS OF TOLAY LAKE REGIONAL PARK by Greg Sarris A relative told me that when she saw Tom Smith’s charmstone, she was temporarily blinded and felt instantly faint— its power was that overwhelming. The charmstone, an oblong, smoothly carved rock figure, about an inch and a half in length, was loosed from Tom Smith’s “doctoring kit,” which had been stored in a drawer at UC Berkeley’s Lowie Museum for decades following his death in 1934. Grandpa Tom, as he is known in the family—he was my great-great grandfather—reputedly caused the 1906 earthquake in a contest of power with another medicine man. Like other medicine men and women from Central California and beyond, Grandpa Tom, a Coast Miwok, used b ay n at u r e

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charmstones when doctoring the sick, for luck in fishing and hunting, and who knows what else—perhaps even causing an earthquake. Mabel McKay, the late renowned Pomo basket-maker and medicine woman, witnessed a Lake County Indian doctor pulling a tiny rabbit from a sick woman’s chest using a thumb-size quartz amulet; Mabel herself gave a troubled young man a charmstone to keep an evil spirit at bay. Maria Copa, a Coast Miwok born at Nicasio, told ethnographer Isabel Kelly that a charmstone had followed a woman home and that the woman had

spanning some 200 acres, thanks to the plentiful rains earlier in the year.

“to hit it three times” with a stick to kill it. When American rancher William Bihler dynamited the southern end of Tolay Lake in the early 1870s, draining the rather large but shallow lake of water, what the muddy bottom revealed was thousands upon thousands of charmstones—far more than found in any one locale in North America. Roughly seven miles east of Petaluma, Tolay is the southernmost and largest in a chain of lakes tucked within the Sonoma Mountain range. You might imagine it the pendant at the end of the chain. Standing on the ridges above the lake, you can see the emerald expanse of San Pablo Bay spreading before you, and like a sculpture rising from the water, San Francisco’s Financial District, and then four of the Bay’s major mountains: Mount Saint Helena, Mount Tamalpais, Mount Diablo, and Mount Burdell. All of the lakes in the chain were shallow,

Christopher Coughlin

on on the the trail trail

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Christopher Coughlin

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Certainly California Indians had extensive trade routes. More, the so-called discovery of these charmstones becomes evidence for the stories that continue to be passed down in our families. What we’ve always known is that Tolay Lake was a great place of healing and renewal, that Indian doctors came from near and far to confer with one another and to heal the sick. Members of a village at the southern end of the lake, not far from Cholequibit, hosted the visitors in several special houses made for fasting and ceremony. Charmstones vary in length, but most

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(Above) Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris spoke at a Tolay Lake tribal gathering. Member Joanne Campbell (right) began the meeting with a wee’a (prayer) in Coast Miwok.

Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Nations, they practiced controlled burning, maintaining grasslands for elk and pronghorn. They cleared waterways for fishing and hunting waterfowl and cultivated sedge beds, growing long, straight roots for basket-making. From the San Pablo marshes, they fished sturgeon and bat rays. Each nation, it seemed, had something unique that was needed by others. A Southern Pomo Nation near Santa Rosa mined obsidian prized for arrow-making. Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok along the Laguna de Santa Rosa grew the finest sedge. The lagoon was full of perch and bass year round. The Petaluma Nation’s vast plains contained the largest herds of elk and deer. The Alaguali had Charmstones That Cure the lake. When Tom Smith possessed these charmstones It wasn’t only in the early 1900s, Tolay Lake had long since been local indigenous drained. Smith used them to cure “water sickness,” nations who cherwhose symptoms varied from diarrhea to dry salivary ished the lake. glands. He would hang a stone from a tree limb that Charmstones extended furthest over the suspected body of water, discovered in the such as a lake or pooling spring. Smith would sing lake bed came from until the stone moved, and then begin indirectly a multitude of questioning the patient to determine the illness’ places throughout origin— such as water demons or breaking a taboo. California, and The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria Tribal from as far away as Council unanimously granted Bay Nature permission Mexico. Many are to publish this photo of Tom Smith’s charmstones. over 4,000 years old.

Christopher Coughlin

even more shallow than Tolay, hardly 20 feet in its deepest spot, but, like Tolay, all of the lakes contained water year round, until after European contact, when the water table in the region dropped 20 to 30 feet in a relatively short period of time. My ancestors occupied the region. Today we are known as the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, descendants of natives identified by early ethnographers as Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok. These are names based on language families: Southern Pomo, a member of the Hokan family; Coast Miwok belonging to the Penutian family. Southern Pomo, with its own various dialects, was spoken from the Santa Rosa plain north, and Coast Miwok southward to and including present-day Sausalito. But until recently, and for purposes of our relationship with the federal government, we never referred to ourselves as Pomo or Coast Miwok. We belonged to one of over a dozen separate nation-states, each composed of 500 to 2,000 individuals, with one or more central villages and clearly defined national boundaries. Most people, regardless of their national affiliation, spoke several languages, some of these languages perhaps quite different from one another—Pomo is as different from Coast Miwok as English is from Urdu. Tolay Lake is in the heartland of the Alaguali Nation, whose principal village, Cholequibit, sat southeast of the lake, bordering San Pablo Bay. The Alaguali knew their homeland intimately; typical of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo

are about 2 to 3 inches long, and most are oblong. Some are simply rounded; the specific shapes of others might suggest a phallic design, prompting some ethnographers and casual observers to think these charmstones were used in fertility rites. Sinkholes bored through some suggest they might’ve been used for fishing, specifically for anchoring nets. Whatever else charmstones may have been used for, they were used by medicine people to extract illness. The charmstone, in a sense, inherited the sickness, and it had to be destroyed. Drowning was the usual method, whether in Tolay Lake or another body of water. Maria Copa’s story reminds us the charmstones were considered living beings—they possessed living spirits like all of the material world. A person could use a charmstone—and the sickness it took from an ill person—to harm another person. Some of what we know about j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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practices. We made herculean efforts European oat grass, spread from seeds to maintain families, even as the aforein the dung of Spanish and Mexican mentioned 1850 act provided loopholes livestock. After the missions were secufor Americans to steal our children. J. B. larized in 1834, the natives worked for Lewis, an American rancher, who in the General Vallejo on his Rancho Petaluma, 1850s owned land north of Tolay Lake, which included Tolay Lake, mostly in noticed that Indians—he thought from a some form of indentured servitude, local tribe—“stayed a day or two [at the tending his cattle and planting crops. lake] and had some kind of powwow.” It It was no coincidence, although it was only after William Bihler dynamited was sadly ironic, that General Vallejo, the southern end of the lake 20 years defeated by Americans in the Bear Flag later that there were no reports of Revolt, helped California lawmakers Indians returning. draft, during their first legislative session in 1850, An Act for the Government and Protection of Indians that legalized At the time of European contact, the Indian slavery—and was not repealed in its entirety until 1937. Indians were sepacombined population of Southern rated from families Ad ob but their aboriginal eR d Gulch Rd villages persevered, Stage Tolay Lake even as our numbers Regional Park dropped precipitously. Rd 1 Mile 0 h ulc G We continued to eat 0 1 Kilometer many of our native Existing trails foods, most notably Proposed trails Tolay Three Bridges Lakeville acorn mush, and conPre-1870 lake Lake Vista Tolay Lake Park Center tinued older religious County Park

the Alaguali Nation and area comes from historic records. Father Abella, a Franciscan from Mission Dolores, baptized two elders from the village of Cholequibit in 1811. Randall T. Milliken’s meticulous study of mission records indicates that between 1811 and 1818, 151 Alagualic people were baptized—91 at Mission Dolores and 37 at Mission San Jose. Father Jose Altimira, traveling in 1823 from the Presidio in San Francisco to establish Mission San Francisco Solano in present-day Sonoma, stopped near the lake and noted in his journal that the surrounding hills would provide plenty of grass for cattle grazing and that the lake was named after “the chief of the Indians,” called Tola. The landscape, already altered, continued to change, in many places beyond recognition for a person living a generation before. The great herds of elk and pronghorn continued to disappear. Flocks of waterfowl, once rising from the waterways so thick as to block the sun, thinned. Native bunchgrasses, like purple needlegrass, were overrun by

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“The Names Before the Names: The Indigenous Bay Area, 1769,” from Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas, by Rebecca Solnit. Research by Lisa Conrad, design by Lia Tjandra, cartography by Ben Pease. University of California Press.

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Pomo and Coast Miwok Nations was05/11/17 v4 about 20,000. Some estimates go much higher. Central California, the Bay Area in particular, was home to the densest population of indigenous peoples in North America outside of Mexico City, site of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán. Ethnographers have often wondered how so many people living so close together speaking so many different languages got along with virtually little physical warfare for 10,000 years—yes, we’ve been here that long. From atop the ridges surrounding lake Tolay, we watched the Bay grow as it filled with water from the melting glacial ice caps. Believing that everything in nature was alive—and had power—you had to be

To the southeast over Tolay Lake, a sliver of San Pablo

Herb Lingl, aerialarchives.com

Bay is visible and Mount Diablo rises from the horizon.

Christopher Coughlin

careful not to mistreat or insult even the smallest pebble on your path. Likewise, people had power, often secret power. Secret songs, spirit guides, and objects such as charmstones protected a person and could be used against one’s enemies. If you had to physically assault another person, you revealed that you had no secret power. Physical warfare thus was seen as the lowest form of war since it would suggest that you possessed no spiritual power and could be attacked without worry of retribution. Ethnographers saw the culture as predicated on black magic and fear. Rather, the culture was predicated on profound respect: You had to be mindful of all life, reminded always that you were not the center of the universe but a part of it. Sickness, whether caused by another human being or from a bird or a simple rock, dislocated one from the world, resulting in, if not continuing, imbalance. Medicine men and women drowned the charmstones to put away the sicknesses that were taken from patients. The sickness was put away and the patient—and the natural world of which the patient was a part—was renewed. Knowing the lake was drained of water and the charmstones exposed, did the Indians fear returning? For the past several years, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria have held their summer picnic at Tolay Lake. We gather to enjoy food and reconnect with family. Booths offer information on language and basketry classes.

At one booth, we can trace our ancestry to one or more of 14 survivors from whom we all descend. Children can visit goats and chickens inside the restored barns. Hayrides take us across the dry lake bed and up onto the mountain ridges. Yet even as I give my welcoming speech as Tribal Chairman extolling the virtue of our gathering again in a sacred place, I’ve often wondered if it is such a good idea for us to be here. The Cardozas gathered charmstones as they planted pumpkins, leaving the lake bed bare—and for a long time displayed the stones in buckets during the Fall Festival. But might not disease and sickness remain in the soil, in the humid air that rises from the lake? On hayrides, I watch as relatives and friends point from the ridgetops and name ancient villages. “There,” a young woman says, looking south below the lake. “Cholequibit. The priest baptized a man and his wife there and named them

East Ridge rises above a dry Tolay Lake basin.

Isidro and Isidra. They are my ancestors.” Another young woman looks west and points. “Olompali. My ancestors are from there. [The priest] baptized them Otilio and Otilia.” So many of our people have been lost as a consequence of an ugly history. Too many have lived —often difficult lives—and died with little sense of the homeland, much less of the sacred lake. Seeing these young women and others, some of whom are taking in the views for the first time, I understand something about renewal— about what must have occurred as Indian doctors and their patients left the lake. Didn’t the ridgetop views confirm healing, that one was located in place again? Even if Grandpa Tom didn’t return to the lake after it was drained, might not he have climbed a ridge to remember Petaluma, the birthplace of his mother? During a lull in this past winter’s endless rain, I went to Tolay. The lake collects water during the winter months, and with the abundant rain, I thought I might see the lake as it once was—or maybe close to what it once was. Archaeologists have noted that the lake’s southern membrane was thin, suggesting that people of Alaguali maintained a dam, no doubt regulating waterflow from the lake. I found the water was high, extending from just below the farms’ barns to the opposite end of the valley below the hills. A lone osprey flew overhead. Mud hens and mallards bobbed on the muddy water. Under a cloudy sky, I stood and tossed a small piece of angelica root into j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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Indians who haven’t the water to appease yet heard it? Might the spirits. I figured if not fooling around the lake’s ridges helped the lake be dangerlocate my people, then ous? Thinking has the story of the lake its clever way of and its charmstones taking me out of can remind us again the moment, and of the power within Young tribal members get ready for a hayride here I was thinking all life. Yes, I thought, during the tribe’s Fall Acorn Festival held at again, lost. Until I imbue reverence. Tolay Lake. reached my car. The Then, as I was sky opened and silvery sunlight covered walking back to my car parked behind the land around me. The four mountains the gate above the lake, I began to in the distance remained covered in the wonder about my people who might shadow; they seemed to grow out of not believe the story. And what of non-

the land like huge fingers. The lake was below me, flat and broad. All at once I understood something else, or rather I felt it. In that brief moment before the clouds shielded the sun again, I felt what it was like to be held. I was standing in the earth’s enormous hand. Greg Sarris, Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, is the author of several books including Grand Avenue, and holds the Graton Endowed Chair at Sonoma State University. His new book How a Mountain Was Made will be published by Heyday Press this fall.

In 2005, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District purchased the 1,737-acre Tolay Lake Ranch from the Cardoza family, who since 1943 had grown crops and operated a dairy on the land. The district then transferred the land to Sonoma County Regional Parks to develop and use as a regional park. Another 1,665 acres was added to the southern end of the regional park this year when the Sonoma Land Trust transferred a property called Tolay Creek Ranch to county parks. Park officials anticipate opening the entire 3,400-acre Tolay Lake Regional Park to the public this fall, pending the County Board of Supervisors’ approval. Currently, only the Tolay Lake Ranch property—the northern half of the park—is open to members of the public with permits. Of principal concern for the county parks is the preservation and restoration of the landscape. The land, with its 200-acre seasonal lake, would become an important addition to approximately 20,000 acres of surrounding conserved land needed to support wildlife corridors, once replete with migrating birds, notably waterfowl. The Tolay Lake Regional Park is home to a number of threatened species, including the California red-legged frog and the western pond turtle. Golden eagles and white-tailed kites soar over the lake bed, and California horned larks dart in the willows that line the lake. It is not unusual, particularly in the evenings, to spot a burrowing owl on a patch of recently plowed earth or even atop a fence post. The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, borrowing against our future resort casino, donated $500,000 in 2005 to Sonoma County to

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Photos by Charlie Gesell for Sonoma County Parks (2)

OPENING TOLAY TO THE PUBLIC

The Tolay Fall Festival celebrates the land with hayrides, a pumpkin patch, wildlife education, and more. Open to the public, the festival this year will be held October 14-15 and 21-22.

help support the development of a master plan for the park. The master plan calls for significant restoration of the landscape, including a partial refilling of the lake year round. At the same time, the plan anticipates expanded public access to the park, an additional 20 miles of trails, and overnight camping. For the tribe, protection is key, protection of a place that is sacred to us, the lake bed in particular. Already the park provides guided tours and school events. Even as it’s open on a limited basis, 4,400 people hold permits to enter the park for hiking, birding, horseback riding, and cycling. Over a thousand people a month visit the park. Each year, 15,000 park guests attend the Tolay Fall Festival in late October, started years ago by the Cardoza family to celebrate local agriculture. The master plan anticipates that the park would be open year round. Partnered with the county, the tribe helped create the master plan and will play a key role in its implementation. Indeed, we are in a fortunate position to protect our resources, which may prove challenging with added visitors to the park. The task will be to balance human intervention with sustainable environmental restoration, something once understood quite well by my ancestors. —Greg Sarris

Ecological Landscape Design and Consulting Mountain lion at Pepperwood photographed by our Wildlife Picture Index project, scientifically tracking the health of our wild neighbors.

Pepperwood is a leader in advancing the health of Northern California’s land, water and wildlife. We offer environmental education programs for all ages. Hikes | Classes | Membership www.pepperwoodpreserve.org (707) 591-9310

• Custom • Food Forests • Native Plants • Drought Tolerant

www.NativeSunGardens.com 510.332.2809 j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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Bedwell Bayfront Park

Butano State Park

There’s nowhere better to take a lunchtime walk or run while taking in the past, present, and future of the San Francisco Bay than Bedwell Bayfront Park in Menlo Park. A 160-acre city park built over a capped landfill, the grass-covered park is crisscrossed with flat trails that abut the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge and hill trails that climb to a panoramic Bay view. On a clear day you can see north to the Bay Bridge, east to Coyote Hills, and south to Mount Hamilton. Closer to the base of the hill, you can see the many uses of the modern Bay: A still-operating Cargill salt pond, the glittering green pickleweed and sinuous channels of a remnant tidal marsh called Greco Island, the birding-friendly roof deck of the new Facebook campus, and several hundred acres of mid-restoration former salt ponds fronting the Dumbarton Bridge. Hike along the 2.3-mile perimeter trail and then climb to the viewpoint at the southeast corner of the park and admire the geometric precision of the levees that divide green Greco Island from blue Ravenswood Slough from white salt pond. Or just bring your lunch and eat on one of many picnic benches, while stilts, avocets, and ducks hunt their own lunch in the shallow ponds and channels flanking the park. details: The park is at the east terminus of Marsh Road—easily accessible from Highway 101 or via the Dumbarton Bridge. The perimeter trail is wheelchair accessible. Bikes and dogs OK. Restrooms available. —Eric Simons

A smaller, quieter alternative to braving the Big Basin crowds, Butano State Park, located five miles south of Pescadero, offers hushed, shady seclusion among acres of redwood canyons. The park interior is home to tiny winter wrens and endangered marbled murrelets, both more easily heard than seen. Newts are common in winter, as are wild orchids, spongy mushrooms, and blooming berry bushes. Bulbous chartreuse banana slugs are ever-present. Other humans are a rare sight. For an easy, mostly flat hike, the 1.5mile Little Butano Creek Trail follows the water with half a dozen footbridges crisscrossing the creek. Park along the one-lane road near the well-marked Mill Ox trailhead and descend into the canyon among numerous species of ferns, sorrel, mossy Douglas firs, and soaring redwoods. About a mile in, a trail marker points upward away from the cool canyon path, and the trail ascends rather sharply before following the park road. To stay on the forest floor, simply hike back out the way you came. Ambitious hikers can easily continue for miles more on connecting trails (2.8-mile Goat Hill or 5-mile Jackson Flats loops offer more elevation gain), weaving through the park’s six major ecosystems, from coastal grasslands and chaparral to wetlands. details: State park day-use fee $10 per vehicle. Twenty parking spots near two picnic areas (pit toilets here, too). Campground parking for campers only. No dogs or bicycles allowed on trails. —Brittany Shoot

Dotson Family Marsh Lovers of Point Pinole Regional Shoreline in Richmond have long wished to explore Breuner Marsh, south of the park. In April it was opened at last, with the new name Dotson Family Marsh in honor of local activists who saved it from development. Crossing this 150-acre wetland, the Bay Trail gains 1.5 new miles. This was a big project, creating an upland marsh that will filter polluted runoff, sustain creatures like the Ridgway’s rail and the salt marsh harvest mouse, and act as a buffer to flood tides in the future. Access to the marsh is a wide, elevated boardwalk, scaled for the heavy traffic of hikers and bicyclists expected when missing links of the Bay Trail are completed. The trail parallels the railroad tracks, so children may enjoy seeing trains go by, but there’s little shade, and fences now protect the fragile marsh from hikers and dogs. Don’t miss the Cordgrass Jetty Trail, a less-improved spur to a 0.1-mile grass-grown riprap peninsula where curiously shaped piers bespeak an industrial past, but a curlew paces the Bay’s edge, flocks of sandpipers fly up from the shallows, and a jackrabbit bounds away. The broad view 3 takes in plumes of steam from the Chevron refinery, 1 and Mount Tamalpais is deep blue and very near. 2 details: A new main entrance is at the end of Atlas Road. About 2.5 miles south is another: the new Dotson Marsh entrance off Goodrick Avenue. Both have parking, toilets, and picnic areas; dogs and bikes are permitted on the main trails. —Ann Sieck 2

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Experience

Sculpture in the Garden June 17th - August 13th

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Disappeared after 1930s

Rediscovered in 2005 Thought to be extinct

Million sighted in 2016 How has it survived?

Endemic. Elusive. The Mount Diablo Buckwheat is a symbol of success in an era of extinction.

by David Rains Wallace

I remember the first time I visited Black Diamond Mines

Regional Preserve, situated between Mount Diablo and Antioch, on a hot September day in 1978. The spiky expanse of wild oats covering the sunbaked hills seemed a particularly striking example of exotic plants’ invasion of California grasslands. If someone had told me then that the preserve would produce one of the next century’s most amazing native wildflower discoveries, I’d have been, well, amazed. When I visited during the cool of February 2017, it seemed a likelier setting for the romance of botanical exploration. The landscape brought to mind Victorian paintings of California as an earthly paradise: sunbeams rayed through diaphanous clouds; greenswards swept to oak-studded hills. My botanical explorer guides, Heath Bartosh and Brian Peterson, weren’t focused on greenswards, however. They were looking for steep patches of bare soil. Sighting two particularly steep and muddy patches, they gravitated toward them so fast that it seemed a kind of levitab ay n at u r e

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tion (which would be a useful skill in seeking the needle of a rare plant in the haystack of a landscape). When I caught up with them, Bartosh pointed at something in the mass of exotic weed seedlings that winter rains had sprouted around the bare patches’ borders. “They’re here,” he said. I looked closer and saw, among the weeds, seedlings of a plant that has been called the “ivory-billed woodpecker”—a bird presumed extinct—of rare and threatened native wildflowers. It was Mount Diablo buckwheat, an annual forb that is found only in part of the East Bay, and that has been found only a few times in the past two centuries. Bartosh and Peterson, both professional botanists, hadn’t expected to find it at Black Diamond Mines. Hired by the East Bay Regional Park District to conduct a rare plant survey of the preserve, they’d been looking for endemic globe lilies and manzanitas one hot day in May 2016, when they’d spotted a pink haze emanating from a canyon side. A closer look had revealed myriad “cotton candy” blossoms of plants that looked

Lech Naumovich

E X P L O R I N G T H E E A S T B AY R E G I O N A L PA R K S This story is part of a series exploring the natural and cultural history 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.

like Mount Diablo buckwheat, and that turned out, after due examination and consultation, to be Mount Diablo buckwheat. “It was,” Bartosh said, “the find of a career.” To me, seeing the plant in February was a bit of an anticlimax at first. Although I’d heard a lot about the species, Eriogonum truncatum, I hadn’t seen a live specimen, and the photos I’d seen had been of mature plants prettily blooming. I’d anticipated something more special-looking than these minuscule seedlings among the weeds, which looked not unlike other seedlings of the buckwheat genus Eriogonum that I’d seen, their leaves radiating from the ground like pointy reddish-green teaspoons. But if the seedlings’ appearance wasn’t that impressive, something else about them was. Although I’d seen the botanists’ estimate that as many as 1.8 million Mount Diablo buckwheat plants grew there in 2016, I’d been skeptical. Recent earlier discoveries had recorded far fewer plants. But when Bartosh and Peterson directed my eye from the weeds to the bare patch

Only ever documented around Mount Diablo, the Mount Diablo buckwheat (Eriogonum truncatum) blooms with clusters of pretty pink and maroon-striped flowers.

itself, I saw that a kind of emerald glaze hovering over its brown surface was composed of countless Mount Diablo buckwheat seedlings, a truly astounding number of tiny plants, mostly growing from crumbling mud. I still couldn’t quite believe my eyes at the sheer abundance of them, and I think the two botanists may have felt a little incredulous too, perhaps accounting for their rapid levitation to the bare spot when we arrived. They hadn’t been back since the 2016 plants seeded and died in September. The past spring’s pink haze may have begun to seem like something in a dream. “I had personally hoped to find this thing for so many years, and then I suddenly walk up to this population that was so numerous,” Bartosh said when the discovery was announced. “It was like, wait a minute, this can’t be real.” When I looked up from the emerald glaze, the botanists had disappeared again. When I caught up with them, they j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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Heath Bartosh, Nomad Ecology LLC

were discussing the mystery of the species’ very restricted distribution. Miles of steep ridges separate the Black Diamond Mines rediscovery site from the handful of locations where the plant has been found growing in the past two centuries; little is known about how it spreads. Although its seedlings teemed among the weeds at the bare spots’ edges, I’d found none growing a few steps away. How does the species perform its own kind of levitation, appearing and disappearing from place to place? The botanists were considering the possibility of water distribution, whereby seeds carried into a stream by landslide might wash downstream to another landslide, which they’d then colonize. There were several new landslides on the bare spots: one had carried down a tree. But since the botanists hadn’t found any Mount Diablo buckwheat plants growing downstream (or upstream) from the Black Diamond Mines site, this was still a theory, one of a number provoked by the mysteries of what I began to think of as “little big plant.” The fundamental mystery of Mount Diablo buckwheat is this: How has such a rare endemic survived the past two centuries of huge ecological change, not to mention the past millennia’s shifts of climate and geology? The mystery has grown as some of California’s most colorful and influential botanists have encountered the species. William H. Brewer probably wasn’t particularly mystified when he discovered it near Marsh Creek east of Mount Diablo on May 29, 1862. As botanist for the Whitney Geological Survey, which first scientifically described the state, he found many new species, and his chief concern was locating mineral deposits like the Black Diamond Mines coal. Mary Katharine Curran, botany curator at the California Academy of Sciences, most likely knew of its specialness when she collected the species at an Antioch location in 1886. She had just met a plant explorer named Townshend S. Brandegee, whom she soon married; they honeymooned by hiking through half the state collecting plants, a collection that grew to over 76,000 specimens and became the core of the herbaria at UC Berkeley. In 1903, a Stanford graduate student, Charles F. Baker, described the species as locally common on rocky banks along Marsh Creek. Then it didn’t turn up again in botanical collections until the 1930s, when another California Academy botany curator, John T. Howell, found it on Marsh Creek, and a UC

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Berkeley graduate student, Mary L. Bowerman, found it in what is now Mount Diablo State Park. Bowerman was well aware of its specialness since she was conducting the first ecologically oriented study of the mountain’s vegetation. She later helped to start Save Mount Diablo, a nonprofit organization, which set out to protect the native ecosystem by acquiring land. But she didn’t find the buckwheat again after 1940. Suspense mounted as it seemed that the species might be extinct. So there was great excitement in 2005 when Michael Park, another UC graduate student, found a small patch of the buckwheat on land that Save Mount Diablo had acquired for the state park. “We’ve been calling the Mount Diablo buckwheat the holy grail for botanists working the East Bay,” exulted Barbara Ertter, curator of western North American flora at UC Berkeley’s University and Jepson Herbaria. “It’s been the number-one priority [the species] we’ve been trying to relocate.” The 2005 rediscovery was national and international news, partly because it coincided with apparent sightings of the Botanists Heath Bartosh (left) and Brian charismatic ivory-billed Peterson, at the Mount Diablo buckwheat’s woodpecker. Famous biolorediscovery site, found more than one million gist Jane Goodall, among of the plants in 2016. others, hailed the buckwheat news as reason for hope in an “age of extinction.” Conservationists took pains not to divulge the Mount Diablo site’s location, which might seem overcautious for dealing with a little wildflower that doesn’t look that spectacularly different from the 150 or so other members of its genus. But the 2005 site contained fewer than 20 plants, and rarity has a powerful and not always positive effect on the human mind. Collectors, including scientists, have gone to great lengths to get “last specimens” even when this risked bringing about a species’ demise in the wild. The buckwheat protectors were not eager to be guides to the 2005 site even for this article, which I understand. (To paraphrase one California ex-governor: How many buckwheats do you need to see?) A collaboration of local, state, and federal agencies, non-

profits, and scientists, the Mount Diablo Buckwheat Working Group (MDBWG), has been trying to solve the survival mystery since 2005. I talked about what they’ve learned with Holly Forbes, curator and conservation officer at the UC Botanical Garden, who has assumed the task of propagating the species and preserving its genetic material. She said Mount Diablo buckwheat has proved “very easy to grow” at the garden. She

even calls it, affectionately, a “nursery weed.” The species needs no “special nutrient formula” to grow in, she says, and the seeds don’t seem to have any special dormancy requirements. The tiny white or pink flowers don’t seem to have special pollination needs either. They open in the daytime, and “if something pollinates them, fine.” If nothing does, they selfpollinate when closed at night. Each flower produces a single tiny seed: I first thought one that Forbes showed me was a speck of dust. But each plant produces many flowers, so propagating seeds in the nursery has not been a problem. Maintaining the 2005 buckwheat population in the wild has proved more complicated. I talked about that with Cyndy Shafer, a state parks senior environmental scientist who coordinated the MDBWG from 2005 to 2016. “Our focus in the past 12 years has been on preserving the species and providing some insurance for it,” she said. “It’s not easy with an annual whose yearly populations are so fleeting.” So far, attempts at reseeding with nursery-produced seeds have been disappointing. In 2015, sowing 80,000 seeds at one experimental site produced just hundreds of new plants. This year the scientists will learn more about the sustainability of that reintroduction, as well as the two wild populations. “We’re hopeful,” Shafer said. “This will be a telling year for us, since all the rain suggests it will be an extended spring.”

“E. truncatum’s last stand” suddenly became a big army, albeit a bewilderingly localized one. Official and media response was more muted than in 2005. “Finding the Mount Diablo Buckwheat in Black Diamond Mines Regional Preserve is exciting,” said Matt Graul, the East Bay Regional Park District’s chief of stewardship, in a September 2016 MDB Working Group media release. “Both locations of the plant [2005 and 2016] are tiny and on steep slopes that could be easily damaged. A fire or a landslide might completely wipe out one or both of the populations.” Seth Adams, land conservation director of Save Mount Diablo, struck a similar cautionary note. “On the one hand a second location is good news, but it could be dramatically affected by east county development pressure. Right now, for example, Antioch is considering plans for more than 4,000 houses.” Heath Bartosh showed me a stark sign of development pressure as we were coming back from looking at the seedlings in February. He pointed to a wire fence that crossed one of the greenswards. “That’s the urban growth boundary,” he said. “There’s housing proposed for the other side of that fence.” And there are other kinds of pressure. When I asked Bartosh if potential flower thieves had tried to wheedle the 2016 site’s location out of him, he said that indeed they had.

Solving the survival mystery will entail learning more about

“The Antioch population is a great discovery,” Holly Forbes said in the MDBWG’s September release. “Its habitat is quite different from the 2005 rediscovery site and provides valuable information for efforts to develop new populations.” Bartosh said in the same release that the site more resembles the “highly erosive” dry hillsides where Brewer first found Mount Diablo buckwheat than the 2005 site’s chaparralgrassland interface. When I asked Forbes what she thought might be learned from the new site, she said its huge number of plants would help greatly in studying things like the species’ genetic variation, which could provide insight into how the species evolved and adapted to its present habitat. She still seemed mystified by the 2005 site’s difference from the Black Diamond Mines one, where she’d been able to gather thousands of seeds during a single visit. When I asked if she had any ideas about how the species could grow in such apparently divergent habitats, she said she didn’t really, but that Michael Park might. When I contacted Park, however, he replied that the two sites aren’t in “truly diverging habitats,” adding that “the common denominator is slope instability.” There’s certainly irony in little big plant’s sudden population jump from fewer than 20 individuals to over a million. Antienvironmentalists might point to that as proof (continued on page 44)

the species’ life cycle in its natural habitat. Michael Park’s 2005 rediscovery site is at an interface between chaparral and grassland. Mary Bowerman noted that the species grew with shrubs like poison oak and California sagebrush but also with grasses like brome. A zone of bare soil often lies between chaparral and grassland, which would seem favorable to a small native wildflower that has trouble competing with aggressive weeds. Botanists once thought that chaparral shrub roots produce toxins that inhibit grassland plants from growing near them, but studies of the shrubs didn’t corroborate this. Then it seemed possible that small browsers hiding from predators in chaparral, brush rabbits and such, might cause the bare soil zone by cropping the weeds, thus allowing native plants to grow. But camera traps at the 2005 site didn’t reveal much brush rabbit activity, although they did photograph many quail, also browsers on seeds and seedlings. More needed to be learned.

The 2016 site is good news for the species, of course.

Jane Goodall, among others, hailed the buckwheat news as reason for hope in an “age of extinction.”

Then along came the 2016 Black Diamond Mines rediscovery.

“It was like, whoa!” Holly Forbes told me, “so many plants of all sizes just in a square foot…It was astounding! It was hard to wrap our heads around.” The find complicated what had been a satisfyingly dramatic narrative: sharp-eyed researcher finds species feared lost: conservationists rush to snatch a few remaining specimens from the jaws of extinction. But the little troop of

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Are Bay Area Parks Being

Kevin Fox

Loved to Death?

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Jerry Ting, Flickr.com/photos/jerryting

That depends on your perspective. by JEREMY MILLER

n a clear day from the 2,517-foot summit of Fremont’s Mission Peak Regional Preserve, there’s a telltale panorama of the Bay Area. Many of the East Bay Regional Park District’s 65 parks and preserves are visible to the north—green islets of calm amid greater San Francisco’s creeping sprawl. To the south rises tree-covered Mount Hamilton, towering over the asphalt and glittering high-rises of San Jose. In 1976, when the Mission Peak preserve was established, the view from the summit was of a pastoral-like landscape

below. Since then, more than 2.5 milFrom Mission Peak in Fremont, where selfies lion people have moved into the Bay have been the rage since Area. Driven by a torrid economy, the 2014, two views of the Bay boundaries of Silicon Valley have bled Area: to the west the Bay’s northward along the margins of the Bay. Today, the San Francisco-Oakland- growing metropolis and to the north undeveloped San Jose nine-county Bay Area is grasslands. home to almost 7.7 million residents, making it the 6th largest urban region in the country. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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courtesy zrfphoto

But in the last 50 years, the acreage of the Bay Area’s regional and county parks has also grown significantly, so that today, the inventory of protected lands stands at more than 1.3 million acres—a swath of land that, if combined, would be larger than one-and-a-half times the size of Yosemite National Park. Only a region whose people are passionate about the environment would protect that much land in the face of so much growth. On Mission Peak that swelling population and love of the outdoors have clashed. Just like the urban hardpan over which it looms, Mission Peak is showing signs of increasing human pressure. Last year the mountain saw a total of 274,000 visitors. That’s roughly 750 visitors per day competing for the trailhead parking lot’s 43 spaces. Badly eroded spur trails run up from the wide main trail, shortcutting its switchbacks. “Social” trails have grown so ubiquitous on one severely eroded section of the peak, known as “Scarface,” that an extensive revegetation effort is underway. Mission Peak is certainly not alone. At iconic Muir Woods, designated as a national monument by president Theodore Roosevelt in 1908, visitors today stroll amid teeming crowds and the tailpipe emissions from hundreds of passenger cars and idling buses. In 2016, some 1.1 million people passed through the Muir Woods gates, while last year more than 15 million people visited Golden Gate National Recreation Area—a collection of sites scattered across Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties including Muir Woods, Marin Headlands, Crissy Field, and Alcatraz Island. (By comb ay n at u r e

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parison, that’s triple the number who The old-growth coast redwoods in Muir Woods went to Yosemite National Park in 2016.) GGNRA is the most visited park National Monument (above) attracted more than 1.1 in the entire National Park Service inventory. The Bay Area’s regional parks, million visitors in 2016 (right). The NPS will implement a too, seem to be getting more of an visitor permit system this fall influx. East Bay Regional Park District to reduce the crowds. visitation has jumped by almost 80 percent since 2000, with the annual number of visits now exceeding 25 million (more than the annual attendance to all seven of the Bay Area’s major sports teams’ games combined). With the uptick in visitors has come an oft-repeated storyline: Across the Bay Area, as more hikers, runners, cyclists, picnickers, and other users seek out the region’s open space parks, they’re finding more people—and more conflict—along the trails. “The pressure is mounting,” says Steve Abbors, general manager of Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which oversees 63,000 acres of land between Pacifica and Santa Cruz. “We’re seeing more pressure on trails in places like Rancho San Antonio, which is our biggest preserve and serves around 700,000 people a year. You can’t park there on weekends.” Our trails, it would seem, only stand to get busier. According to the Plan Bay Area 2040 report issued by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area will add another 2.4 million residents over the next two decades. With such growth projections, some like Abbors are asking whether the fundamental mission of the parks—seeking to

ost of us who’ve visited Muir Woods or Yosemite National Park on a weekend in June might not have a formal definition of overcrowding—but we know it when we see it. The hallmarks are unmistakable: endless streams of cars and buses, jam-packed trails, impossible-to-book campsites. Park managers, however, use more formal metrics, including “carrying capacity,” a technical term borrowed from population biology, which refers to the maximum population a particular ecosystem can sustain before suffering negative effects. In relation to parks, the definition of “carrying capacity” is more fluid, referring to the maximum number of visitors a particular park can handle. According to management policies promulgated under the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 it means “the type and level of visitor use that can be accommodated while sustaining the desired resource and visitor experience conditions in the park.” Another more in-vogue concept known as “limits of accept-

able change” (or LAC) seeks not to assign a maximum number of visitors to an area but instead devise “scenarios” meant to quantify the impacts caused by a park’s array of users. The basic premise of LAC is that activities are not equal when it comes to their toll on the land: For example, a dozen bird-watchers sticking to a short segment of trail in a park’s front-country are likely to have less impact than a single camper bestride a thousand-pound pack animal plodding deep into the backcountry. “Limits of acceptable change looks at finding trade-offs and evaluating scenarios rather than some hard and fast number,” says Tom Robinson, director of conservation, science, and innovation at the Bay Area Open Space Council. “It’s more of a dialog than a mathematical exercise.” While the methodologies differ, both metrics share an overarching goal—to determine just how much use a particular park can withstand before its resources or the “natural” experience of its guests are degraded. With this information, park managers determine how many permits to issue each year for a particular backcountry destination, say, or for sites in a particular campground. In extreme cases, such as Utah’s Zion National Park—where a 61 percent increase in visitation since 2010 has users waiting in hours-long traffic jams to reach the entrance during high season—officials are relying on carrying capacity figures to potentially limit the total number of visitors allowed in the park. At Muir Woods, park managers in December announced a new reservation and permit system. Resulting from a 2016 memoran-

George Su, National Park Service

improve access and increase visitation while also preserving ecosystems and solitude—is self-defeating. By encouraging more visitors do we risk loving our parks to death? Are there ways to manage larger crowds that both enrich the park experience for more people and protect the natural resources for future generations? Could larger, more diverse crowds, in fact, be essential to the future of open space in the Bay Area?

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a small collection of popular sites at high visitation times, they see greater numbers of people doing the same thing. “At Point Reyes, we have over 150 miles of trails,” says Dell’Osso. “It’s five or six segments that are seeing heavy use, not the entire system.” Instead of determining carrying capacity and quotas for the entire park, Dell’Osso and his colleagues evaluate impacts at “hot spots” and then recommend strategies to reduce crowding there. The rise of social media—notably, the selfie phenomenon among other trends—has created some of those hotspots. Dell’Osso points to Alamere Falls, situated along the southern edge of the park. The striking seaside cascades have seen a surge of visitors in recent years. “People get to the waterfalls and take their selfies and post their videos to YouTube,” he notes. To counter the large and often underprepared crowds, the park has taken an “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude. It’s embarked on a social media campaign and a new docent program, urging people to bring water and sturdy shoes and—on the busiest days—to avoid the Alamere Falls trail altogether. “Eventually, we started to catch on,” he says. “We realized we could use Twitter and Instagram to make recommendations about where to go and how to have a safe experience once you get here.” So far, says Dell’Osso, it’s been hard to measure the effectiveness of the outreach efforts. But at the very least, the posts and docents have helped educate visitors about the basics—namely the importance of staying on trail

Gero Schmidt

dum of understanding between the National Park Service and Marin County, the system aims to improve the water quality of Redwood Creek and reduce traffic and parking congestion along the shoulder of Muir Woods Road, which sees as many as 400 parked cars during peak visitation times. Starting this fall, visitors must call ahead to obtain one of a limited number of permits. Park managers plan to reduce the number of annual visitors by 176,000 from 2015—a 16 percent decrease. Mission Peak park managers have implemented a similar permit system, restricting parking on residential streets at the height of the weekend rush. But gross visitation statistics often don’t tell the whole story. It’s just as important, says John Dell’Osso, chief of interpretation and resource education at Point Reyes National Seashore, to know where, when, and why people are visiting. “We’re located an hour away from eight million people in the Bay Area—that makes us very much a weekend destination,” says Dell’Osso. “We may average 200,000 visitors per month, but a large percentage of those visitors come on weekends and holidays.” They also congregate in certain areas, Dell’Osso says, such as the Point Reyes Lighthouse, a small prime attraction. Similarly, the vast majority of visitors to nearby Muir Woods National Monument crowd onto a roughly mile-long segment that follows Redwood Creek, under the towering redwood canopies of the Bohemian and Cathedral groves, and venture no farther. In other words, the perception of overcrowding suffers from a self-reinforcing effect. When more people flock to

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Ben Flasher

and the overall length of the hike. “Before we began writing our posts, many people we spoke with at the Palomarin Trailhead thought the hike was between four and six miles, round-trip, when it’s actually between 12 and 13,” he says. “More and more people we talk to these days come knowing the length of the hike.” Creative crowd management strategies notwithstanding, Midpeninsula’s Steve Abbors says the crowds are detracting not only from the natural “aura” of these places but from the integrity of ecosystems. Akin to the city’s “lungs,” large open space parks perform critical ecological roles, including removing carbon and other pollutants from the atmosphere and creating corridors for wildlife within the ever-expanding footprint of the city, Abbors says. “We don’t tend to see urban parks in this light,” he told me. “But that’s what these spaces are—the city’s life support system. How much use can the land sustain before we start seeing effects that damage its ability to serve these other ecosystem functions?” The Bay Area’s parks are not merely life support systems for the city’s human denizens—they are habitat for thousands of species of plants and animals, including 35 endangered or threatened species within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “Even many of the city parks maintain small but important pockets of biodiversity,” says Robinson of the Bay Area Open Space Council. “But the demand for these parks is significant. We have to understand that meeting the needs for larger human populations

means increased responsibility for environmental stewardship.”

Park officials in Point Reyes National Seashore say Alamere Falls (above) has become a

“hotspot” for selfies (left).

Through social media and t’s tempting to draw a tidy cononsite docents, the park nection between the Bay Area’s educates visitors about the rapidly growing population Palomarin trail and steers and the experience of overcrowding crowds elsewhere on busy days. and environmental threats to local parklands. But it’s not so simple. Indeed, some areas within some parks have seen a sharp uptick in visits in recent years. However, much of the visitation data suggests something else is going on. While that data is hard to come by, the existing information shows that visits to many Bay Area parks have not increased significantly in recent decades. For example, the number of people to Muir Woods National Monument was roughly the same in 2016 and 1978, while numbers in other parks have declined dramatically. In 2011, Henry Coe State Park, a rugged 136-square-mile preserve east of Morgan Hill, was almost shut down during the state parks crisis, citing low visitation and scant revenues. The peak in annual visits to Golden Gate National Recreation Area—often considered the epicenter of overcrowding in the Bay Area—occurred back in 1987, when 21 million visitors (roughly 5 million more than in 2016) came through its gates. And of course, even the busiest parks can offer plenty of solitude—if one is (continued on page 46)

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THE LAST FRONTIER IN BIRDING

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by Alison Hawkes

Living tens, hundreds, even thousands of miles offshore, pelagic seabirds are some of the least understood and most threatened avian species in the world.

W A blackfooted albatross rests in Monterey Bay National Alice Zhuk, zhukphoto.com

Marine Sanctuary waters dozens of miles from shore.

e have arrived. Twenty miles offshore, the shallow plain 350 feet beneath our boat ends in a cliff. If we could get a fish’s view of the seascape below us, we’d see a 1,500-foot drop-off at the continental break. For an underwater climber, it would be like scaling two Golden Gate Bridges stacked on top of each other. There are saw-toothed gullies and submarine canyons, the equivalent of an underwater Yosemite or even parts of the Grand Canyon. A pair of ancient volcanoes—the Gumdrop and Pioneer seamounts—rise from the seafloor southwest of the Golden Gate, and rival in size their terrestrial neighbors Mount Diablo and Mount Hamilton. But from the surface, we can’t see any of it. Underwater cliffs and canyons like these are where Northern California’s coast comes to life. Each spring a strengthening California Current beats against such cliffs, driving nutrients from below toward the sunlit surface and j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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(Above) Pelagic birding guide Alvaro Jaramillo; (below) breaching humpback whale, Monterey Bay; black vented shearwaters along Point Reyes National Seashore.

on an early October morning from Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay aboard the New Captain Pete, a compact fishing vessel

T h e t r i p h a d b e gu n at daw n

Beth Hamel

Gail Stevens Chuck Graham, chuckgrahamphoto.com

fueling one of the most biologically productive ocean zones in the world. Feeding on the nutrients, microscopic marine plants called phytoplankton multiply wildly, forming what is known as a bloom, and become the basis of a food web that fuels schools of forage fish like anchovies and sardines. There are also squid and swarms of krill, as well as whales, sea lions, porpoises, and sharks, among others. The fish also draw some of the least understood but most threatened avian species on the planet. Pelagic birds from all over the world migrate to this stretch of the California coast each summer and fall to partake in the California Current’s feast. Dozens of species of seabirds, from albatrosses to shearwaters, murres to murrelets, guillemots, puffins, auklets, storm-petrels, and gulls and terns, migrate from far-flung breeding islands and elsewhere across thousands of miles of open ocean to reach California waters. We don’t know much about pelagic birds, which live on the open ocean. Their life cycles play out far from easy observation. Tufted puffins, those clownish-beaked auks, for example, nest along inaccessible sea cliffs from Northern California to Alaska. Where they go in winter, though, when they seem to all but disappear into the central North Pacific, is anyone’s guess. Once in California waters the birds remain in perpetual search of food; a section of ocean may be rich with life, but it’s patchy and ephemeral, changing as the wind, waves, and currents move. “If you think about trying to find your breakfast, lunch, and dinner in a habitat that’s a flat expanse of blue, that’s pretty challenging,” says Hannah Nevins, director of the American Bird Conservancy’s seabird program. Another species is drawn to the seasonal gatherings: humans, and in this case, birders like us. Clinging to a rocking 53-foot Hoquiam fishing vessel, solid ground a faint smudge in the distance, and the unrelenting sun overhead, we’ve

come to see species that are rarely sighted on the mainland. For many it’s a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to glimpse rare seabirds from the Southern Hemisphere. Out here, in the pelagic zone, there are still chances to break birding records. Braced against the railings of the fishing boat, several dozen bundled-up enthusiasts, binoculars readied, wait for a flash of wing or an oncoming swell to lift bobbing bodies into view in the gray-blue water. It doesn’t take long for a cry to rise above the wind. “SKUA! Skua! Going right at one o’clock!” projects Alvaro Jaramillo, our guide, who has navigated us to this spot using the most recent satellite maps of ocean conditions and a sonar-operated depth finder device. “It’s big, it’s a bully—and it’s mean looking!” Jaramillo says. Adds a birder: “It’s really going after those other birds!” Barrel-chested with sporty, white-banded wings, the south polar skua races across the sky after a pink-footed shearwater to snatch away its meal—high drama on the high seas. “It’s the last frontier of birding,” Jaramillo says. “There are only a few select areas to go pelagic birding in North America and this is one of them.”

Glen Tepke, pbase.com/gtepke

Jaramillo points out a couple of common murres alongside the boat, black-and-white birds with a penguinlike appearance, and Captain Baxter comments that “anchovy birds” is the anglers’ name for them. “They’re a very useful tool,” he says. We cross a sun patch, and a harbor porpoise propels through the shimmering strip of water. As we come to a reef, our depth finder begins to bleep and display a massive blob of red beneath our boat. It’s a school of fish. We see that brown pelicans and red-beaked Heermann’s gulls, nesters on primarily one small island

(Right) A Pacific white-sided dolphin offshore from Half Moon Bay; (below) Mark Rauzon

with a deep rumbling motor piloted by Dennis Baxter, who after a career spent largely following birds to find sport fish is now learning to follow birds for a new and growing market—the pelagic birder. But we’re relying on Jaramillo, a biologist with the San Francisco Bay Bird Observatory and author of several birding field guides, to locate the seabirds. Born in Chile, raised in Canada, and a resident of Half Moon Bay, Jaramillo considers himself tri-national and travels the world (much like the birds he observes) leading nature tour groups. He maintains an accessible approach to what can be an arguably intimidating and obsessive hobby. “I try to make it fun and friendly and not always geared to competitive and extreme birders,” he says. “Anybody who can handle a day out on a boat will see something different and better understand the ocean environment.” To track down the birds, Jaramillo scans the latest satellite maps of chlorophyll levels and sea surface temperatures; he points to an area around the Half Moon Bay weather buoy where a warm blob of water is mixing with cold water. “We’re going to the interface because the interesting stuff happens there,” he says. “Think of water temperature as a different habitat. It might change whatever you’re seeing.” The deckhand unties the ropes and we motor out along the twisty hairpins of jetties loaded with squawking brown pelicans and into a moderate 9-knot wind, enough to lift the seabirds off the ocean and into the skies where we can better see them.

birders catch sight of a rare Salvin’s albatross on a local tour with pelagic bird expert Debi Shearwater.

in Mexico, have also found the spot. Then, Baxter heads starboard toward the open sea and explains we’re headed to a fishing area along a deep canyon colloquially called the “shrimp pots.” “There’s lots of landmarks out here,” he says. “They’re just underwater.” As the waves pummel the boat, we see our first shearwaters—or rather Jaramillo does (from a distance they look like all other gray-white seabirds to the untrained eye). He uses the moment to break out the main categories of pelagic birds along the California coast. Shearwaters belong to the tubenoses, an order of seabirds also encompassing albatrosses and petrels, characterized by prominent tubeshaped nostrils on their upper beak. The tubes facilitate locating their prey by olfaction and finding their nests within vast nesting colonies. The mighty albatross, a surface feeder and fabled denizen of the high seas, navigates by smell to areas reeking with dimethyl sulfide, the “fishy” odor given off by phytoplankton. They often turn up alongside fishing boats looking for easy prey and may then get tangled or hooked on fishing gear, which become their own sort of albatross. The auks, or alcids—including murres, murrelets, guillemots, puffins, and auklets—are the Northern Hemisphere’s equivalent of penguins, though they are unrelated, with crisp-looking black-and-white plumage and bulky bodies built to favor wing-propulsion underwater, although unlike penguins, they can fly. The piratical skuas, meanwhile, and their close cousins the jaegers, have well deserved bad-boy reputations, bullying the food from other birds by forcing them to drop or regurgitate their hardsought meals. These large, acrobatic fliers truck in from nesting colonies in the polar regions in the late summer and fall to overwinter in our temperate climes. Finally, the sandpiper family, common shorebirds, is represented on the high seas by the phalaropes, petite and slender-necked with a bit of ruddy-red plumage and known for spinning in circles to stir food up to the surface. And every now and then, a rarity will blow in—like the first and only spotting of a white-chinned petrel from South America, or a tropical storm-petrel, or the king of j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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the sea, the endangered, short-tailed albatross, a breeder in Japan. “Those days become legendary,” Jaramillo says. “Those birds make history in birding. It’s a weird birding history. Nobody in the outside world cares.”

Islands, which rise like little peaks out of the water in the distance. Suddenly, a pod of Dall’s porpoises appear as shadows flanking the boat, and they ride its wake, emerging now and then to give off explosive breaths and show their white underbellies. Amazingly, we’re still seeing western gulls, though we haven’t been taking much notice because, well, what’s so special about a gull? “They’re very versatile— parking lots, 20 miles out at sea,” Jaramillo says about the range of habitats in which gulls can survive. Of course, many seabirds have not fared well, thanks to humans. Their nesting grounds are often on islands where introduced mammals prey on the birds at their most defenseless life stages. Pink-footed shearwaters, listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, breed entirely on three islands off the coast of Chile, including the famed Robinson Crusoe island. “It’s this remote, amazing little island with 700 people on it, but there are feral cats, rodents, and domestic dogs that prey upon the shearwaters,” Hannah Nevins says. “They go through this whole wide area of the ocean and when they come back to that one little spot on land, that’s where they’re most vulnerable.” Albatrosses are among the worst off as a group—all 22 species are listed at some level of concern, from vulnerable to critically endangered. Their evolutionary survival strategy renders them vulnerable in a world hungry for seafood. Albatrosses live upwards of 50 years and produce a single chick at a time that can take more than a year to fledge. In the black-footed albatross’s case, the mates take turns

Wi t h t h e s h o r e l i n e r e c e d i n g, we approach a scene of much flapping. “Feeding frenzy up ahead,” Jaramillo calls, as a variety of shearwaters come into view as well as a solitary rhinoceros auklet, a medium-size brown bird with a horn at the base of its bill (the horn’s function is unknown). “It’s too bad the ocean moves; it could be a lot easier,” Jaramillo remarks as birds disappear again within seconds behind the swell. “Also if the birds wore name tags,” one of the passengers quips. We pass near a sooty shearwater that’s desperately flapping its wings. “Look, he’s so full of food that he can’t take off!” Jaramillo says. Some of the birders call out their wish lists—one person really wants to see a Manx shearwater, while a man who traveled here from Georgia is angling to glimpse a fleshfooted shearwater for the second time in his life (neither species appears that day). “If you focus enough, your mind will make it up,” Jaramillo cautions. “That’s why it’s always important to look at a bird with an open mind.” One woman, who’s keeping a life list of birds in San Mateo County, grumbles that we’ve crossed into the San Francisco county line, rendering all new sightings of bird species less consequential (to her). It’s news to me that the county lines matter this far past the shoreline. At this point we’re about 14 miles south of the Farallon

South polar skua (Stercorarius maccormicki): This bird nests in Antarctica and is known for its pirate-like ways. It will grab another bird in its bill, then shake it violently until a meal is regurgitated.

Scripps’s murrelet (Synthliboramphus scrippsi): Often nesting on cliffs, parents usher their young from the nest a day or two after birth. The hatchlings must jump into the surf far below, where they find their waiting parents.

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David Pereksta

Jerry Ting, flickr.com/photos/jerryting

Tufted puffin (Fratercula cirrhata): A puffin’s wings double as fins when it hunts underwater for the fish it collects in its stout beak. On average a puffin can carry ten fish at a time thanks to spines on its palate.

David Pereksta

P E L AG I C B I R D S

Rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata): The only member of its genus, this auklet is a close cousin to puffins. The horn at the base of its bill—whose purpose is unknown—grows and whitens during breeding.

of the continental shelf, our first black-footed albatross of the day soars overhead, dipping down into the trough of a wave and coming out

As we ap p roac h t h e e d g e

Alice Zhuk, zhukphoto.com

collecting food for the chick. One stays put while the other travels for up to two weeks from the nesting site in the northern Hawaiian Islands to California fishing waters, then returns home with a slurry of concentrated fish oil, like a protein shake, in its stomach to regurgitate it into the hungry chick’s mouth. As surface feeders, albatrosses are also prone to gulping down pieces of plastic that fill the guts of their chicks. And when a parent goes down in a longline fishing net, as happens with these baitfeeders, its death deals a heavy blow to the waiting chick and the species’ population. Nevins says fisheries have heeded requests to use new techniques that reduce the birds’ exposure to fishing lines, but it’s not mandatory. Over the long term, sea level rise threatens albatrosses and other philopatric or site-faithful species. A 2015 U.S. Geological Survey study of Midway Atoll and the surrounding chain of islands—where three-quarters of the global breeding population of Laysan albatrosses and onethird of black-footed albatrosses nest—found that rising seas, as well as sudden flooding from waves and storms, could wipe out up to 90 percent of the nesting sites on some of the islands. In 2011, a powerful winter storm followed by a tsunami (caused by the earthquake that also destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan) resulted in a “catastrophic nesting failure” for albatrosses on the atoll when 250,000 Laysan and 30,000 black-footed nests were lost. Conservation efforts for seabirds are also hampered by public indifference. “How do we get people to care about something they have never seen or will never see?” says Debi Shearwater, who pioneered and for 42 years has led pelagic birding tours off the California coast. But there are some signs of hope. In California waters, a network of national marine sanctuaries largely protects the birds, and the birds are increasingly recognized as indicators of ocean health and healthy fish stocks. Pelagic tour boats not only help expose the public to these rarely observed species, they collect records of seabird sightings to share on eBird, the premier public online database tracking the worldwide distribution of bird species run by Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society. “Basically, every pelagic trip offshore in North America gets entered into eBird,” says eBird manager Brian Sullivan, who notes the data’s value to science and conservation efforts.

Common murres at a nesting colony on the cliffs of Lighthouse Rock in Point Reyes National Seashore. The variation in egg color and markings may help parents recognize their nest.

the other side, using the rising air to propel itself forward. Albatrosses have astoundingly high glide ratios—on the order of 75 feet forward for every three-foot drop. A large concentration of birds appears about a mile farther out and Jaramillo takes the bait, dramatizing the situation as we make a beeline to the spot. “We go into full hunter mode, like a bloodhound on a tracer. This is serious business we’re doing here.” We get a good look at some pink-footed shearwaters, which take off as the boat blows past, and a Buller’s shearwater, slimmer and longer than the others with bowed wings; visiting at this time of year from New Zealand, it’s a rarity. “What’s that sticking out of the water?” Jaramillo asks, as the boat slows down near an area inexplicably empty of birds. “Oh, was that a blue? Look at the gray back— it’s a long back.” Over the next few minutes, we slowly realize what we’ve stumbled upon 20 miles from shore. A blue whale slides in and out of view, leaving in its wake a “footprint,” a smooth area of surface water, as it swims back down. Then a fin whale, with its perfectly sculpted dorsal fin, emerges and dives under our boat, coming back up on the other side. Humpbacks are everywhere, releasing their spouts like puffs of smoke. The captain turns off the engine. We watch, speechless, entranced. Finally we pull away and it’s a straight shot back to shore. Along the way, my attention is drawn to something floating in the water that’s bedazzling in the late-afternoon sunshine, like a jewel, but it turns out to be a Mylar balloon, lost from some birthday party. We slow to pick it up. It becomes easy to see why seabirds, and other marine life, find trash so attractive, and how our lives are changing theirs, even when they are so far from sight. Alison Hawkes is a contributing editor with Bay Nature. j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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first person

José González (center) wants Latino Outdoors to become a top environmental organization, on par with the Sierra Club or The Nature Conservancy.

José González on Growing Latino Outdoors by Victor Reyes Photographs by Isaac Lane Koval Not long after the fog recedes and the sun starts to warm the beach in the late morning, a small bus arrives, and a mix of English and Spanish conversations spill out. The passengers disembark, carry their few belongings over the sand, and gather around Alicia Cruz and José González. The group of two dozen stands on Heart’s Desire Beach in Tomales Bay State Park in west Marin County, and Alicia and José ask if anyone doesn’t understand English. Two hands go up, so they begin their introductions in Spanish. What looks like an introductory kayaking trip to some is a cultural expedition for others. In the circle stand two families with a handful of kids and teenagers, a few adults, state park employees, volunteers from the nonprofit Environmental Traveling Companions (ETC) to guide the kayaking trip, and the leaders of b ay n at u r e

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Latino Outdoors, a nonprofit devoted to connecting Latinos with nature. “This is the second time I’m paddling,” Raul Hernandez tells me in Spanish. Hernandez is originally from Mexico but came to the U.S. when he was 9; his wife, Olga, crossed the border when she was 25. Now in their mid-30s, the Hernandezes and their two young daughters are becoming Latino Outdoors excursion regulars, but the girls have stayed home today, Olga explains. “They love it, but today is for adults. I don’t know how to swim, so I wouldn’t be comfortable taking them on the water.” Latino Outdoors was born through unexpected circumstances, beginning with González’s start in life in rural Mexico. “I remember in my little village you never asked or knew if the land around was private, a state park, a

refuge, or what. I learned those concepts here in the U.S.” His family immigrated to California when González was nine, and he grew up in Tulare, an hour north of Bakersfield in the Central Valley, where his mother worked in the fields and later in an industrial laundry facility for hospitals and hotels. His father worked in a chicken cannery. “I am the only one in my family who has an interest in nature,” he says; he learned about U.S. conservation and the systems supporting it, in school. While González was working on his master’s degree in natural resources and the environment at the University of Michigan in 2009, he began searching for American Latino organizations focused on conservation. “I found nothing,” he recalls. But four years later, González had an opportunity to create what he’d discovered was missing. Working with Tuolumne River Trust, he began talking to Latino communities about the outdoors, asking what they needed to get out and enjoy it, and chronicling their stories online. With that information he was able to garner a grant for transportation and food from the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin to bring a group of Latinos to Drakes Bay. Alicia Cruz organized Boy Scout members and a family to join the trip, “and that’s the way we started it,” González recalls. Soon Latino Outdoors had a grant from the local Resources Legacy Fund, and today there’s a vibrant Facebook page, website, blog, and social media channels where Latinos from all over the country connect to the volunteer-powered organization. It’s grown to more than 40 leaders in six regions, with national directors, regional coordinators, ambassadors, communication directors, media contributors, special project contributors, and more. When Cruz first encountered Latino Outdoors, her life was at a turning

point. She had married young to escape abuse in her family, left school, had a daughter, and then divorced. In search of a new beginning, she turned to nature and began working for the Boy Scouts, though it wasn’t her first experience outdoors. Born and raised in Mexico City until age 9, she used to visit the Bosque de Chapultepec, the city’s main green area. “I went to row on Chapultepec Lake to enjoy nature,” she says. Then when she lived in La Paz, Baja California Sur, for a year, she spent nights sleeping on the beaches due to her father’s unstable personality. “I knew nature by camping and sleeping outdoors at times when my dad didn’t have a place for us in La Paz, or when crossing the border.” While working for the Boy Scouts, she learned about hiking and later backpacking—what equipment to bring, how and where to pitch a tent. She ventured by herself to Oregon and Yosemite and took a two-week excursion to Utah to visit its national parks. “It was like being on another planet, peacefully contemplating the stars, without thinking of rushing to get up and leave.” Cruz is now the Latino Outdoors coordinator for the North Bay and, inspired by her experience with the Boy

Scouts, has developed a family hikes program. She offers Wellness Walks, as she’s dubbed them, at least once a month and has cultivated a group of mothers who attend and volunteer regularly. Raul, Olga, and the others return to Heart’s Desire Beach from kayaking to board the small bus back to San Rafael. “It was so beautiful,” Raul says. “We rowed around the bay and stopped on a beach for lunch.” Before leaving, group members clean the kayaks together and put away the equipment. “It’s good to learn all the work this takes,” Raul says. “Not just coming and enjoying others’ work.” Olga says she was surprised by and appreciated the group camaraderie and conversations, especially with the ETC volunteers and park officials. “You can talk to them. I love these kids, the volunteers, making an effort to talk to you in Spanish. I never have seen anything like it. I was surprised by how they talked to you,” she adds, “explaining everything and inviting you to come back”; they made her feel secure. Not knowing how to swim, she never would have gone kayaking alone. Since Alicia Cruz (left) and José González led the first Latino Outdoors outing in West Marin, the organization has grown nationwide through volunteers.

“I was living in a rural area in Mexico, dealing with animals and working in agriculture,” Olga adds. “But the difference is that we did it to produce, survive, and have food on the table. Here it is just for fun. Very different.” Navigating perspectives on nature in the U.S. and from the various Latino countries of origin can be summed up in a word: complicated. González notes that poverty and wealth can dictate attitudes about the outdoors as much as nationality can, and that the diversity in the Latino community—from recent immigrants to multigenerational descendants to the range of countries of origin—poses significant challenges. Nonetheless, his vision for Latino Outdoors in the coming decade is soaring: “a Latino organization that is one of the top environmental organizations in the country, along with Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, and others.” In many ways, this is a dream come true for the U.S. conservation community, which has been searching for ways to connect with minority groups as U.S. demographics change. González believes that even the most difficult-to-reach Latino population, recent immigrants from impoverished backgrounds, has a place in the organization. “When we were on Mount Tamalpais, starting the fire to have cookies with marshmallows, some folks said that we were wasting the fire,” he recalls. “They were used to having it just to prepare food to survive, not to sit around watching it.” He invited them to see everything differently: the fire, the woods, the park. “We tell them, ‘This is a protected park, with rules to protect it. We want you to understand and see this land in new ways, to be present in this space and be connected with a new experience, which is also for you.’” He also asks about participants’ experiences and memories. “For example, they talk about placing a comal (continued on page 42) j u ly – s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7

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(OUTDOORS continued from page 41)

on the hot

rocks to cook fresh tortillas.” So far Latino Outdoors has been most popular with immigrant families and with Latinos who already spend time outdoors but want to bring their cultural identity—through food, gear, stories, and traditions—to the experience. Latino Outdoors’ East Bay coordinator Melissa Avery, a first-generation American, carries a Peruvian cloth to use as a tablecloth, a blanket, and a piece of fabric to strap her youngest to her back when she’s hiking. It was a gift from her mother and helps her feel connected to her heritage and her parents, who once walked from Peru to the U.S. border. The appeal for immigrant families is that “we can give them transportation and food for fun, outdoor activities each month,” González says. The organization’s bilingual leaders are an essential bridge for those families. Like González, Cruz, and Avery, many of the leaders immigrated as children, or their families came to the U.S. a generation or more ago, acclimating to American culture on

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their own. “We are expecting [immigrant families] eventually to be more and more integrated in a different country with different customs and language,” he adds, and to become more confident in the outdoors here on their own. The Latino Outdoors leader and founder doesn’t want the organization to be viewed as belonging to him nor to suffer from being the kind of organization that disappears when its leader leaves. “First, I want Latino Outdoors to be a renowned and respected Latino environmental organization, with resources to create leaders in the field,” he says. “Then I’d like to pass the baton for the leadership to continue.” During the Heart’s Desire trip, he kept a low profile. González appreciates the importance of the role he plays, but he doesn’t expect to be in it forever. “I consider Latino Outdoors to be a great responsibility. I’m the spearhead, but I’m not alone. I have space to open doors. “I just planted the seed,” he says. “Now, together, we are getting it to grow.”

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conserve. Earth Team teens working on French broom at Oyster Point, East Bay Regional Park District. Photo by Pamela Beitz

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of the futility of spending money and effort to save apparently vanishing species. But I think it is actually proof of that method’s efficacy, because Mount Diablo buckwheat’s 2016 rediscovery occurred where money and effort have been spent to save species. It was rediscovered because the site is protected. The same is true for the 2005 rediscovery site that incited comparison with the ivory-billed woodpecker. (Unfortunately, the reported ivory-billed sightings proved inconclusive; no one could verify it was the right species.) Michele Hammond, an EBRPD botanist who hired Bartosh’s company, Nomad Ecology, and who now coordinates the MDBWG, is enthusiastic about E. truncatum’s prospects. “This has been a super-exciting example of the benefits of land use planning,” she told me. “As more land is protected, we’ve been able to look at more places and think about their botanical potential, then take advantage of Heath and Brian’s expertise and send them on a rare plant treasure hunt.” Hammond added that although Mount Diablo buckwheat’s two known current occurrences are in separate areas, they are increasingly linked by corridors of protected land, so that “we hope the species can continue to do its thing even if we don’t understand yet how it does it. And having land corridors in protected status allows us to manage them to the extent that we do know what’s good for rare natives.” Hammond was touching on one of the main “age of extinction” issues—what is called the “island effect.” As much as we still need to learn about rare species conservation, we have (BUCKWHEAT continued from page 27)

established that if a rare organism lives in an isolated area, or even in multiple isolated places, the prospects for its longterm survival are not good. Populations often die out locally, and if there isn’t “recruitment” from elsewhere, that can be the end for a population and eventually for a species. Linked corridors allow populations to shift around as they have evolved to do in the wild—and especially in grasslands—which boosts survival prospects, although it’s hard to say how much connection is enough. For all the uncertainties of rare species conservation, I

think little big plant’s latest rediscovery demonstrates one thing clearly: Given enough space, the natural resilience of what might seem to be “loser” species is also reason for hope. After all, they’ve been surviving a long time. Mount Diablo buckwheat isn’t the only “species of concern” that responded amazingly to 2016’s favorable climatic conditions. I’ve been walking past a muddy old livestock pond at Mount Diablo for years without seeing amphibians. It dried up entirely from 2013 to 2015. But after the 2016 rains filled it, I found Pacific chorus frogs, western toads, and (endangered) California red-legged frogs breeding in it. When I walked past this spring, the frogs were back, sunning on the spiky weeds by the water. David Rains Wallace is author of more than 20 books on conservation and natural history, including The Monkey’s Bridge and The Klamath Knot. He lives in Berkeley.

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Los Vaqueros Interpretive Center PHOTO BY: MARCO SIRAGUSA

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willing to walk a bit. As Dell’Osso points out, hundreds of places with wilderness-like solitude exist within the 71,000-acre confines of Point Reyes—including along popular stretches of shoreline, such as Drakes Beach. “You may see more than half of the parking lot full on a given weekend day,” he says. “As you approach the beach you might also see a lot of people. But if you walk 15 minutes in either direction it thins out incredibly quickly.” So if population growth isn’t wholly to blame for the perception of too many people in our parks, what else is contributing to it? Some argue that overcrowding can be conflated with “user conflicts” that stem from an unwillingness among park managers to accommodate anything but “traditional” forms of outdoor recreation. “The park districts have acquired a lot of land but have closed off or severely limited access to all but a small group of people—mainly hikers and equestrians—while access for cyclists has decreased,” says Austin McInerney, president of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association. He cites East Bay Regional Park data showing that of the 200 miles of single-track trail in the park system, only 22 percent, or 44 miles, is accessible to bikes; by comparison, 57 percent, or 114 miles, is accessible to horses. “As a planner and someone who has seen what cycling can do for youth, that is frustrating.” McInerney asserts that most conflicts between mountain bikers and hikers and equestrians could be greatly diminished by building trails and other facilities to accommodate today’s diverse group of trail users. (PARKS continued from page 33)

He notes that much of the East Bay Regional Park District’s network of existing trails is simply overlaid atop former logging and grazing access roads and is not engineered to safely handle bikes and walkers at the same time. But in parks such as Marin’s Camp Tamarancho and East Bay’s Crockett Hills, where purpose-designed bike “flow” trails have been built, user conflicts have declined substantially. “It’s entirely possible to design trails that invite fewer user conflicts,” McInerney says. “But you have to be proactive about it.” To that end, park managers want to know just who is flocking to the parks—and what they like to do there. And though data is sparse, one study conducted by researchers at San Francisco State University suggests that first-time visitors comprise a large segment of the visitor population. The survey, carried out over two-and-a-half months at 20 different sites across San Mateo County, found that one-quarter of patrons interviewed were making their first trip to a particular location— roughly the same percentage of people who responded that they had visited more than 50 times in a year. Three-quarters of those surveyed in both Marin and San Mateo counties reported they were visiting the parks to “improve physical fitness,” and 64 and 75 percent, respectively, said they had come to “connect with nature.” But the data also paints a stark picture of underrepresentation. An often-cited 2011 study conducted by the Department of the Interior found that between 2008 and 2009, 22 percent of visitors to national parks were non-Caucasian, even though they made

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up 37 percent of the U.S. population. The SFSU study revealed a similar pattern: Asian, Latino and African-American visitors comprised close to one-third of visitors in San Mateo County parks and only one-sixth in Marin County, even though members of these groups account for almost half of the Bay Area’s population. In other words, the Bay Area’s parks are both overcrowded and underutilized. This is not a contradiction, but two sides of the same coin, divergent realities of life in a stratified region increasingly beset by income and social inequities. In the Bay Area, people’s disparate needs and priorities are reflected in their hopes for the commons. While some emphasize the overcrowding and ecological impacts in parks, others have drawn attention to these racial disparities and advocate for expanded use among a more diverse cross section of Bay Area residents. This latter perspective argues parks aren’t just for communing with nature, but are also potent economic engines that confer valuable social benefits—which are critical needs of the Bay Area’s underserved communities. Earlier this year, Marin City, Marin County, the National Park Service, and several other agencies embarked on a “parks prescription” partnership program, which encourages underserved communities to improve their health by using the region’s trails and parklands. “By prescribing outdoor activities we’re actually getting positive health care results—reductions in depression rate, blood pressure, and diabetes,” says Marin County Parks & Open Space director and general manager (continued on page 48) Max Korten. “We’re not just addressing

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park disparities in these communities, but health disparities as well.” A recent East Bay Regional Park District study found that its open space generates $200 million of economic activity in local communities per year, including jobs, supporting working landscapes, and visitor spending, and close to $500 million in social “benefits” (a sum nearly four times the East Bay Regional Park District’s annual budget). According to the researchers, benefits include reductions in health care costs. The study estimates that regular exercise at the district’s parks help lower individual health care expenses by $300 per year for visitors under age 65 and $600 for those over 65, translating to a total savings of $21 million annually. The calculus here is simple: The greater the visitation, the greater the social and economic benefits derived. Nina Roberts, professor of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (PARKS continued from page 47)

at San Francisco State University (and a co-author of the San Mateo and Marin user survey study), argues that parks are democratic crossroads that derive their highest “value” from being accessible to all. Roberts often refers to open space and public parks as “catalysts for social change.” Like great communal spaces in large cities—New York’s Central Park, for example, or Chicago’s Lake Michigan waterfront—parks are places where people from different walks of life can mingle in a space that reflects a larger set of societal values. “In parks, people come together experiencing the common ground of park values,” Roberts told me. “There’s a greater exchange and interaction. These are the kinds of spaces that transform our lives and bring us together.” Whitney Dotson, director of the East Bay Regional Park District’s Ward 1, echoes Roberts’ sentiment and says it is a main focus of his job to help get people out of neighborhoods—many of which

“ Demographics are shifting. If we don’t have these communities of color supporting and screaming and writing letters saying ‘don’t mess with our parks,’ the likelihood of park protection is going to be diminished in the years ahead.”

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are low-income and predominantly African-American and Latino—and into parks across the district. “We not only have a diverse population, we have a huge diversity of lands,” Dotson says. By experiencing that array of landscapes, he adds, a person gains a deeper and richer awareness of the community at large and of one’s place in it. To that end, he’s working to improve access and increase transportation options, such as van shares, to get people from low-income communities to parklands across the district: “People should be able to experience these places regardless of what neighborhood they live in.” There’s certainly a balancing act between conservation and courting new park-goers, Roberts says. But she asserts that getting more people of color into the region’s open spaces is not merely a matter of equity—it is critical to the future survival of the region’s open space. “Demographics are shifting,” Roberts points out. “Park managers have to reckon with this. If we don’t have these communities of color supporting and screaming and writing letters saying ‘don’t mess with our parks,’ the likelihood of park protection is going to be diminished in the years ahead.”

rom atop Mission Peak, with the city’s sprawl far below, the scale of the Bay Area’s growth is perceptible, but not the demographic nature of it. Roughly 69 percent of the Bay Area’s population will be non-white by 2040,

according to the recent Plan Bay Area report. As Roberts says, park managers and users have to come to terms with the demographic and cultural changes underway. Compromise and a careful consideration of priorities for each park seems to be the only way forward for the vast inventory of parklands as the region continues to grow, says Robinson of the Open Space Council. And it is the remarkable variety of the region’s open space that may prove the greatest asset in that effort, he adds. He points to San Francisco’s Crissy Field and the Sunol Regional Wilderness as opposite ends of a wide spectrum of open space. “Both are well-managed parks,” he says. “But Crissy Field is full of people in the heart of the city and Sunol is so remote that it’s easy to forget you are still in the Bay Area.” Both kinds of parks are vitally important, he adds—and require vastly different styles of management. “As managers, we need to continue asking ourselves: What does society need from this land? And what does nature need?” An embrace of the Bay Area parklands’ multifaceted mission will be essential in preserving them for future generations, Robinson insists. “We’ve done a good job, I think, of striking the balance on a park-by-park basis, between human needs and the needs of ecosystems,” he says. “That will have to continue in the future.” Jeremy Miller writes from Richmond and logs hundreds of miles annually on the Bay Area’s trails, bike paths, and roadways. His recent work has appeared in Harper’s, Orion, Pacific Standard and The New Yorker’s Elements.

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SUPPORT FOR BAY NATURE

The Bay Nature Institute is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes exploration and stewardship of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. Through tax-deductible contributions of $25 or more, the Friends of Bay Nature support this independent voice for local nature and conservation. Listed below are individuals whose donations were received between March 8, 2017 and May 26, 2017. All Friends receive advance notice of Bay Nature’s “In the Field” outings. Donors of $500 or more become members Friends of Bay Nature $5,000+ Jorgen Hildebrandt $2,500–4,999 Nancy & Bart Westcott $1,000–2,499 Carol Baird & Alan Harper Barbara L. Bessey Tracy Grubbs & Richard Taylor Harriet & Robert Jakovina Greg Sarris Shell Oil Company Foundation Matching Gifts Program $500–999 Randy Arnold Douglas Booth & Margaret Simpson Louis Berlot & Joyce Cutler Eric Folmer Carolyn Greene Karla Jones Andrea Mackenzie & Jenni Martin John & Valerie Metcalfe Barbara Moulton Frances & John Raeside $250–499 Carlene & Stephen Abbors Marice Ashe & Larry Orman Sue Bloch Connie Bowencamp Michael Closson & Catherine Milton Kim Conner Adrian Cotter Norman Fritz & Fran Mueller Charles Garfield & Cindy Spring Peter Gleckler & Emmanuelle Waubant Larry Hassett John & Molly Hooper Mary Hughes & Joe Simitian Louis Jaffe & Kitty Whitman Paul Judge & Christine Yaeger

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of the Publisher’s Circle and receive invitations to additional special events and private outings. Bay Nature Funders are foundations and institutions that have contributed $500 or more over the past 12 months for general support or organizational development. To learn more about how you can support Bay Nature, contact Associate Director Judith Katz at (510)528-8550 x105 / judith@ baynature.org. You can also donate directly online at baynature. org/donate. Thank you for your continuing interest and support.

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ask the naturalist m i c h a e l q: Is it true that some crickets can tell us the

temperature? If so, how does it work and what are the Bay Area species to listen for? —Eddie, Albany a: I was recently in the Amazon, high up in an observation tower overlooking the canopy and as the tropical morning progressed, the cicadas suddenly started singing…loudly. And our guide said, “It must be getting hot now.” We sure didn’t need those insects to tell us that! But with the cicadas, temperature acts just like an on-off switch. When it reached about 77 degrees, they started singing. However, throughout North America (except for a few states), we have our very own so-called thermometer cricket— the snowy tree cricket (Oecanthus fultoni). Way back in 1897 a professor at Tufts University figured out a formula to determine the ambient air temperature based on the number of chirps this cricket makes per minute. It’s pretty darn accurate. When west of the Rockies, you count the number of chirps during 12.5

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seconds and then add the number 38 to get the temperature in Fahrenheit. I bet that most of you, like me, have heard these snowy tree crickets in the evening every year beginning around midsummer and on into the fall. They’re widespread in the Bay Area, and while no one’s ever surveyed the regional snowy population, entomologists suspect they’re common in some areas. While they’re mostly herbivorous, they also eat aphids, making them a gardener’s friend. What we hear are the males singing to attract females. Assuming the crooning Casanovas succeed, the females—which look very similar to the males—then lay eggs in the bark of trees or shrubs and even potted garden plants. Those eggs hatch the following spring and very slowly mature into adult tree crickets; by midsummer they are ready to mate. As the environment around the cricket heats up, the cricket’s own metabolic processes increase in frequency and speed.

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Among those temperature-dependent processes are chemical reactions that control the muscle contractions involved in vocalizations or stridulations (the rubbing together of body parts to make sounds). When it gets warm enough, the male crickets are able to start singing. They raise their wings to a 45-degree angle and draw the scraper of one wing across the furrows on the underside of the other wing. It is like running your finger along the teeth of a comb and presto—a loud sound from a small insect. This activity increases in direct proportion to the temperature. There are three other tree cricket (Oecanthus) species, and field crickets, in the Bay Area whose chirping can also be counted, but the snowy tree cricket is much more precise. However, these insects can probably only sing between about 48 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. So outside of that range, you’ll have to rely on a thermometer.

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es y uidado en un mundo atrapados e, nuestra os a otros dor, usted manda que sted es un ed vive en u relación veedor de familiar, diferente. años y proveedor ar, pero sobre el ador de emas que endientes extraño. UHW, ha ya durante ención de gidos por a Loretta campaña ndado de dico y los dores. En un grupo sido los uecido sus plan para

de marcar un hasta aquí, de nuevo, rompiendo la burbuja del pasado, siempre avanzando acercándonos,

“CUHW está rompiendo todos los mitos al enfocarse en los miembros.” conforme continuamos construyendo el “Puente Hacia un Mejor Futuro” Estamos reventando la burbuja cuando nuestro Comité de Constitución sugiere un cambio que combine el espacio de nuestro Secretario Tesorero y que cree una nueva posición, Vicepresidente segundo. El

a nuestro personal político, y asegure de que se nos haya dañado o se haya los servicios de los individuos que abusado de nosotros mentalmente. viven y respiran la política durante este tiempo critico en la historia del cuidado •Merecemos el derecho de que del hogar a nivel Federal y Estatal. se nos pague bajo el esquema del CUHW, al salir de la burbuja, Seguro Social por una vida de trabajo emerge con nuevas ideas ahora que por un miembro de la familia. estamos en período electoral este agosto. Nuestras elecciones estatales •Merecemos vacaciones pagadas, incluirán dos semanas en las que merecemos el derecho de que se nos puede votar en línea o llamando trate con compasión y respeto por las a un número sin costo, usando su número de celular o un teléfono fijo. Una vez más nos salimos de nuestra burbuja, hemos lanzado un Programa de Voluntariado de Incentivos para ofrecer descuentos a nuestros miembros en los negocios al mostrar sus tarjetas del Sindicatolo cual representa un ganar-ganar para todos. Hemos establecido oficinas en más de 9 de nuestros condados. La mayoría de las oficinas tienen bancos de llamadas y capacidad de difusión de web y cuentan con grandes pantallas. Contamos con otra acción que es también otra burbuja que se rompe, y estas son las actualizaciones por email y mensajes dificultades que enfrentamos en nuestros de texto que alertan a los miembros de trabajos por una paga justa, beneficios los últimos acontecimientos de IHSS. To End quiero the Age médicos of Wastyeoportunidades de educación, Yo personalmente al igual que las otras fuerzas de trabajo. salirme de la burbuja en la que se considera la reforma de IHSS en ¡No solamente lo merecemos, California y sugiero que empecemos con

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