Bay Nature January-March 2018 by Bay Nature Institute

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Can We Change How We Live with Fire?

Tracking S.F.’s Urban Coyotes Kayaking Amid the Delta’s Birds Street Trees in Silicon Valley

Photo by Stephen Joseph

Photo by Laurel Serieys

Protecting our Water, Wildlife, and Working Lands The Open Space Authorityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission focuses on building resiliency to climate change by protecting these precious resources. Learn more about the Authorityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiatives at https://hubs.ly/H096yd-0

Photo by William Mathias

SONOMA L A N D

C O U N T Y

C O N S E R V A T I O N

Building on over 25 years of land conservation, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District has launched the Vital Lands Initiative â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a comprehensive plan to guide our efforts for the next 15 years as we work to preserve the vital natural and working lands that sustain, nourish and inspire us.

Find out more and get engaged at SonomaOpenSpace.org/Vital-Lands

contents

january–march 2018

Features 28

DELTA BIRDS BY KAYAK Millions of birds take refuge in the Delta each winter, and watching them from the water “you see the Delta from the Delta’s perspective,” says Mike Moran, naturalist at Big Break Regional Shoreline. by Victoria Schlesinger

mcnair evans

Robin Mayoff

Jaymi Heimbuch

COYOTE TRACKER Scientist Jonathan Young has put radio collars on San Francisco coyotes for the first time. Now as the data comes in we’re learning where they spend their days, how far they travel, and how they navigate the urban world. by Kim Todd

THE NORTH BAY FIRES California’s 2017 fire season is a reminder that we have traded frequent, small fires—lit and managed by California Indians for millennia—for rare, big ones. Can we trade back? by Zach St. George

Departments 6

Bay View

Letter from the Editor

Letters & Comments

Feedback from our readers

Opening Shot

Cedar waxwings and toyon berries

Currents

• Essay: Transformational fires • Heat and rockfalls • Yelloweye rockfish’s slow return • Funding forests with carbon offsets • Signs of the Season: Tundra swans

14 Conservation in Action

A street tree revolution in Silicon Valley by Eric Simons

On the Trail

A Landscape Shaped by Art Nature and art meet on the hiking trails of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside. Here’s a giant nest of sticks; there’s an upholstered redwood stump; farther on a lichen-festooned band plays wind instruments. by Rachel Diaz-Bastin

16 Santa Cruz Mountains

20 Elsewhere

Doolittle Pond, East Bay; Walter Haas Park and Billy Goat Hill, San Francisco; Stevens Creek, South Bay

Ask the Naturalist The regenerative superpowers of salamanders by Michael Ellis

54 Naturalist’s Notebook

Woodrats fumigate with bay laurel leaves by John Muir Laws

VISIT US ONLINE AT WWW.BAYNATURE.ORG

BY VICTORIA SCHLESINGER

bayview letter from the editor ike many of you, we at Bay Nature have spent this fall thinking and talking about fire. We’ve been on the rolling wave of emotions and questions and search for answers along with everyone else. From learning that lives were lost, to family members and a Bay Nature board member having to evacuate Santa Rosa, to the many partners and organizations that saw homes, buildings, and facilities destroyed, the fire and its long tail have permeated much of what we do. And it’s with weary hearts that we now watch the fire season push into late December in Southern California. There’s solace in knowing that the land in the North Bay will, for the most part, be fine and benefit from the natural clearing and germination fire brings. In areas that need “re-oaking,” the California Native Plant Society continues to lead volunteers in an effort to plant last fall’s acorn harvest through 2018. With spring will likely come a much-anticipated wildflower bloom, and we will continue to report on what researchers learn from the fires. We are also closely watching the La Niña weather patterns projected for this winter (looks warm and dry) and the implications for erosion and North Bay watersheds. But what’s on our mind most—again, as with many of you—is this moment, the brief period when the smell of smoke still saturates roadsides, ranches, parks, and preserves and change is most plausible. What will the North Bay, the state’s southern counties, and California as a whole do with this moment, this opportunity to recalibrate our relation-

David Johnson

contributo rs 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. McNair Evans (p. 34) is is an American photographer living and working in San Francisco, California, and Laurinburg, North Carolina. Alexander Fox (p. 10) is in the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program and a former Bay Nature

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ship to fire and how we live with it? In November the Bay Area Open Space Council hosted a nine-person panel moderated by Bay Nature to discuss the North Bay fires. (An audio recording of the panel discussion is online at openspacecouncil.org/2017novgathering.) We heard from land managers who have been working feverishly to assess damage, gather data, and help staff, the public, and private landowners get back on their feet. We also heard from Cal Fire that the 2017 fire season is “the new normal” and from Robert Doyle, the East Bay Regional Park District’s general manager, on the long, long recovery from the Oakland Hills fire that killed 25 people and burned more than 3,000 structures 26 years ago. Doyle advised, “Right now the emotion, pain, sadness, and the fear dominate, but over that 26 years what we have seen is that people forget, and they forget how fires can happen again…ten years from now when you’re still going to have the fire problem, there will be very great resistance and very strong opinions on what’s right and what’s wrong to do.” If Doyle’s cautionary tale was sobering, his closing words struck me as comforting in their familiarity to the conservation community in the room: build coalitions, educate the public, and prepare for the marathon. Our cover story, by Zach St. George, looks at prescribed burning—practiced by Native Americans for millennia in California—as one fire management tool that is embraced by many fire ecologists and land managers, but whose implementation is complicated and not without risk. We hope the story brings together new voices, offers insight, and illustrates that fire has been part of California for a long time. We are all now in a race to learn to live with fire, rather than fight it. intern. Serena Ingalls (p. 12) is a junior at Albany High School and an editorial intern at Bay Nature through the EDSET (Environmental Design, Science, Engineering, and Technology) program. Faith Kearns (p. 9) is the academic coordinator for the California Institute for Water Resources. She specializes in science communication and tweets at @frkearns. Naturalist and illustrator John Muir Laws (p. 54) is the

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

Volume 18, Issue 1 January-March 2018 Executive Director/Publisher Regina Starr Ridley Editor in Chief Victoria Schlesinger Editorial Director Eric Simons Art Director Susan Scandrett Research Editors Sue Rosenthal, Erica Langston Copy Editor Cynthia Rubin Advertising Director Ellen Weis Associate Director Judith Katz Marketing & Outreach Director Beth Slatkin Office Manager Jenny Stampp Information Technology Manager Laurence Tietz Development and Editorial Associate Laney Ennis Board of Directors Catherine Fox (President), Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough, Reed Holderman, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Founder David Loeb Volunteers/Interns Hayley M. Davis, Jacqueline Gauthier, Serena Ingalls, Hannah Johansson, Shidonna Raven Johnson, Clark Mosher, Treva Obbard, Phil Osegueda, Karen Ramírez, 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. © 2018 Bay Nature Printed by Commerce Printing (Sacramento, CA) using soy-based inks and alternative energy.

Cover:McNair Evans Charred bushes mark the previous fence lines at Phil Clover’s property in Glen Ellen, CA. mcnairevans.com 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. Sue Rosenthal (p. 8) is Bay Nature’s research editor. Eric Simons (p. 14, 20), a Bay Nature’s editoral director. Ann Sieck (p. 20) is dedicated to helping people with disabilities, including those using wheelchairs, find parks and trails they can enjoy. baynature.org/asiecker.

letters & comments Hiking With Dad Thank you for sharing your uplifting story. I’m reading “Blue Mind” by marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols on the effects of water on our well-being, and the research is clear: being in nature uplifts and renews us. I have a dear friend struggling with Alzheimer’s who has always loved the beach and being in nature. I believe this is the key to helping her quell her anxiety. Thanks so much for all the great resources to help others help loved ones to explore nature. I can’t wait to watch “4 Wheel Bob”! —Darris B. Nelson, Bodega Bay Sycamore Grove Park I was pleased to see western sycamore (Platanus racemosa) featured in your OctDec 2017 issue. The article did not mention, and many are not aware, that this species is critically threatened by

genetic contamination from London plane trees—one of the most widely planted street trees in California. Because P. racemosa is wind-pollinated, there is almost no remaining stand that pollen from nonnative hybrids cannot reach. Researchers have found that virtually all new western sycamore saplings are tainted by hybrid DNA. While the implications are unknown, this is one more example of human activity altering native ecosystems in ways we cannot possibly foresee and for which no solution exists. —Kristen Van Dam, Oakland David Loeb Hits the Trail There are a couple of minor errors in Mary Ellen Hannibal’s much-too-flattering profile of me in the Oct-Dec 2017 issue. First, Hannibal writes that I was “hurt” that “we” (implying the U.S. government) were aiding the Sandinistas. In fact, on the contrary, the U.S. government was aiding the Contras in an effort to overthrow the Sandinistas. That’s what my colleagues and I were opposing. Secondly, I don’t believe I called the

Join us for

BAY NATURE’S LOCAL HERO AWARDS DINNER

Connectivity:

Bringing Together People and Nature

Sunday, March 25, 2018

outcrop we saw on the beach south of Limantour at Point Reyes “granitics.” Granitics are an important part of the geology of Point Reyes, but are only found at beach level at McClure’s and Kehoe to the north. The lovely outcrop in question was likely of marine sediments, perhaps Santa Cruz mudstone. —David Loeb, Berkeley Cor rections We are grateful for our careful, passionate, and extremely knowledgeable readers and welcome your corrections. All online versions of the stories have been corrected. The Smell of Change: Due to an editorial error, the story incorrectly described big leaf maple leaves as red rather than yellow. Steller: The story incorrectly stated that the southernmost Steller sea lion rookery is in Oregon. While small, the southernmost Steller sea lion rookery is in our very own Año Nuevo. Sycamore Grove Park: The leaf and seedpod photos pictured on page 19 were from the Liquidambar genus and not Platanus.

Local Hero Award Recipients: Conservation Action

Walter T. Moore, Peninsula Open Space Trust

Environmental Education

Dr. Lisa Micheli, Pepperwood Preserve

Youth Engagement

Sandra Corzantes, Latino Outdoors, MROSD

with remarks by

Rue Mapp, Outdoor Afro UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center 1675 Owens Street, San Francisco

baynature18.eventbrite.com Early bird tickets

Photo: Karl Gohl

through Feb 21: $150 after Feb 21: $195 info: laney@baynature.org (510) 528-8550 x103 A benefit for Bay Nature Institute j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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opening shot

A CLASSIC PAIRING Cedar waxwings and toyon berries: It’s one of those iconic California

are technically pomes, like apples, and their seeds contain similar

food-web pairings, like black bears and manzanita berries or southern

toxins. Green toyon berries are loaded with poisonous cyanogenic

sea otters and sea urchins. In fall and winter, flocks of the black-

glucosides, but as they mature, their toxins shift from pulp to seed and

masked birds swoop in on toyon shrubs laden with clusters of bright

the berries turn red, signaling their edibility. Waxwings safely pass the

red berries, making their tea-kettle-like whistles.

toxic seeds through their guts and back into the environment intact, in

Waxwings are known to feed cooperatively. A group may pass a berry from bird to bird until one eventually eats it, and members of a flock may politely take turns feeding at a shrub until they’ve picked it clean. One of the few true frugivores (fruit feeders) among birds, the cedar

the process dispersing toyons to new areas. As generalists, waxwings eat many types of berries (and insects in spring and summer), including some red cool-season berries that closely resemble toyon: Pyracantha and Cotoneaster. To tell the native

waxwing can assimilate nutrients solely from fruit—low in calories

toyon from these common nonnative shrubs, look for toyon’s thornless

and protein compared with insects—for weeks at a time. Toyon berries

branches and serrated leaves. —Sue Rosenthal

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s t e v e z a m e k , f e at h e r l i g h t p h o t o . c o m

CURRENTS

essay

news & notes from around the bay

Glen Ellen

Faith Kearns

A Transformation: As disaster strikes, a marked change in how we relate to wildfire I drove away from the Pepperwood Preserve in the Sonoma County hills on a hot and windy Sunday evening in October feeling hopeful. I’d spent part of the day talking with members of the California Naturalist Program about wildfire-induced emotional trauma in the region. As I arrived home in Berkeley later that evening, however, that peculiar fire weather feeling Joan Didion described as when the “winds show us how close to the edge we are” kicked into overdrive. Several hours later, I awoke to the overwhelming smell of smoke and the news that people all over the Bay Area were hearing: a number of large fires were running wild through the beautiful place I’d left just the night before. As the days went on, a horrifying picture emerged. Story after story of sudden and terrifying evacuations appeared. Whole neighborhoods had been awoken in the middle of the night by people—some police and firefighters, but many simply neighbors—banging on doors or honking horns as emergency alert systems lagged. These reports from citizens are harrowing enough on their own but, as a scientist working on disasters like drought and wildfire in California for over a decade, I’m especially struck by the changing commentary from the emergency response community itself. As an example, Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott told the Sacramento Bee that “it’s becoming more the norm now to have multiple damaging fires” at the same time. In the Ventura County Star, Cal Fire Battalion Chief Jonathon Cox said the [Tubbs] fire was “unstoppable.” Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner noted the pace of alerts and evacuations simply couldn’t keep up with the pace of the fire. These are remarkable statements from top-down, command-and-control institutions. Even more telling are Gossner’s remarks about fire-safe landscaping, one of the long-standing hallmarks of fire prevention. He said, “We want the fire-wise communities, so if a fire starts, we can jump on it and put it out. That gives us a chance. It doesn’t mean it’s going to prevent it.”

There was a time not long ago when it would have been difficult to find fire officials, whose focus is most often on suppression, talking so publicly about how unmanageable some wildfires can become. It might be the threat of more fire in a changing climate, or just a long-overdue admission, but even first responders seem increasingly open to acknowledging the limits of human control in disaster situations, even in highly developed places. The admission that our best efforts may not always be enough opens a small window to shift how we think about disasters. For the North Bay in particular, it provides an invitation to rebuild creatively, in ways that are consistent with what we know about the local environment. As I’ve spoken with Sonoma County residents, it has become clear that anguish and deep grief will persist. At the same time, there is also hope that the fires served to reveal existing inequalities, offering an invitation to heal and transform, to cultivate new alliances, and to reenvision everything from affordable housing availability to a more equitable local economy. There are still incentives—particularly arcane insurance requirements and building codes—working to keep things largely as they were. But as people commit to regenerating lives and communities, they are also reimagining the world they inhabit. Time will tell if they are able to do the things that might signal real change, like limiting building in the most fire-prone areas, requiring fire-safe structures even in places that may appear impervious, and developing realistic evacuation procedures that take into account the most vulnerable citizens. There is no doubt that this disaster has deeply tested our assumptions about how we live with wildfires, notably the idea that we can control them. From Houston to Puerto Rico to here at home in California, disasters are revealing new ground that is paradoxically both shakier and more solid than it once seemed. We may find our footing by finally embracing the fact that we can’t always be in charge. —Faith Kearns j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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CURRENTS

science

nearly 30,000 tons of granite had fallen from El Capitan— the equivalent of 1,600 full concrete trucks. Rockfalls this size occur roughly every decade. They can be much larger. A rockfall at Ahwiyah Point in 2009 dropped 122,000 tons of rock, more than four times the size of the 2017 falls. The September rockfalls and the Ahwiyah Point rockfall have something in common, though—no clear cause. Triggers are assigned to recorded rockfalls, but in nearly half of all cases the park database leaves the cause either unknown or unrecognized. Common triggers include precipitation, heat, and earthquakes. Wintertime freezethaw cycles can also break loose rock as freezing water expands against cracks and then melts away. Together with Brian Collins, a civil engineer with the U.S. Geological Survey, Stock found a link among some of the unexplained rockfalls—heat. “We realized a lot of them were occurring on sunny days,” Collins says. This finding jibed with reports from climbers: safety gear plugged tightly into cracks in the cool morning air would sometimes have shifted or even fallen out later in the day. Stock and Collins tested this idea by placing a purposebuilt “crack meter” in one of Yosemite’s many cracks in 2013.

YOSEMITE ROCK

FALL

Courtesy of the National Park Service

After three-and-a-half years of study their data showed the crack “breathing” in and out about one centimeter each day, and a cumulative expansion of one millimeter per year. The stress of this repetitive movement could, according to Stock and Collins, weaken the bonds between chunks of rock over time, like bending a paper clip back and forth. Just like a paper clip, these rock joints eventually fatigue and break. The hottest days of summer cause cracks to expand to their maximum widths, but the greatest daily in-and-out

n September 27 a twelve-story slab of granite cleaved from the

movements, and the greatest stresses to rock joints, come in shoulder

face of the rock wall El Capitan, 1,800 feet above the valley floor

months like October and March when the change between the day’s

in Yosemite. El Capitan is so steep that for a few moments the granite

high and low temperatures is the greatest. Yet when Collins and Stock

sheet may have cut through nothing but air—whizzing like a diving

examined the list, they found that roughly 15 percent of Yosemite rockfalls

airplane as it fell.

with either a heat-stress or unidentified trigger occurred at the hottest

One rock climber was killed at the base of the cliff. Yosemite Search and Rescue evacuated another injured climber. Within hours, a string of six more rockfalls pummeled the boulder field that teams had been

times of day in the hottest months of the year—more than you’d expect if the distribution of rockfalls was random. The rockfalls in September happened on warm days after a cold snap in

searching. The next day Greg Stock, Yosemite National Park’s resident

the hottest summer in California history, but they’ll go into the database

geologist, was in Yosemite Village when he heard rolling thunder. An

as occurring because of “unrecognized” causes to flag them for future

enormous dust cloud soon drifted eastward toward him, evidence of a

study, Stock says. Rising global temperatures might affect the occurrence

rockfall even larger than the previous ones.

of some types of rockfalls in the future, but it’s still unclear how much.

“At least every five days on average there will be a rockfall, probably

“The rock that makes up El Capitan may undergo temperature extremes

in Yosemite Valley,” Stock says. The average 70 annually recorded

and cycles that it has, as of yet, not experienced,” Collins notes. “It’s

rockfalls in Yosemite have killed 16 people in the park since 1857 and

possible that higher maximum temperatures could cause new stresses

injured more than 100. When the dust finally settled in September,

with potentially new effects.” —Alexander Fox

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CURIOuS creature

time & money

CURRENTS

How Long Does It Take to Restore a Population of Centenarians? Galapagos giant tortoises, African elephants, and bowhead whales

fish. “Yelloweye are one of the larger rockfishes, and they have huge

share something: very long lives. Perhaps their life spans contribute

mouths and large bellies, so they have a large predation capacity,”

to public perception of these species as wise and noble. To that group

NOAA fisheries biologist Jason Cope says by email.

you might add the extraordinarily long-lived yelloweye rockfish, which can reach up to 118 years in age.

maturing species that was declared overfished in 2002,

Yelloweye rockfish is a large eastern Pacific species

Amadeo Bachar, abachar.com

Occasionally they bite into baited fishhooks. For a long-lived, sloweven accidental catch might hamper recovery. Although

with a distinct look: up to 3.5 feet in length,

a female yelloweye rockfish can produce up to 2.7

bright orange-red hue, and most notably, the

million eggs, the vast majority of larval rockfish

yellow eyes for which it is named. Juveniles—

do not survive to maturity. Shortly after fishery

fish under the age of 15 or so—have a darker

restrictions went into place, Cope says, there was a

orange-red body, accentuated by two white stripes.

good yelloweye rockfish “recruitment” year—meaning that a large

Yelloweye rockfish, upon reaching maturity, reside on the ocean floor.

number of the babies survived. But that still means 15 to 20 years

Here they live a sheltered, mostly solitary life, hardly ever leaving

waiting for that baby boom to mature and trying, in the meantime, to

their rock piles, dining on zooplankton, small crustaceans, and other

keep them off of fishermen’s hooks. —Serena Ingalls

MONEY DOES GROW ON TREES THANKS TO CARBON OFFSETS

Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth, kaitlynkraybillvoth.org

The 19,500-acre Buckeye Forest in northwestern Sonoma County holds a lot of trees. More than 75 percent of the trees are redwoods, tanoaks, and Douglas firs, with the rest a combination of sugar pines, true oaks, bay laurel, and other hardwoods. You might take a close look at a sample of those trees to count and size them. Then you might use statistics to arrive at an estimate of carbon in the entire forest. A forester did this and came up with the figure of 1.1 million tons of carbon. You

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can then calculate backward from carbon stored in trees to a “carbon dioxide equivalent,” which is basically the amount of carbon dioxide the trees took out of the air, over their lifetimes, to make themselves. The Buckeye Forest trees are built out of nearly 4 million tons of carbon dioxide, or roughly what would be emitted in 6,400 airplane trips around the world. The climate case for keeping those trees in the ground is not just the carbon dioxide they’ve taken out of the air so far, but the trees’ potential to continue taking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it. But there is also no timber or development money in letting trees grow. Enter California’s carbon offset market. In 2013, a Virginia-based nonprofit group called Sustainable Conservation Inc. teamed with several government agencies and private foundations to buy the Buckeye Forest (then called Preservation Ranch) on the assumption that it could pay back part of the purchase price by selling offset credits to carbon polluters. Keeping those trees upright and inhaling carbon dioxide was worth about $2 million in 2015.

Offset critics have been skeptical of forest projects for allowing emissions in exchange for simply preserving the status quo, as opposed to actually removing additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to a recent article by Stanford graduate student Christa Anderson and colleagues in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, forest projects do seem to contribute more than just their baseline. “[In] the offset program, the principal idea is that a polluter, a greenhouse gas emitter, will buy a credit and then emit that ton,” Anderson says. “Because of that arrangement it’s important to know that there’s been a ton sequestered.” There’s also more of importance to the conservation world than just carbon dioxide. Forest offset projects help fund intact forests, Anderson says, allowing a number of “co-benefits” to wildlife. The Buckeye Forest, for example, protects 29 miles of fish-bearing rivers and streams, and under a conservation easement with the Sonoma County Agricultural and Open Space District could one day be opened to the public for hiking. — Eric Simons

signs of the season

Tundra Swans

CURRENTS

Snowy white visitors in the Delta come from the Arctic

Rick Lewis

thousand feet take quick Avian migration exhibits a running steps and a cloud planetary ebb and flow like of large white birds, ferthat of an ocean tide—a pull across the latitudes vently calling, lifts into exerted on whole populathe sky. tions of birds. Throngs of The tundra swan seems shorebirds and waterbirds to represent the cold come surging into our renorth, even in California. gion from the Arctic north It arrives in large numbers every autumn—they ride after the first autumn frost the frozen edge of winand departs before the ter south to California’s winter’s last freeze. To see Central Valley. and hear a skein of tunArriving on this seasondra swans flying hard and al swell of birds is the magstrong is to feel the heminificent, normally cold-lovspheric tide of migratory Note the all-black beaks on these tundra swans at the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge in the Central ing tundra swan. Large and birds. —Claire Peaslee vigorous, the adult tundra Valley; mute swans have orange beaks, which is one easy way to differentiate species. swan has pure white plumage, a jet-black bill and feet, a long neck, and powerful wings. SWANS IN NORTH AMERICA Highly gregarious, these swans migrate and overwinter in flocks. When occasional wanderers • The tundra swan has two subspecies, show up in San Francisco Bay or along the coast, they are few in number. formerly recognized as separate Within the flock, whether in the air or on the ground, tundra swans maintain tight family species. The one native to North bonds. Not only do mated adults stay loyal for life; they teach and protect their offspring America (Cygnus columbianus through the young swans’ first migration and winter. Juvenile tundra swans have variably columbianus) is also known as gray heads and upper necks. whistling swan (for the sound of Voice is the matrix binding the swans together. They chatter among themselves while its wings in flight). The Old World standing, while feeding, and even while roosting. When flying together—in strong V formasubspecies (found rarely here), tions high overhead or in straight lines within a few hundred feet of the ground—tundra known as the Bewick’s swan (C. swans are often heard by humans before they are seen. Check for a shiver of bone-deep columbianus bewickii), has variable, thrill if you experience this. The swan’s distinctive call—one to three flutey syllables, oo oh bright yellow patterning around the oo—pierces the winter air. base of its bill. People seeking swan encounters near the Bay Area may head east to the Delta’s Staten Island or Cosumnes River Preserve. Farther north in the valley, birders visit the Sacramento • The trumpeter swan (Cygnus National Wildlife Refuge Complex or drive the small roads east of the Sutter Buttes. In buccinator), also native to North either region, swans may comingle with sandhill cranes by the dozen or hundred, geese and America, is slightly larger than the ducks by the ten thousand. tundra swan. Its population is small, The landscapes to inspect will be broad shallow ponds, wetlands, or harvested agriculand the species’ appearance is tural fields. Tundra swans are well equipped for aquatic feasting, using the headstand known unusual in California in winter. as dabbling. They upend their jet-black feet in order to snorkle deep, probing with intention • The mute swan (Cygnus olor) was for roots and tubers and seeds. They also thrive by grazing in harvested farmlands: the swans introduced here from Britain and (along with cranes and geese, perhaps) will walk about prodding the soggy stubble where Europe as early as the 1850s and today seeds remain—especially corn, grown for silage to feed cattle. breeds in the wild, including in the Bay Tundra swans are restless birds—perpetually ready to lift a thousand strong into the air Area. It has a long slender neck, held in and go someplace else. A human watcher, coming upon a winter field full of the birds, may an S-curve, and a bright orange beak do well to pause without disturbing them; a safely parked car serves well as a blind. Wait, with a black knob at the base. and watch. First, a collective twitch may run through the flock, and voices rise. Then a few j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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BY ERIC SIMONS

conservation in action

California Room, San Jose Public Library

A Street Tree Revolution in Silicon Valley Three hundred years ago, to walk from the site of the modern-day Apple Campus in Cupertino to the bayshore site of the modern-day Google headquarters in Mountain View would take about four hours. You would start in an oak savanna at Calabazas Creek on the west edge of Tamien Ohlone tribal lands, walk west through oak woodland and chaparral to Stevens Creek, then turn north to follow the waterway through oak woodland and oak savanna, until the water fanned out into willow woodlands and the lazy water of the south Bay near the Ramaytush Ohlone village of Puichon. On the walk, and in the entire Silicon Valley, you would have encountered fewer than 20 species of trees. Lord among them would have been the oak. As recently as 1850, according to a new A postcard from the early 1900s highlights a valley oak growing near San Jose.

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report from the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), 80 percent of the trees in Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Cupertino were oak trees. Another 13 percent of the trees were those commonly found alongside oak trees in oak woodlands: buckeye, madrone, sycamore, and California bay laurel. Willows, alders, and redwoods rounded out the final 7 percent. Oaks defined the place. Postcards from San Jose in the early 1900s show farmers standing in the shade of skyscraping oak trees. Spanish explorers called Silicon Valley the “plain of oaks.” The Peninsula is still home to at least two Roblar Avenues, a Robles Drive, and a Robles Park, as well as the North Fair Oaks neighborhood of Sunnyvale and the Menlo Oaks neighborhood of Menlo Park. Most of Silicon Valley’s oak trees were valley oaks, the largest and longest-

lived of North American oak trees and endemic to California. They grew tall and towering, and “in such numbers,” a one-time gold miner named Thaddeus Kenderdine wrote in 1898, “that I wondered the farmers tolerated them.” The farmers, of course, did not tolerate them. Valley oaks thrive in the rich soil of creek floodplains, which happens to be prime agricultural land. The farmers cut the oak trees down and replaced them with fruit orchards. Later developers paved over the orchards and cut down what oaks remained to build sprawling residential neighborhoods. Over 150 years, scientists at SFEI estimate, there has been a 99 percent decline in valley oak populations in some parts of Silicon Valley. People wonder sometimes why Silicon Valley seems to have no sense of place; one answer is that people understand a place by its nature, and Silicon Valley is missing its iconic trees. Recently I walked over the buried oak woodlands from the new Apple Campus in Cupertino to the Googleplex in Mountain View. On the default view of Google Maps there are only three green areas on this entire 10-mile route: two school baseball fields and a playground. There are no valley oaks at all. As I walked I tallied coast live oaks in the neighborhoods and kept it to a single sheet of paper. But once I was looking it was also easy to see the surprising biodiversity on display in this gray, flat, sprawling corner of the world. There are trees everywhere. There are trees by the thousands. In place of lost valley oaks we have invited in an absolutely staggering increase in tree diversity. Today there are something like 400 species of trees in Silicon Valley. Oak trees, mostly coast live oak, make up about 4 percent of the total. London

This story is excerpted from an essay that first appeared on the Bay Nature website.

woodpeckers, oak titmice, and mournbetween the two tech giants, in the great ful duskywing and California sister gray suburbs where new trees are chosen butterflies. Finally, oaks are historic. one property owner at a time. Will the “Restoring elements of oak woodtech companies influence their resiland ecosystems to urban environdential neighbors—schools, suburban developers, office parks, homeowners— ments could make California cities to choose oak trees instead of cheaper, less similar to cities in other parts of more popular London planes, sweetthe world,” the report says, “reinforcgums, or magnolias? ing a distinctive identity and adding Ecologists I’ve talked to have genercharacter that could complement local ally described this re-oaking experiment landscapes and architecture.” as pioneering. There are lots of urban The challenge seems to be getgreening initiatives out there—stormwating Silicon Valley to want to add that ter runoff programs, backyard polcharacter. Grossinger and the SFEI team have been studying oak trees in Silicon linator gardens, low-impact building Valley for a decade. But it took the more materials—but no one has tried to bring back an ecosystem by connecting the recent interest of Google to kick-start a dots, yard-to-yard, in an urban region re-oaking project. the size of Silicon Valley. It’s a remindAs Google’s real estate holdings iner, many of them told me, of how far creased, its ecology team went in search we’ve come in appreciating the value of of scientifically sound landscaping opurban conservation. tions for its green campuses. They found SFEI and asked Grossinger for technical Twenty years ago scientists viewed guidance. The result was Re-Oaking urban ecology as a great unknown. Or Silicon Valley. “We’re not going to creless than that, as futile. But University ate oak savannas,” says Google Ecology of Washington urban ecologist Marina program manager Audrey Davenport. Alberti says it’s increasingly apparent (Disclosure: Google also sponsors Bay that nature in the city is the best way we Nature’s annual fund raising event.)“But have to reconnect people to the world we actually can bring the function of an around them. “Humans are a dominant oak ecosystem back to these places. We species on this planet,” Alberti says. can help wildlife. The re-oaking guid“They’re going to determine in many ance has been great because I can turn ways the future of the planet. Whether to landscape architects and say, ‘Here’s they will be able to actually help—to evolve the planet in a direction that is what we want to see in your designs,’ and mutually beneficial for our species and they can work with that.” other species—really depends on whether Google has incorporated re-oaking we understand the power we have.” into the designs for two of its new campuses and conA coast live oak grows on a residential street in Cupertino. verted 50 acres of its existing campuses to native landscaping. On the other side of the valley Apple has landscaped its new campus with thousands of oak trees. My cross-valley walk started and ended in ambitious, heritagehonoring oak landscaping. But a successful re-oaking of Silicon Valley hinges on what happens in j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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Robin Grossinger, San Francisco Estuary Institute, sfei.org

plane, magnolia, and sweetgum make up about 8 percent each. This is a reasonably consistent list of common street trees in most cities in North America. The London plane, for example, a hybrid that first appeared in Europe, is also the most common tree in London and New York, and an extremely common street tree in Buenos Aires, Rome, Paris, and San Francisco. The more influence human landscape choices have on the world, the more our nature is becoming the same no matter where you are—a term urban ecologists refer to as ecological homogenization. Yet while the trees themselves have changed, the percentage of canopy itself hasn’t changed particularly between the 1850s and today. What SFEI’s Robin Grossinger and Erica Spotswood point out is that many of the trees in that canopy are aging. Many were planted more than 50 years ago in post–World War II suburban developments, and many will soon need to be replaced. Imagine the potential, Grossinger and Spotswood say, if we started thinking about how to replace them, tree by tree, to make the best use of that canopy across the entire valley. “This is an area of literally hundreds of thousands of acres around the Bay, and probably a million or more trees,” says Grossinger, a historical ecologist and co-author of the report Re-Oaking Silicon Valley: Building Vibrant Cities with Nature. “In the Bay Area we’ve done a pretty remarkable job protecting the hills and the Bay and the baylands, of protecting and preserving a greenbelt and a bluebelt. But we’ve tended to ignore the gray area in between, just leaving it to be a blank from a conservation perspective.” A coast live oak sequesters more carbon than many other common urban trees—even a redwood—and twice as much as Silicon Valley’s most common street tree the London plane, according to data from the Center for Urban Forest Research Tree Carbon Calculator. Oaks tolerate drought yet draw up more runoff than many other trees in heavy rain. Oaks host California wildlife. In the re-oaking report Spotswood paid close attention to the benefits of oak trees to acorn

dj e rassi re si d en t a rt i st s p rog r a m

A LANDSCAPE SHAPED BY ART IN THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS by Rachel Diaz-Bastin In 1999 an artist named William King gathered a collection of old fence posts on a windswept hilltop in Woodside and fashioned them into sculptures—four human-size, instrument-holding creatures. He called the quartet “Orpheus Coyote and Friends,” after the largest of the sculptures, a coyote playing what appears to be a flute. Since then moss and lichen have grown over the sculptures, but when the wind picks up—as it often does there—the metal instruments in their hands resonate, creating an odd, metallic music that echoes down the valley below. In the fall and winter, dry grass sways around the band, seemingly joining in the dance. It’s hard not to get swept b ay n at u r e

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away by it. Their wind-created music captures the intermingling of nature and art that is at the core of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. “We like to think of landscape as an extension of their studio,” says Felicia Herron, the environmental stewardship associate for the program and my tour guide for a day of exploring the 583-acre property in the San Mateo County hills where the resident artists stay and create their works. There are more than 70 sculptures at Djerassi, most of them pieces made specifically for the place and scattered among creeks, redwood groves, grasslands, and ancient oaks. A 2-mile loop trail, accessible to the public during an annual open house or by

Orpheus Coyote and Friends begin to play their musical instruments when the wind picks up in the hills at Djerassi.

guided hike, winds past the work created by roughly 30 artists over the last several decades. Other guided hikes cover almost all of the 5.5 miles of trail and nearly every sculpture on the property. The drive to Djerassi takes you up over foggy hills, along Skyline Boulevard, and through wooded canyons infused with soft, warm light. The smell of fir and bay laurel trees and the quiet chatter of birds fill the air as Herron orients me to the land. The selective residency hosts more than 70 artists a year in various disciplines—choreography, musical composition, writing, visual art, and science—for a monthlong stay, during which they can create, lose themselves in the landscape, or simply sit and let inspiration roll in like mist over the hills. Carl Djerassi was a scientist, artist, poet, novelist, and playwright, but he

Djerassi Resident Artists Program

on thetrail trail on the

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Alexandra MacDowell

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As Herron and I climb from the wooded parking area to the top of the property, oak woodland gives way to clear blue skies. Raptors circle overhead near “Torii,” a

17-foot-tall structure, carved from a single chunk of reclaimed old-growth redwood, that resembles a larger-than-life pi symbol. In Japan, torii, which translates to “bird abode” or “bird gate,” is a gate marking the entrance to Shinto shrines, signifying the transition to the sacred world. Lichen decorates one side of “Torii,” made by Sonoma-based artist Bruce Johnson in 1983. The sculpture’s weathered wood frames a ridgeline of undulating hills and, far below, the shoreline and breaking waves of San Gregorio State Beach. With its location at the top of the property and prominence on the skyline, “Torii” has become the symbol of Djerassi. Next we descend into the heart of the property, where the artist’s studios look over the valley, and then we wander farther into the wild fringes. The trail meanders through shady redwood forests, oak woodland, and madrones, past grasslands and sun-baked chaparral. Paola Cabal, a former resident, used to walk this path often. “It’s a space that really filters into your subconscious and becomes part of your dreams,” Cabal says. “I can’t think of any other residency that has the same insane beautiful acreage to just get lost in.” In a redwood grove we come to a large stump nestled among its towering relatives. Alyssa Neglia made “Roots to Crown” in 2006 by upholstering the redwood stump—the remains of a logging victim—in dark red vinyl, covering it from cushiony seat to the contours of its twisting root system. As filtered light falls on the forest floor, the stump takes on a sacred quality. “It takes something that is sad and makes it beautiful,” Herron says. We weave through chaparral and then back into another redwood grove, where Herron points out a healthy understory of sword fern and false Solomon’s seal. “Nest,” created by Cynthia Harper in 1997 from madrone and redwood branches, rests among the plants. Several feet high when first created, the sculpture was held together by wooden dowels that are now coming apart, and the piece is collapsing. Perhaps—as Harper had hoped—birds or other animals have carried off some sticks to use in their

T H E

Torii is the symbol of Djerassi. Standing in front of the iconic sculpture are (left) Malcolm Margolin, founder of Heyday books, and Dale Djerassi, whose father first purchased the land in the 1960s.

ed—the old cattle barns and ranch manager’s house were renovated into artist studios—to welcome larger coed groups of artists. “That my father could have the vision to create something like that out of something so tragic is of great personal meaning to me and the legacy of my sister,” Dale Djerassi says. “This is not a monument; it is a living, breathing, dynamic institution.” To date, 2,400 artists from more than 50 countries have wandered these rolling hills, and the sculpture collection has grown, some pieces made by the program’s artists, others commissioned. Even nonvisual artists such as writers, poets, and composers are encouraged to create physical pieces for display here. On the 2-mile hike you can see three of writer Cintia Santana’s poems brought to life on signs placed at the bases of redwoods. These “Footnotes” draw attention to the trees, encouraging the reader to consider them in the context of the landscape. In 1999, the Djerassi family’s foundation donated half of the ranch’s 1,300 acres, including Pamela’s interest in the property, to the newly formed nonprofit Djerassi Resident Artists Program. That gift created the largest artist residency on the West Coast. A conservation easement with the Peninsula Open Space Trust protects the program’s land from development, preserves its conservation value, and ensures it is open to the public on a limited basis.

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may be best remembered as the man who helped invent the birth control pill in the 1950s. Money from the invention allowed him to purchase property west of Skyline Boulevard, and over the years he turned it into a substantial Shorthorn purebred cattle ranch. Djerassi built a house on the land, as did his daughter, Pamela, and son, Dale. Pamela, an artist and poet, lived there with her husband. Tragically, in 1978, when Pamela was just 28, she took her own life. To honor his daughter’s work, Carl created a small family foundation and started the residency program. The first artist invited to live and work on the family’s land for a year was Israeli artist Tamara Rikman, who began her residency in 1979; three other female artists followed. But the fourth commented she sometimes felt isolated there. “That struck a chord with everyone with respect to my sister, who was alone there a lot,” says Dale Djerassi, a founding trustee of the program. And so in 1983 the program expand-

T R A I L

Hear, a giant earpiece and megaphone, captures both the sounds of the valley and helps you project your own.

Lech Naumovich Photography, lechphoto.com

T H E

As we leave the redwood forest, Herron leads the way through golden grass. The Djerassi property spans roughly 128 acres of grassland, home to rodents and prowling bobcats, and includes rare

coastal prairie grasslands that support a rich diversity of wildflowers. Herron, who leads Djerassi’s environmental stewardship volunteer program, organized a first-ever bioblitz on the property in July 2017. Volunteers documented more than 30 species of plants and animals in iNaturalist, including the Acmon blue butterfly, skunkweed, a waxcap mushroom, and a pygmy nuthatch. Beyond the prairie’s whispering grass lie patches of scrubby coyote bush. On sunset hikes you can listen to coyotes yip and the birds perform their evening chorus through a wooden megaphone constructed from old fence boards. “Hear,” made by Aristotle Georgiades in 2013, is also for yelling into, creating a wave of echoes in the valley.

Cool scented air greets you as you descend into a grove of redwoods where Harrington Creek follows its course. Harrington Creek is a major tributary in the San Gregorio Creek watershed, which environmental groups and state and federal agencies have targeted as a place to bring back coho salmon. “What we do on our property can affect the health of this important watershed,” Herron says. She is happy to see redwood sorrel and leopard lily— indicators of healthy redwood forest— growing on the forest floor.

Rachel Diaz-Bastin

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own nests. Artists who choose to create a sculpture at Djerassi are encouraged to make their pieces from natural materials that fit into the landscape and will eventually degrade and return to it. Unlike museums and collecting institutions that take extreme measures to preserve art, Djerassi embraces the natural decay of its works as a way of honoring the land’s natural heritage.

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“Droog,” a word that means friendship in Russian, recalls a time when this forest wasn’t quite as intact. To create the piece, artist Blane de St. Croix started with a charred redwood stump, another relic of former logging operations, and added two pairs of burnt pine legs, emulating the stance of 19th-century loggers when using a two-man saw. Though it evokes loss, it’s one of Herron’s favorite pieces here. “To look at the charred, artistic representations of the legs, of the mysterious men who once stood in that same position and worked together to fell such a huge tree, is really beautiful and eye-opening for me,” she says. “It helps paint a picture of what this place looked like only 100 or so years ago; along with all that destruction there is now beauty, after years of healing.” Herron says the felled tree likely shot up new sprouts, which grew into the giant trees we see all around “Droog.”

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ronments without really noticing what’s going on in them.” The grove makes you stop in your tracks. Some of the pieces lean against the oaks for support. When the trees die the statues will fall. But for now ribbons of light stream over their gray surfaces. All is quiet except for the distant drilling of a woodpecker. It’s a surreal feeling to see human-made objects left to weather and age with the elements, to crack and fall and return to nature in real time. They appear at once so giant and so fragile, so inseparable from the trees.

The panoramic view from Djerassi encompasses the San Mateo County hills to San Gregorio State Beach on the ocean.

Longtime volunteer docent Dennis Ruby leads artist orientation hikes, private hikes, and a new offering he created in 2017 called the “Everything Hike” at Djerassi. The latter covers almost all the sculptures on the property, but since it’s six hours long Ruby wasn’t sure it would be popular. But all five of the Everything Hikes sold out almost immediately. For 2018 he is stepping it up to nine. Ruby’s love of Djerassi goes way back. A veteran docent in nearby parks, he came here with his wife on a public hike in 2008 and loved it, so when the docent program began in 2012 he signed up immediately. “The natural beauty of the Djerassi Ranch is captivating,” he says. A tour with Ruby is one way to see what is perhaps the most unusual piece on the property. The “scultura interventa,” or intervening sculpture, completed in 1989 by Italian artist Mauro Staccioli, consists of six giant plywood and stucco geometric shapes in an oak tree grove. Although they appear opposed to the natural environment, their extraordinary size makes the ancient oaks around them that much more noticeable. “That is the nature of Staccioli’s art,” Ruby says. “He feels as we walk through the environment, whether we live in a forest or in a city, we tend to walk through those envi-

The program hosts roughly 26 guided sculpture hikes a year for groups of 20 to 25 people, including free public hikes, director’s hikes, and newly created “Everything Hikes.” But getting a spot can be tough: Djerassi limits its public hikes so as not to disturb the artists. Last year’s registration for free hikes filled up six minutes after it was announced; this year public hikes open for reservations on February 6 at 9 am. djerassi.org/events/sculpture-hikes

Adam Kuby

Return is a series of disintegrated redwood benches set in the midst of a Djerassi redwood grove and created by Adam Kuby in 2016.

Rachel Diaz-Bastin is a curatorial assistant at the California Academy of Sciences and a freelance writer and illustrator. Find her natureinspired artwork on Etsy.

HIKING IN DJERASSI

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san francisco

south bay

Eric Simons

Regina Starr Ridley

east bay

Dan Hill

e s e wthhe e r e . . t. r a i l oln

Doolittle Pond Wildlife Sanctuary

Walter Haas Park & Billy Goat Hill

Stevens Creek

Arrowhead Marsh is well known among East Bay birders, but some may not know that the MLK Shoreline includes other segments of the more than 9-mile perimeter of San Leandro Bay, several of them well worth visiting. Doolittle Pond is one, a largely undeveloped wastewater reservoir on Bay Farm Island, much favored by migrating and local waterfowl. There is parking at the pond, but we got there from Alameda on the Bay Trail, crossing on the very grand pedestrian drawbridge, where there’s a fine view of San Francisco. The bridge opens for boat traffic about 360 times a year, which must be exciting for the swallows that nest there. Across the sparkling water, a rowing team powered a broadbeamed boat that looked more like a Roman galley than a racing shell. The asphalt shoreline trail skirts a mounded landfill and runs about half a mile to the pond, which is imperfectly separated from the Bay by riprap levees. It was a very high tide, so Bay water was gushing over them into the pond, and rafts of ducks had gathered there, along with three white pelicans busily scarfing up small fishes. Several terns were hovering and diving, while sandpipers scurried in the rocky shallows. Circumnavigating San Leandro Bay by bicycle to take in all of the MLK Shoreline would be very feasible; bike routes are provided at places where no shoreline trail exists. DETAILS : Most of MLK Shoreline is amply furnished with informative signage, toilets, and picnic sites, but Doolittle Pond has only a few benches. Dogs and bikes are permitted. —Ann Sieck

The best neighborhood parks offer a little something for everyone. Two perfect examples are Walter Haas Park and Billy Goat Hill, wedged across the street from each other on a steep slope between two central San Francisco neighborhoods. Popular with young families, hearty joggers, teenagers, and tourists who somehow find their way here far from the beaten track, these connected parks are enjoyed by many but never seem crowded. The 4.4-acre Walter Haas Park has a playground, basketball court, picnic tables, fenced dog run, and a spacious grassy play area. A wonderfully placed bench invites you to stop and soak up a panoramic view of downtown San Francisco. Then you can hike down the steep, wooded 680-foot new trail that connects the parks. At the bottom, you cross quiet Beacon Street and walk into the equally steep but much more open 3.5-acre Billy Goat Hill. The entire trail through this former goat pasture offers continuous breathtaking city views, with a railed vista point bookended by two large eucalyptus trees. Part of the city’s Natural Areas Program, Billy Goat Hill is predominantly grasslands that in the spring are a colorful profusion of purple and white wildflowers attracting butterflies and birds. This area has the city’s highest diversity of bee species and is one of few places in San Francisco where the native California saxifrage blooms. DETAILS : Street parking is available at all three entrances to these parks: Diamond Heights Blvd. and Addison St.; Beacon St.; and 30th and Laidley streets. Be prepared for steep trails. —Regina Starr Ridley

The Stevens Creek Trail can feel like an island of California nature in the sea of Silicon Valley sprawl. The nearly sixmile paved trail through Mountain View isn’t a place for hiking, necessarily, but a place for runners, walkers, and bikers to find and contemplate nature in an area where you’d have to drive awhile to find anything else like it. The creek itself, once a shallow seasonal creek and wet meadow, runs through a deep-cut artificial channel. Coast live oaks and eucalyptus grow out of the muddy banks. In a few places, restored native plant landscapes are part of a wildlife corridor. Matilija poppies burst at head-height at the southern end of the trail. As you move north, the trail gets leafier with oaks. Acorn woodpeckers and squirrels rustle the canopy. Near Middlefield Road the trail forks into Creekside Park, where there are picnic benches and a children’s playground. The trail leads north from there under Highway 101, then onto a narrower path between NASA’s Ames Research Center and the Shoreline tech campuses. The trail continues to the edge of the Bay; from there you can end or begin a hike with a panoramic view of the South Bay salt ponds 1 and restored wetlands. DETAILS : Start at either 3 end of the trail or at most street crossings. Get there by car or Lyft or Uber, depending on who/what you’re disrupting. There’s easy entry at the trail’s bayshore side off of La Avenida St., or at the trail’s southern terminus at Dale Ave. and Heathersone Wy.—Eric Simons

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

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NEW FROM HEYDAY Birds of Berkeley Oliver James

“Whether you are an experienced birder or just learning natural history, this book will deepen your sense of place and open insights to beauty, wonder, and connection to the natural world.” —John Muir Laws Author of “The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada”

Paper over boards, 5.5 x 8.5, 80 pages, full-color illustrations throughout, e-book available ISBN: 978-1-59714-407-0 ($25.00)

Available at your local independent bookstore or at www.heydaybooks.com

We’re celebrating our 40s! Can you imagine the Big Sur coastline as a series of seaside developments? Thanks to the donors of Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT) many of the spectacular landscapes and iconic views in Big Sur and beyond have been protected. BSLT is a non-profit working in coastal, inland, remote and urban open spaces – increasing access to public parklands and ensuring the long-term viability of working landscapes and significant habitats. As an accredited land trust, we provide places where people and nature thrive – creating more possibilities for lasting prosperity and health.

Our human legacy can be measured by the landscapes we leave behind. Please join our supporters who have helped BSLT conserve and care for over 40,000 acres throughout Monterey County by donating at bigsurlandtrust.org

Conserving over 40,000 acres in 40 years. j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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PRODUCED BY BAY NATURE FOR THE EAST BAY REGIONAL PARK DISTRICT

trings of birds have been passing overhead for the past 40 minutes. There are wobbly lines of starlings, Brewer’s and tricolored blackbirds, all of them flying east toward the sliver of sun that’s pushing above the horizon. They’re commuting to the farmland in the Central Valley where they’ll feed for the day, and tonight they’ll come back here to the Delta to overnight in the tule marshes. The sky is still a diluted blue, and as the flocks fly they call to one another, a cacophony known as the “dawn chorus.” Mike Moran is pointing out and naming the birds as we stroll toward the water’s edge. We’re getting ready for an early morning kayak trip to seek out some of the birds that live around Big Break Regional Shoreline, which sits at the edge of Oakley, a small bedroom city on the San Joaquin River. The park and region is a hot spot for birding, and I’ve been curious about watching birds from the water, from a different perspective. “You can see the Delta from the Delta’s point of view,” Moran says. And then right over our heads sails a clump of dark-colored bodies with long curved bills. “Those are ibis!” Moran whoops. “That’s crazy. White-faced ibis you see as you drive up Highway 99 north of Sacramento in all the rice fields. They’re lousy up there. But I’ve never seen a flock of them here.” In fact, he says, this is the farthest west he’s ever sighted ibis. Moran’s been a naturalist with the East Bay Regional Park District for nearly 25 years and became supervising naturalist at the Big Break Visitor Center when it opened in 2012, so I make a note to look up where else white-faced ibis have been seen in the area. (That night I check eBird, a website where birders can b ay n at u r e

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record their sightings, and the last sizable flock of ibis noted at Big Break was in 2000.) “Well, that’s the sighting of the day,” he says.

We slide our two-person kayak from the muddy alcove near Big Break’s viewing and fishing pier into the still water. We’re in a shallow inlet off the San Joaquin River where the current is calm, perfect for watching birds from the water. It’s among the handful of areas in the Delta that hints at the region’s past richness in wildlife. About nine miles downstream from here the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers converge, funneling 40 percent of California’s freshwater toward the San Francisco Bay and beyond. The tides from the Pacific reach 60 miles inland to raise and lower the water twice a day at Big Break. That mingling of salt water and freshwater, the swell and sink of tides, and all that dynamism are the ingredients for good bird and wildlife habitat. Emergent freshwater wetlands like those found at Big Break, that support tule and willow, grew across 746 square miles of the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta before the Gold Rush. Today about 16 square miles of freshwater marsh remain. Big Break protects roughly a half square mile of that. Hardly 50 feet from the shore, a giant, stilt-legged contraption, sagging at the shoreline, comes into full view. Perched on an arm of it a snowy egret eyes us carefully. Moran tells me that resting in front of us is a piece of San Francisco and Delta history. In 1878 State Dredge #2 became the second dredge ever

Robin Mayoff, rhmimages.com

Birding by Kayak at Big Break

commissioned by the state of California to scoop silt from the bottom of the Bay. It was deployed to deepen the approaches and berthing areas near the San Francisco wharves. Scuttled back here in 1932, the dredge is now part monument to another era and part living sculpture. “This did the most of any bit of technology to change the Delta,” says Moran, “and now it’s out here getting reclaimed by the Delta.” Alders grow up and around the barge; a tangle of Himalayan blackberries consumes much of it. “You can see there’s stuff all over the place—a barge over there, a hopper over here. A lot of these islands have square corners because they’re old barges.” The wildlife seems to be making do with what’s here. We stop paddling by a rusting hopper that once funneled things like grain or gravel onto a barge and now protrudes from the water like a giant tulip. Stuck to one side is a honeycomb-like collection of earthen nests built by cliff swallows, one little mud ball at a time. Moran tells me that when the tide goes out, the cliff swallows head for the soggy shoreline to collect beakfuls of mud. They fly back to the nest, deposit their scoop of mud on the wall, and slowly stack them row upon row like bricklayers. Nine hundred to twelve hundred mud balls later a cylindrical nest is stuck to the wall—of a cliff, a building, or a piece of the past—and next to it are more and more of the colony’s nests. A different kind of monument to industry. Like much of the Delta, the area around

Big Break was once cordoned off by levees that held back the marsh, the seasonal floods, and river to make way for farming on its rich soils. In 1927, a levee that kept out Dutch Slough and the river crumbled, causing 2.5 square miles of asparagus farm to flood—hence the name Big Break and the noticeably bulbous shape of the inlet. The levee was never repaired, the tule marsh returned, and to this day stray stalks of asparagus grow up amid the grasses surrounding Big Break.

We have barely left the cliff swallow nests when a blackcrowned night-heron sails overhead, settling into the branches of a willow tree on the shore ahead of us. Before I can ask about the heron, Moran breaks in: “Oh! There’s an otter, off to your

Rick Lewis

(above) From the shore looking northwest through tules and over Big Break toward the San Joaquin River. (right) The long curved bills on white-faced ibis make them easy to identify.

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BAY NATURE / EAST BAY REGIONAL PARKS DISTRICT

left, off to your left!” We watch the brown head of the river otter bob up and down right to the edge of a disintegrating platform—another abandoned barge—and hoist itself from the

Kayaking At Big Break you can bring your own kayak, join EBRPD’s regularly scheduled trips, or work with a nearby private outfitter. The boat launch is a small clearing at the muddy edge of the water adjacent to a viewing and fishing pier that juts 100 feet into the quiet inlet. • If you bring your own kayak, you’ll be happy to hear there’s plenty of parking in the Big Break lot, and the park makes carts available to help you move your gear the quarter mile from the lot to the launch. • The EBRPD schedules kayak trips about once a month that include an introduction to kayaking on land, followed by a 1.5- to 2.5-hour paddle with a park district guide. The “stable touring” kayaks hold one or two people, and you must be at least 8 years of age (11 for birding) and accompanied by an adult to participate. All trips are $30 plus fees. Sign up for a trip through the district’s Regional Activities guides (ebparks.org/activities) or by contacting the reservations department at 1-888-EBPARKS. • Based in Antioch, Delta Kayak Adventures rents equipment and leads trips exploring Big Break and elsewhere. deltakayakadventures.com.

Tides Big Break is subject to daily tides that can rise or fall as much as four feet every 6.25 hours. Tidal stations in Antioch and Three Mile Slough take readings, and Big Break is located roughly halfway between the two stations. A recommended app for keeping track of tides while boating is TideGraph.com.

Birding

water. And then “Ah! There goes a Cooper’s hawk,” Moran calls in a loud whisper. I catch sight of the svelte hawk swooping in toward the tree housing the night-heron. With a disgruntled squawk, two herons lift from the branches and then resettle. “It’s a juvenile and an adult,” Moran explains, pointing to the brown-and-white-speckled younger bird and the black-grayand-white adult. Statue-still in the same tree hunches a great blue heron. A black phoebe hops along the otter barge (where a second otter has appeared), and a marsh wren chatters in the tules. A green heron takes flight. The wildlife is a glimpse of the Delta prior to the Gold Rush when fresh and salt water wound through dendritic channels and spanned the 1,200 square miles of the Delta. Today almost 1,100 miles of levees slice up, divert, and redirect water into deep waterways. Newer technologies dredge silt from the channels, allowing ships from all over to head upriver to the port of Stockton, bringing with them a world of invasive species. But Big Break’s mix of plant life still includes native species, like the tall and slender tule, cattails, and bulrushes growing at the edge of the shore. This type of marsh likely once supported the most diverse population of birds in the Delta. Today the tule marsh at Big Break still shelters California black rails (listed as threatened by the state) and the elusive American bittern, and it’s the hunting grounds of herons and egrets. The black-crowned night-heron and great blue heron we’ve caught sight of are fishing birds, and smart ones. Both species have been noted trying all sorts of tricks to catch fish. The night-heron vibrates its beak in the water to lure prey. It has also waited by a bit of bait, or even placed bait in the water, before picking off curious fish as they swim to the surface to investigate. Blue herons have been seen using the same strategy. The downside to being clever and successfully catching fish in the Delta, though, is the accumulation of mercury in smaller species. The Gold Rush’s legacy of mercury contamination in the Delta travels from little fish to birds to their avian embryos and causes myriad problems that can reduce nesting success. Moran says area naturalists know of one great blue heron nesting colony in Big Break, and though they’ve never found a nightheron nesting colony, “we’re pretty sure there’s one around here. We see so many juveniles.” Almost on cue, seven, eight, and then a ninth night-heron emerge from the tangle of vegetation en masse, taking off across the water. Maybe they’d had enough of the Cooper’s hawk.

For an update on the avian life birders are spotting at Big Break, check eBird.org (Big Break is listed as a birding hot spot here: ebird. org/ebird/hotspot/L2401829).

San Francisco Bay Water Trail In the S.F. Bay Water Trail’s growing network of boat launches,

Robin Mayoff

Big Break is its most eastern “trailhead.” The trail website profiles each trailhead and offers resources and maps for planning longer paddles between them. sfbaywatertrail.org

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We’ve followed the shoreline for roughly a third of a mile since climbing in the boat, and glancing toward the open water I see another brown head pop to the surface, but it’s much bigger. “Is that a seal?” I ask. “Oh, no! It’s a sea lion!” Moran says; “Salmon are running now. It’s an adult male. See that big forehead?” We head into the open water, but the California sea lion catches sight of us and dives just beneath the surface, creating a thick, single wave that travels fast across the smooth

Big Break Animal Guide

(first row) Don DeBold; Lee David Jaffe, bit.ly/leejaffephotos (second row) Marianne Hook; Robin Mayoff; D. West (third row) Rick Lewis; Lee Aurich, aurich.com/photos

1) A cliff swallow prepares to add a beakful of mud to its nest. 2) American coots flush from a stand of cattails at Yolo Bypass in the Delta. 3) The sea lion spotted during our kayaking trip at Big Break was seen later that morning catching a fish. 4) Cormorants perch on the remnant dredging equipment at Big Break. 5) An adult black-crowned night heron waits at the shoreline. 6) Great blue herons seem to be in abundance at Big Break and are known to nest there. 7) A pair of otters spotted during a sunset kayaking trip at Big Break.

7) j a n ua ry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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water. And then suddenly he bursts through the surface, his12/11/17 full v52 500-pound body suspended above of the water. Then he crashes back under, only to burst through and dive down over and over again. Moran and I laugh out loud. I’ve never seen such a display! “That’s called porpoising,” Moran says and then explains that sea lions (usually lone males) do swim into the Delta to hunt. I’m surprised and cautiously happy that for all the Delta’s ailments, it’s possible to see so much life in less than an hour on the water. We’ve encountered more than a dozen kinds of birds, just a fraction of the 150 species seen at Big Break. The Delta has been thick with birds since tides began to reach it some 3,000 years ago. The Pacific Flyway—the route between the Arctic and South America traveled by a billion birds annually— passes right through the area. Between the year-round residents, the migrants that stop every spring and fall, and the individual residents—those birds that for reasons we don’t fully understand decide to stay year-round in one place—many millions of birds rely on the Delta. Imagine the Central Valley before the Gold Rush, when 35 to 50 million birds are estimated to have wintered there. By the time we leave behind a handful of barge-shaped islands and paddle into view of the asparagus farm’s levee remains, I estimate that when we return to the boathouse we will have paddled 1.5 miles, all within Big Break’s boundaries. We are nearing the park’s northern border now, and I can hear the traffic on Highway 160 where it arches over the San Joaquin.

Reduced 93% from version 3. Big Break map covers upper left corner (inner crops) leaving this map L-shaped. Lines remain same thickness but labels are 93% reduced and not enlarged back to original point size/dimensions. Added Delta label in blue, plus route numbers I left off (99 near Manteca, 113 near Dixon). Alternate North/scale location.

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Big Break Regional Shoreline Fishing Pier Delta Discovery Experience

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Ben Pease, peasepress.com

er Am

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Sacramento

BAY NATURE / EAST BAY REGIONAL PARKS DISTRICT 80

Farther out in the main channel, a massive SINOTRANS cargo12/7/17 v3 ship, maybe just arriving from China, motors upstream. Moran peers through his binoculars and points to a frenzy of aerial activity over a patch of tules; it’s a swarm of tree swallows chasing down insects, catching them mid-flight. In front of us is a raft of American coots, the black-feathered chicken-shaped rail common in wetlands. Moran says they’re so plentiful here in the Delta some people call them the rats of waterfowl. If adaptability leads to species abundance, at least American coots have come by it honestly. They’ve been present in California since the Late Pleistocene (at least 12,000 years ago) and their bones were plentiful in Ohlone middens along the Bay. Yokuts used to sew blankets from their skins. As we paddle toward the coots, I realize there are hundreds, maybe a thousand of them, clustered in groups on the open water. Moran tells me to cup my ears and listen. All at once the coots begin to move in a single direction, flapping their wings and slapping their webbed feet against the water in a drawn-out sprint across a frothy surface. In the rising roar of their splashing I hear the old sound of birds in the Delta taking flight. Victoria Schlesinger is Bay Nature’s editor in chief. Facilities & Trails Big Break Regional Shoreline has accessible bathrooms, multiple shaded and unshaded picnic tables, and short and long trails. There’s a paved half-mile path to the water and back, as well as a longer paved regional trail that follows the estuary for some 2.5 miles before connecting to the 6.5-mile Marsh Creek Regional Trail. The Big Break Visitor Center at the Delta provides insight into the Delta’s history, ecosystems and species, along with maps and books, and naturalists there can answer your questions on boating and other details.

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11/20/17 10:05 AM b ay n at u r e

ne night a little more than a year ago coyote 02M took off into the dark.

He’d been born in the Presidio, San Francisco, likely a year and a half before, in an earth den dug under a log and hidden by English ivy or in the pit left by a windfall cypress. For months he wriggled in a mass of brothers and sisters, playing and fighting, waiting for his parents to show up with a nice dead rat. Then, a bit older, he scampered through the landscape of palm trees and cream-colored buildings with red-tile roofs, the smells of ocean and hot pavement, learning to listen for the scratchings of gophers underground and to catch his own. But for the past while, he’d been restless. Pale, with stilt legs, enormous ears and an anxious expression—the picture of a gangly adolescent—he was old enough to want his own territory and a mate. The unease pushed him down to Lands End and back, long-distance pacing. b ay n at u r e

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And now it was time to go. Heading south, 02M left the restored meadows and eucalyptus forest for the habitat of Home Depot and InN-Out Burger. During the day he’d hide and sleep, then at night he continued on, parallel to the highway, poking around Millbrae and San Mateo, exploring the manicured fantasy of the Stanford campus. But he kept moving, sniffing around the backyard pools of Los Gatos, until he ended up at Highway 17. Loping along the edge of the road, as he’d done for miles already, would take him into the Santa Cruz Mountains, with its acres of tall redwoods and deep shade, a larger stretch of wild land than he’d ever seen. Maybe mountain coyotes chased him off. Or maybe he just felt more comfortable with the tinge of exhaust and mowed lawns that reminded him of home. Either way, he circled back and gravitated toward a swirl of off-ramps and on-ramps where 280 met 85, living off mice and voles he found in the dry grass

Jaymi Heimbuch, urbancoyoteinitiative.com

COYOTE

TRACKER

San Francisco’s Canis latrans and our uneasy embrace of a predator’s return.

(left) A neighborhood coyote, known for stealing and trash on the side of the freeway. animals could be followed, and a colored newspapers off porches to play with, befriended When Jonathan Young, the Presidio Trust tag in each ear, so they could be identified the paper delivery man; he started throwing the ecologist who’d been watching satellite data through binoculars. coyote her own morning copy, keeping them both out of trouble with the customers. (right) from 02M’s GPS collar trace across his computer Though coyotes have been back in San Ecologist Jonathan Young holds a coyote skull in screen in the Presidio, saw where the coyote Francisco since at least the early 2000s, this the Presidio, San Francisco. was hanging out, he had a sinking feeling. Sure is the city’s first radio-collared population. enough, a few days later, California Fish and Wildlife called: And ecologists like Young hope that in addition to providing “We’ve got your animal.” 02M had been hit by a car and killed. a trove of scientific data, the collars will help two toothy, Coyote 02M was one of seven coyotes living in the national intelligent species share the dense streets of the city. “My goal park that Young and others radio-collared in 2016, hoping to see as a manager here is to minimize, to the extent possible, conflict how they interact with each other, avoid or approach humans, between humans and coyotes,” he says. It’s not the easiest task. navigate city life. In the spring, they trapped the alpha female All over the country, predators are returning. The 20thand a one-year-old—02M. Then, in the fall, they caught five century government campaign to rid the country of large pups born that year. They took blood samples, tissue samples, carnivores by shooting, poisoning, and trapping has, for the hair and whisker samples, and anal, ocular, and nasal swabs, most part, stopped. The results—exploding prey populations, species on the brink of extinction—were deemed too damaging, collecting a wealth of information about DNA, dietary habits, overall health. Then they attached a tracking collar, so the the philosophy of predator extermination misguided. In some

j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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Sebastian Kennerknecht, urbancoyoteinitiative.com

by Kim Todd

Jonathan Young

cases, carnivores are escorted back in cages in planes or trucks, like the wolves brought to Yellowstone in the 1990s, or swift foxes released on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. In still others, though, they invited themselves in. But none has made itself as welcome as quickly—and as deep in the urban core—as the coyote. In New York City, they scavenge outside the jail at Rikers Island. They birth pups in concrete dens by Chicago’s Soldier Field. They lope down streets at night in Los Angeles, skyscrapers glowing in the background, and trigger home security cameras in Houston. And in the Bay Area, one cocks an ear and lets a car pass near Telegraph Hill. Another paddles in the pool ruins of the Sutro Baths. Estimates suggest a San Francisco population Each GPS point on the map represents a recording of the alpha female coyote’s location over a six-month of between 50 and 100. period, shedding light on behavior patterns, habitat preferences, and movement corridors. As Dan Flores argues in his 2016 book Coyote America, human alterations of the landscape may benefit coyotes highways, and railroad tracks into the downtown shopping district. in all kinds of unexpected ways. Perhaps, he writes, coyotes are And the question arises—now that they’re back and predator slaughter is out of fashion—how do we live with them? not in the city despite humans but because of them. In this, they are like house sparrows and starlings, who don’t just tolerate a landscape of stoplights, strip malls, and potato chips. They like it. n Young’s office at the Presidio Trust, a coyote pelt We aided coyote expansion of their range over the past 500 years, hangs on a coatrack, along with a ranger hat. A poster Flores argues, from the core in the interior West as they went lauding “weevils of the micro wilderness,” a shed snake south to El Salvador, chasing flocks of domestic sheep; north skin, and a taxidermied bat in a box decorate the walls. Sitting to the Arctic Circle, following miners; then east to the coastal in the midst of this miniature natural history museum, Young states that we’d graciously cleared of coyotes’ main competition: shows me 02M’s plastic radio collar, battered and gnawed. wolves. We constantly create more habitat for an animal known for Young, who has black shoulder-length hair and black plasticbeing curious and adaptable. And now they are following bridges, rimmed glasses, wears a ranger A Telegraph Hill resident who likes to watch the sun rise over the Bay each morning at Coit Tower often crosses paths with the beige Carhartt jacket and pants. neighborhood coyote. A Southern California drawl, a bit of the surfer, belies the intensity with which he talks about coyotes. He grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, near the Angeles National Forest, where coyotes never left. Neighbors knew coyotes lived close and they took precautions: “if you leave your cat outside and it doesn’t come home, you know it either got hit by a car or a coyote or a raccoon.” But San Francisco is different. Before the recent resurgence, coyotes had been absent for decades, and most residents, unaware of their presence, don’t expect one might show up in Jaymi Heimbuch

b ay n at u r e

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Sebastian Kennerknecht

their garden or along a favorite jogging route. Those who want of a toppled tree. Young points out a camera trap strapped to their city wild-animal-free and those who work for organizations a dead trunk. It’s one of many in this area, and when the den like Project Coyote, whose mission is to “promote coexistence was active, his phone was blowing up with constant text message between people and wildlife,” live next door to each other. And pictures of pups: tumbling over each other, eating a gopher, while coyotes are considered pests in many places, here Young is gnawing a deflated football. But today all is quiet; the coyotes charged with their protection. This relies on the good opinion of hatch their plans elsewhere. a public who doesn’t know much about them. One bite, and it Like denning, dispersal is another fraught activity, as 02M’s story shows. As young coyotes strike out on their own, moving could slip away. through unfamiliar terrain, the likelihood of encountering Almost immediately, radio collars helped dispel rumors that humans increases, often with fatal results. One radio-collared swirled around the coyotes like morning fog. Before the tagging, young male died in Daly City in a backyard full of trash. no one had any idea how many lived in the park. But the collars Another ended up dead in Golden Gate Park and, like 02M, showed the Presidio didn’t host hundreds, only one breeding pair probably got hit by a car. and their offspring. The coyote hordes that observers reported Young and I stop at the base of a hillside covered with wet were often the same animal, seen over and over. A coyote out grass and wild iris, to listen for the radio signal of another itchy mid-day didn’t mean it was sick, only that it might be prime time young male, 04M. The sun is just coming up over the eucalyptus for sunning oneself. at the crest, as Young puts the antenna out the truck window The collars also allow researchers to see where the coyotes are and head off trouble before it starts. During the day, Young tracks the collared animals on foot or in his truck by following the radio signal. At night, he uses the GPS and follows them remotely. Their wanderings leave bright lines all over his computer-screen map, covering the park so completely, the map looks like a kid scribbled all over it with a crayon. One morning in March, Young winds through the Presidio in a pickup truck, past trails and bike paths, past a fresh restoration project, muddy and raw. He’s let me tag along. The alpha female is pregnant, and the dens are potential sources of tension; coyotes, shy at other times of the year, chase off dogs Ecologist Jonathan Young holds up an antenna that helps him track radio-collared coyotes at the Presidio Golf Course in San Francisco. who come near, snarling and frightening their owners. If and turns on the tracking radio. In a dispersal attempt a month Young can find the den, he can warn visitors away by posting before, 04M wound up at a Russian Hill apartment complex, signs. He’s gathering clues—tracks in the dirt near a good water source, a promising lack of raccoons—but for now, it’s still a cowering in a backyard, under a bush. Animal control caught mystery. him and brought him back to the Presidio. Now 04M often spends his days hanging out on this slope, lounging or hunting Scrambling down a slope of downed eucalyptus, footsteps gophers, keeping to himself, maybe waiting for another chance. squeaking on the carpet of ice plant, we move through a forest Faint pings from the telemetry equipment indicate 04M is still bound together by blackberry, checking on a former den site. in the park. He’s close, just not right here. After a night of Several years ago, as Young was searching for dens, he was roaming, coyotes often rest during the day, making them hard walking this trail when a pup tottered right in front of him. to see. We back the truck down the path and park nearby, in a Behind it, he saw the birthing den—the hole left by the roots j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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neighborhood of small houses. Young takes out his binoculars. “You would probably not notice that guy right there. He looks like a rotten log,” Young says and points to a patch of grass by a telephone pole. Nearby, kids scramble over a pile of wood chips; a man in jogging shorts sprints down a hill. Then a coyote, 04M, materializes, curled in a ball in the shade of a nearby acacia. The telemetry equipment has revealed him, not far from the sidewalk. He’s mottled gray and brown with a black-tipped tail and long snout. At the pinging, he lifts his head, ears flat, and lazily opens one eye. Spending a lot of time on his own, separate from the main pack, he might be still hankering to disperse. But this morning, he’s just biding his time, hidden in plain sight.

n September of 1917, a notice appeared on the house of colonel Charles H. Blinn on Edgewood Avenue: “Owing to the reappearance of the ‘Lone Wolf of Sutro Forest’ in our neighborhood, and to allay the fear of parents in safeguarding their children and chickens, this call is issued to the men of this district. You are ordered to report at this post Sunday, September 9, at 4 a.m., prepared to capture this wild animal. Bring your arms and ammunition. (Signed) Hunt Committee” Then, nine years later, on the day before New Year’s Eve, the police got a predawn call from a woman who said “Timber wolves!” Then again, “Timber wolves from Sutro Forest!” “You better go back to bed, lady,” the officer answered and added, for good measure, “There are no wolves in Sutro Forest.” But her call brought a sergeant to Seymour Avenue b ay n at u r e

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in the Western Addition, where a man guarded his basement door against whatever was snarling inside. The police officers opened the door, fired into the dark, and removed the corpse of the coyote, which, the paper speculated, had been searching for a “holiday dinner.” The headline in the Examiner, no less astonished in tone than one that might appear a hundred years later, blared: “Wild West Yet! Coyote Is Shot.” Coyotes persisted for years in San Francisco, even as it burned and was rebuilt, bridges stretched to Oakland and then Marin, the human population doubled. Throughout the early 20th century, city officials and concerned citizens shot them in Golden Gate Park for preying on deer and near Potrero Hill for eating chickens from backyard coops. They were always there, worrying the fringes of the city, worrying the people who cast a suspicious eye on patches of parkland. And then, eventually, after a sustained campaign of hunting, trapping, and poisoning, they weren’t. But the city remade itself, cleaning up hazardous waste sites and restoring wet meadows and tidal marshes, and persecution eased in surrounding areas. The goal wasn’t to welcome coyotes back to the city, but that was the result. They came and made a home, without the permission granted our favored predators— dogs and cats—and beyond our control.

hen I next saw Young, he was staring at his phone in horror. It was early June, pupping season, and we were at the International Urban Wildlife Conference in San Diego, supposed to be attending panels on “Landscape and Socioeconomic Predictors of Urban Coyote Distribution: New York Versus Chicago” and “Diet of Coyotes in (continued on page 42)

Jaymi Heimbuch

A young coyote living at Telegraph Hill completes her morning patrol of the neighborhood. She has become adept at avoiding cars in the high-traffic area.

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How We Forgot Fire

We traded frequent, small fires for rare, big ones. Can we trade back? by Zach St. George | Photographs by McNair Evans

nce, in what is now Northern California, a fire burned across a grassy hill and against the base of an oak. It left a black scar on the tree but didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t kill it. Soot from the fire settled out of the air into a nearby lake. It drifted to the lake bed and soon was covered with other sediment. Five or ten years after the first fire, there was another. Back then, fire came often. Tree ring scars and charcoal layers in lake beds can tell scientists how often fire visited those places. By joining many of these records experts can stitch together a portrait of how the land burned, over centuries and across continents. Fire ecologists estimate that when Europeans arrived in North America 500 years ago, an area more than twice the size of New Mexico burned across what is now the Lower 48 states each year. In California alone, fire annually burned an area bigger than Connecticut. Ignited by lightning or California Indians, these fires burned unhindered for months at a time, creeping through forests, sprinting across grass and brush. For millennia, in what is now the Bay Area, summer and fall brought smoke. Then, slowly, the fires stopped. By the early 1900s, Native Americans were no longer lighting fires, and many Americans had moved to cities. Their attitude toward fire changed, writes fire scientist and historian Stephen Pyne in his book Fire in America. They deemed fire a problem and began snuffing it wherever they could, trying to drive it from the landscape. Mostly, they succeeded. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, says that of the thousands of fires that start annually in the parts of the state where it manages firefighting, it prevents 95 percent from getting bigger than 10 acres. The total area that burns in the Lower 48 each year is no bigger than Maryland. But it now seems that in trying to solve the problem of fire, we only postponed it. j a n ua ry â&#x20AC;&#x201C; m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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his fall the Bay Area was once again shrouded in smoke. The fires that started October 8th and 9th killed dozens of people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses across Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties. They were a human tragedy and an economic disaster, the deadliest and costliest fire in state history. In some ways, California was especially vulnerable to fire this fall—the five-year drought that ended last spring and the accompanying bark beetle problem, which has left more than 129 million trees dead across the state, and the heavy rain that followed birthed a flush of brushy vegetation. But for all the ways the recent fires were unique, they closely resemble other disastrous fires that have burned across the state in recent decades: the 2003 Cedar Fire in San Diego destroyed 2,800 structures and killed 15 people; the 2015 Valley Fire near Clear Lake destroyed nearly 2,000 structures and killed four people; the 1991 Tunnel Fire in the Oakland hills destroyed almost 3,000 structures and killed 25; and the 2017 Southern California fires continue to burn in late December. These are the kinds of fires that remain: They burn when it is hottest and driest and the wind is howling, when fire crews can’t fight them. In trying to stop fire, it is as if we tried to stop the wind and rain, but in our hubris were left with only hurricanes. The situation is getting worse. The number of acres consumed by fire each year in the state is growing, and the number of buildings destroyed annually has increased dramatically over the past few decades. Climate change is a factor—the length of the state’s fire season has increased by more than two months since the 1970s, and seven of the ten largest and eight of the most destructive fires in the California’s recent history have occurred since 2003. As the state’s population has grown, expanding into the wildlands, so has the number of Californians in harm’s way, with more than 2 million homes now in locations at high or extreme risk of damage from wildfires. Holding up the 2017 fire season as a vision of the near future, many are arguing for a change in tactics in our long war against fire. Scientists, environmentalists, federal, state, and local officials, and even the head of Cal Fire all agree that a century of fire suppression is largely to blame for our current predicament. But for all the years, effort, and money it took for us to banish fire, it may be just as hard to bring it back.

n the fall of 1542, the conquistador Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo arrived with three ships off the coast of what is now San Diego. He saw “green valleys, broad savannas, and a great pall of smoke,” writes ethnobotanist Kat Anderson. There is little lightning in coastal California, so smoke almost certainly meant people. How long have people been lighting fires in California? The oldest known archaeological sites in the state are on the Channel Islands, says UC Berkeley archaeology professor Kent Lightfoot, and date to around 13,000 years ago. Greg Sarris, tribal chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, suggests that indigenous people have lived in the state much longer, perhaps since before the beginning of the last ice age. However long b ay n at u r e

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(above) Looking north at Sonoma County’s Hood Mountain Regional Park & Open Space Preserve from Trinity Road in Glen Ellen. An estimated 1,338 acres of the central and southern half of the park were damaged.

they’d lived here, by about 6,000 years ago, the inhabitants of central and northern coastal California were numerous enough to begin shaping the landscape to their purposes. Their activities are recorded on the landscape. Archaeologists have uncovered the plant remains of extensive coastal prairies all around what is now the Bay Area. Such prairies would have been quickly overrun with brush and trees without fire to clear them, U.S. Geological Survey fire ecologist Jon Keeley wrote in a 2002 study. Although the Bay Area gets few lightning strikes, some of these prairies persisted for thousands of years. “It was this whole system where you get a more biodiverse and productive landscape,” says Peter Nelson, a tribal citizen of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria and assistant professor of archaeology at San Diego State who studied vegetation preserved in an ancient house near Tolay Lake, in southern Sonoma County. Fire, he says, made the land “more habitable for people.” It kept the brush at bay, creating conditions attrac-

fuel.” Meanwhile, the garden grew wild. Though the landscape was no less flammable than it had ever been, it only rarely burned.

tive to deer and game birds. It promoted the growth of berries, willows for use in basketry, and other important plants. It made traveling easier. For millennia, the indigenous people of central and northern coastal California used fire to create the landscape they desired. The scene that Cabrillo and other Europeans found was not the wilderness they believed it to be, Pyne writes (speaking of the United States more generally). “Closer to the truth,” he writes, “is that Europe found a garden and has tried to render it into a wilderness.” Archaeologists say that when Cabrillo sailed up the California coast, the Bay Area was one of the most densely populated parts of North America, home to tens of thousands of people. Over the next centuries, most of them died of European diseases or were murdered. European-Americans continued to use fire as an agricultural and landscaping tool for a while, but as they moved to cities, Pyne writes, they came to see fire as a threat. Eventually cities expanded back into the woods and fields, mixing together in what fire scientists call the wildland-urban interface, “a fractal fringe of wooden (and oftentimes wooden-roofed) houses that were, from a fire-behavior perspective,” Pyne writes, “jackpots of

hree weeks after the start of the fires in Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino, I drive through the remnants of a neighborhood on the north side of Glen Ellen, southeast of Santa Rosa along State Highway 12. The first fire started around 9:45 p.m., October 8, followed by 21 more fires in the next six hours. Carried by winds that gusted to 70 miles per hour, the fires sped through vegetation left dry at the end of a long, hot season. “You don’t put something like that out,” says Cal Fire staff chief David Shew. “You just try to get people out of the way.” All told, the fires killed 44 people and damaged or destroyed some 9,000 homes and buildings, the largest loss of homes in the state since the 1906 earthquake, according to Mark Ghilarducci, director of the California Office of Emergency Services; more than $9 billion in insurance claims have been filed so far. The fire has painted the landscape with a surrealist’s brush: here’s an intact split-rail fence surrounding a house gone missing; here’s a set of wooden stairs up to a second-story deck, now freestanding in a field of ash. Charred washer-dryers and brick chimneys poke from the ruins. The blackened ground is flecked with golden oak leaves, dropped in the days after the fire. I roll slowly down the block, past FEMA workers in yellow vests, hard hats, and face masks, out looking for hazardous materials. Near the end of the street I find a man named Phil Clover sifting through the remains of his house. Tanned, wearing a ball cap and a flannel shirt tucked into his jeans, Clover looks at least two decades younger than his 83 years (unprompted, he pulls out his driver’s license to verify this). At 1 a.m. on the night of October 9th, firefighters woke Clover and his wife and told them to evacuate. His wife packed some of their things and went, but Clover stayed behind. He never saw the main Nuns fire, he says. The wind was whistling and the air was filled with smoke, and then there was a blizzard of “red little sprinkles coming down,” he says, what a fire ecologist calls firebrands. They didn’t hurt when they landed on his skin, he says, but they caught the grass on fire. He raced back and forth with the garden hose, putting out j a n ua ry – m a rc h 2 0 1 8

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A newt crawls over fire-singed bay laurel and oak leaves at Audubon Canyon the little fires that grew from the brands: on the front lawn, at Ranch’s Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. the base of the eucalyptus, near the chicken coop. It was while house, he says, as they did at Clover’s house, and as they almost he was focused on the coop that the woodpile caught fire. The did at Salcedo’s. Similarly, roofs should be made of fire-resistant fire spread to his fence, to the storehouse, then to his home. materials and vents should be covered to keep out brands. There was a sound like a jet engine and a brilliant white light. But if a lack of homeowner preparedness was to blame in He retreated to his car, parked in the open space at the end of Clover’s neighborhood, the problem is bigger than it seems. In the driveway, and sat there through the night, breathing the airGoogle Street View images of the neighborhood taken before the conditioning system’s recycled air. He watched his neighbors’ fire, it looks just like Anywhere, California—you could swap it out houses burn one by one. for a similar neighborhood in Walnut Creek or San Diego or San Farther south in Glen Ellen, near Jack London State Park, Jose. The message of Glen Ellen, if there is one, is this: when conI meet Tracy Salcedo. Her street is densely wooded, scattered ditions are ideal for fire, suppression fails, and places that hadn’t with houses, some burnt, others not. I knocked on her door seemed vulnerable suddenly are. It is a hard thing to reconcile. “I because I noticed that her lawn was charred within feet of the don’t think anyone who lives in a place like this forgets about fire,” house, which looked unscathed. She’d evacuated, she tells me, Salcedo says. “It’s more an idea that it just won’t happen to us.” but her neighbor had stayed behind. With a garden hose, he As multiple fire scientists told me, managed to keep the small flames at bay. Across the though, there is no “no-fire” option in street is a house that did burn.* As multiple fire Salcedo’s property, nestled in the woods, seems California; over time, fire will always scientists told me, vulnerable. But more houses survived here than in return. In suppressing fire, they say, there is no “no-fire” Clover’s neighborhood, where the homes sit on flat we’ve really only made a trade, swapoption in California. ground with big yards between. Usually, people imagping more frequent, less dangerous fire Over time, fire will ine that wildfire burns through a neighborhood in an for less frequent, more dangerous fire. always return. advancing wall of flame, burning house after house, For decades, scientists and environ“like some bombing raid or a tsunami,” says Jack mentalists have been arguing that we Cohen, a retired Forest Service fire scientist who studought to trade back, even if that means ies how buildings ignite. What actually happens, he says, is more we have to light the fires ourselves. commonly like what Clover described: firebrands igniting many small fires at once. Thrown off by vegetation or burning struc arlier in the fall, I traveled to Kings Canyon National Park tures, these brands can travel for miles ahead of the main fire. Fire to join park employees and area fire crews while they lit crews are ill-equipped to stop these scattered blazes, and many of prescribed fires. The park’s iconic giant sequoias are able to surthe small fires have time to grow into big ones. Cal Fire’s Shew vive repeated small fires, but the clot of vegetation that grew up says that the majority of the homes destroyed in the October fires over decades of fire suppression threatened many of the groves likely ignited this way. with deadly crown fire. Foresters have been lighting fires in Homeowners could be better prepared. The day after the fire Kings Canyon and the adjacent Sequoia National Park since the nearly burned her house, Salcedo and her son tried to fireproof late 1960s, and the effort is known as one of the best, longestit. They cleared the shrubs growing along the walls, felled a small running prescribed fire programs in the West. plum tree by the front door, and emptied the gutters. These kinds Wearing borrowed green pants and a yellow jacket, I follow of steps, taken in advance, are often what separate burned houses a crew of hotshots down a scrubby hillside as they light it on from the unburned ones, Cohen says. Home ignitions depend fire. They walk amid the brush, waving drip torches, thermosmostly on the 100-foot radius around the house and especially on shaped cans with curlicue spouts that drip a fuel mixture past a the five-foot-wide space immediately surrounding the building. flaming igniter. This is the third prescribed burn in this roughly It’s important to make sure those areas won’t carry fire to the 100-acre section of Kings Canyon, says Tony Caprio, a U.S. *It must be pointed out: What Clover and Salcedo’s neighbor (who Geological Survey fire ecologist who helped plan the burn; the did not want to be interviewed or named in this article) did was dangerous. By staying behind to defend their property, Shew says, last time was in the mid-1990s. The goal for today’s fire, he says, “people are taking a huge risk,” not only to themselves, but to the fire is to reduce the combined weight of living and dead vegetation crews who might end up rescuring them. There is some debate about in the area by 30 to 60 percent. Sometimes it is more practiwhether California should adopt a policy like Australia’s “Prepare, cal to thin vegetation by hand or with machines, but here the Stay and Defend, or Leave Early,” in which well-prepared property comparative elegance of fire is clear: it leaves no mess of wood owners are given the choice of staying behind. For now, though, chips or sawdust, no torn ground. Though blackened, the forest in California, it remains more a discussion among academics than looks open, the way it likely did when Europeans first arrived. among policymakers and firefighters. Shew says there are currently The prescribed fire promotes favored species, including the gino communities in the state where he would endorse a stay-andant sequoias, whose seedlings sprout only on bare ground, and defend strategy. Maybe, he says, at some point, “there could be a reduces competition between older trees, making them more time when that becomes a viable option.”

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(left) A charred earthstar fungus; (right) a burned hillside at Audubon Canyon Ranch’s Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen where new grass has poked up on the trail following rain.

resilient in the face of drought. The fire-fighting benefit of prescribed fire is evident when I visit the edge of the 2015 Rough Fire, which burned 151,000 acres and nearly reached the park’s Grant Grove, which contains the world’s second-largest tree. The fire made it within shouting distance of the tree, General Grant, but then hit an area where a prescribed fire had burned. The change in the wildfire’s intensity is still clearly visible nearly two years after the Rough Fire—on the untreated side, all the trees but the biggest giant sequoias are dead snags, while the uphill, prescribed burn side looks untouched. If no one were there to tell me, I wouldn’t have known there had been a fire on the uphill side. The smoke from this prescribed fire is light gray and smells like a campfire, nothing like the acrid haze that enveloped the Bay Area during the October fires. Dar Mims, a meteorologist at the California Air Resources Board, says that just as there is no “no-fire” choice in California, there is no “no-smoke” choice. He often gets calls from people concerned about smoke from prescribed fires, he says, but the air board generally sees the small, brief releases of smoke from prescribed fire as preferable to a wildfire’s toxic gout, which might last for weeks and affect a quarter of the state. “The more we can do fuel reduction,” Mims says, “The better it is for air quality.” I follow the hotshots down the hill along a trail. At times, there are hints of a wildfire’s danger. When I walk back up the hill, some of the flames have grown to 10 or 15 feet high, so hot that I have to shield my bare hands from the heat. The fire roars and laps high up the trunks of dead snags, and smoke billows across the trail. The biggest objection to prescribed fire is not the smoke, but the possibility that it will escape—as Shew says, “the fire doesn’t know it’s supposed to be a prescribed fire.” In 2012, a prescribed fire southeast of Denver, Colorado, escaped and burned 16 houses and killed three people; more than a decade earlier, an escaped fire entered the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, destroying some 300 homes and buildings. There have been dozens of other escapes and near-escapes each year over the last few decades, occurb ay n at u r e

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ring in roughly one percent of prescribed fires. The potential for unintended consequences can make the practice a hard sell to the public, says Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley fire ecologist. “Any time you do something like that,” he says, “there’s risk.” The risk of runaway fires is part of the logistical tightrope that the “burn bosses” I talk with say they must walk in lighting a prescribed fire, as they try to hit the meteorological conditions that will promote a fire that carries without growing too powerful, get approval from air quality districts, and secure both the money and personnel to carry out the work; the fire crews I meet, now lighting fires, had just come off weeks of fighting fires across the western U.S. Legal liability, too, is a constant worry. Despite these hurdles, prescribed burning seems to be gaining support in California. In 2015, as part of a settlement of a long legal dispute between Sierra Forest Legacy, a conservation nonprofit, and the Forest Service, the two parties signed a memorandum of understanding in which they agreed to, in part, “increase public education and awareness in support of ecologically sensitive and economically efficient vegetation management activities, including prescribed fire, forest thinning and other fuel treatment projects.” Twenty-two other parties joined the memorandum or have since joined, including Cal Fire, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Sierra Club, and several of the state regional air quality management boards. Craig Thomas, the conservation director at Sierra Forest Legacy, says the broad group of signatures reflects a “growing, mutual recognition that fire exclusion has been a bad idea.” In a March 2017 State Assembly hearing, Ken Pimlott, the director of Cal Fire, told members of the Assembly that prescribed fire is the best way to reduce the intensity of wildfires. “From Cal Fire’s perspective,” he said, “certainly prescribed fire fuels treatment is a priority.”

meet Sasha Berleman just down the road from Glen Ellen, at the entrance to Bouverie Preserve, a month after the North Bay fires. We drive up from the road, passing a few cows resting in a burnt field on one side and an oak woodland on the other, and park in a lot overlooking what used to be a large cluster of buildings. Berleman is the resident fire ecologist at Audubon Canyon Ranch, the conservation nonprofit that manages the preserve. She leads the way down to the burned buildings, followed by her dog, Chicago, a small yellow curly thing. Berleman spent October 9th at the preserve, trying to save what she could. The area had been washed with firebrands thrown by the knobcone pines two ridges over, and by the time she’d arrived that morning many of the buildings were already on fire. With the help of a retired Cal Fire chief, she managed

to save the historic house of David Bouverie, who founded the preserve, but most of the buildings were lost. We walk past her boss’s house, burned to its foundation. Chickens meander around the wreckage. Kids’ toys lie scattered in the yard. She’d been planning a prescribed burn in the dense oak woodlands adjacent to the compound. The historic buildings weren’t designed with wildfire in mind, but still, she says, “I just keep thinking if I’d had one more year to get those fuel treatments done, there’s a good chance those buildings would’ve survived.” We walk up a path east into the hills above the buildings. On the north side of the path is an oak and bay woodland. The trees’ leaves stick out all in the same direction, as though someone has dragged the boughs with a pomaded comb. The fire came through here so fast that the hot wind sucked all the moisture from the leaves without catching them on fire, Berleman says. The ground beneath the trees is charred deep black. On the south side of the path, just a few feet away, the ground is still brown, the grass unburnt. This is one of the areas where she’d lit a prescribed fire last May. Illustrated this way, with the aftermath of prescribed fire on one side and fire suppression on the other, it seems like an easy choice. If not an outright panacea, prescribed fire at least seems capable of righting many of the wrongs of fire suppression. Look around, and you’ll find plenty examples of people lighting

prescribed fires—in the North Bay alone, land managers at Point Reyes National Seashore, state and county parks, and land trusts have all employed fire to manage fuel loads and encourage native flora and fauna. Some 18,407 acres have been burned in the Bay Area over the last decade, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. The problem is scale. The current enthusiasm for prescribed burning is digging out of a deep hole. This fiscal year, Cal Fire aims to treat 20,000 of the 31 million acres in its purview with prescribed fire, and even more in the future. This is a drastic improvement over years of burning only 2,000 or 3,000 acres, but it regularly burned 60,000-plus acres as recently as the 1980s. As Pimlott says, the new numbers may “not sound like a lot, when we talk about needing to burn three or four million acres across the state.” During the March hearing, Pimlott also noted that although the number of wildfires had grown substantially between 2015 and 2016, the agency had still achieved its goal of keeping 95 percent of non-prescribed fires on the lands it manages to less than 10 acres. As David Shew told me, that goal “kind of flies in the face of the natural ecology of the landscape”—a fact that Cal Fire is well aware of. Although the Forest Service and other federal land managers have been able to walk back somewhat (continued on page 46) from all-out suppression, sometimes leaving

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Southern California at the UrbanWildland Interface,” but Young was pacing in the courtyard. The Presidio coyotes had chosen a den right near the crowded Bay Area Ridge Trail, and several surrounded a dog. Social media was on fire. Tweets included “Coyote Aggression on Rise, Presidio Dog Owners Claim” and “Snarling coyotes charge dogs, force closure of two trails in SF’s Presidio.” NextDoor app users spread alarm and bad information. The rumors Young spent so much time extinguishing—about hundreds of coyotes haunting the park, about their bloodthirsty nature—flared back to life. The Wild West crashed into the electronic frontier, and people demanded something be done across all available platforms. The dog owner wanted the coyotes removed. A commenter on a CBS report wrote, “By ignoring the threat of these vermin, these rattlesnakes with legs, City of SF are endangering public safety and putting dogs, cats and children into harm’s way,” and suggested a lawsuit. If that wasn’t enough, not long after, a coyote in Ingleside snatched a Shih Tzu off someone’s front steps. But the response wasn’t as simple as it would have been a hundred years ago: calling the police or forming a posse. Moving a coyote is illegal in California; no one wants anyone else’s rejects. Animals that are trapped have to be killed. And while throughout the state coyotes can be shot in any season and number, the Presidio is a national park. As native animals, coyotes have as much protection as bison in Yellowstone or bighorn sheep in Glacier. And 1in the city of9:55 SanAMFrancisco A4B_BayNature_OctDec.pdf 8/24/17 (COYOTES continued from page 32)

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itself, even beyond the Presidio’s protective boundaries, hunting and poisoning coyotes is prohibited. Even if the Presidio coyotes could be killed, more would move in to take their place. Radio collars have shown how far they travel, with 02M’s sojourn in the South Bay as only one example. When a coyote popped up in the Presidio in 2003, a researcher took a DNA sample and traced it to a northern population. And Marin County, across the Golden Gate from the Presidio, has an endless supply. They would just need to saunter across the bridge—as coyotes have clearly done before—and settle in. Cities throughout the country are scrambling to come up with solutions for coyote/human conflict. In Denver, Colorado Parks and Wildlife tries to gauge the most aggressive individuals in a population and shoots them. Austin, Texas, adopted a resolution to promote hazing—making loud noises, hurling sticks, spraying them with a garden hose—so the coyotes stay wary of humans. For Justin Brown, an ecologist with the National Park Service who tracks coyotes in downtown Los Angeles, the willingness of people to warn off coyotes is key. The collars revealed how close they pass to humans, thriving on tiny habitat patches between construction sites and office buildings. “Don’t let them get super comfortable with us,” he says. “Most coyotes, even if you do that, they’re not going to become a nuisance, but with the subset of them that are, that’s how we allow them to get that way.” (continued on page 44) Many coyotes that turn to trouble have

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been lured to coyote-lovers’ yards by those who leave out dog kibble, either by accident or intentionally, so one option is increasing fines and enforcement for feeding wild animals. As of now, the fines in San Francisco are $196 in city parks and $1,000 elsewhere. But the challenge, according to Deb Campbell of Animal Care and Control, is catching the feeder in action. For now, the Presidio has closed trails near the den and posted signs warning dog walkers to stay away during pupping season. As in Austin, the Presidio encourages residents who find coyotes on their lawns to scare them off. Using the collars, Young keeps an eye on their roaming, an uneasy truce. But the radio-tracking also serves another purpose. In addition to information about behavior, the collars offer a deep look into coyote lives. “There’s all kinds of drama going on,” Young says. “There’s all kind of really crazy, interesting stories that are happening that just otherwise go unnoticed.” Without the satellite data, 02M’s 144 miles up and down the Peninsula and to the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains would have gone unrecorded: “If this individual wasn’t collared or tagged, it would just be another dead coyote on the side of the road.” To further shed coyotes’ anonymity, Young and the Presidio Trust use iNaturalist, a web platform where users can make and share observations of wildlife and plants, to encourage the public to submit photos of coyote sightings. With the different colored ear tags for identification, a user can see shots of, say, 06F, 04M’s

(COYOTES continued from page 42)

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toast-colored sister, with her double purple tags, as she streaks across the road or lounges on a hillside with her family. Combined with radio collar data, iNaturalist shows she, too, is on the cusp of dispersal, venturing into Golden Gate Park some nights. Or 04M, the young male who got lost in Russian Hill and had to be extracted from the apartment complex. A photo posted to iNaturalist in late summer showed three coyotes on a street winding up Telegraph Hill: one glancing up at an apartment from the sidewalk, the other loitering in the middle of the road, and a third emerging from yellowed grass. Young recognized 04M among them. The young coyote finally ended up with a female and pups (that may or may not be his) near Coit Tower. We sort animals constantly: wild/tame, useful/useless, those welcome in the house/those evicted, food/pets. One of the most powerful groupings is those that make us marvel/those that do not. The collars and digital platform offer technologyaided empathy, a way to follow a coyote’s story without chasing or feeding it. As residents mull how coyotes fit into their vision of “San Francisco,” these are potent tools for redefinition, taking coyotes from the category of “vermin” (the place they occupied for most of the 20th century) and edging them into the category of wonder. Kim Todd’s essays and articles have appeared in Orion, Sierra, and Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015. Her most recent book is Sparrow.

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(FIRE continued from page 41) fires burning under preferable conditions,

Cal Fire is more constrained, says Daniel Berlant, the department’s assistant deputy director. “The majority of the land we protect is privately owned,” he says, “inhabited by homes, structures, and infrastructure.” In the North Bay, 81 percent of the fires were on private property. Choosing to let those fires burn wasn’t an option. As the wildfire season stretches, he says, the amount of time that Cal Fire’s seasonally employed fire crews have for prescribed fire and other vegetation management, as well as defensible space inspections, shrinks. The state’s leading firefighting body is trapped in a cycle of fire suppression. Relief will likely have to come at least partly through the efforts of private landowners. Bill Keene, general manager of the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, says that before the October fires, the district wasn’t actively working on fire prevention with landowners on the conservation easements it manages. Going forward, though, he says, fire will be part of the conversation, which might mean allowing activities on easements that wouldn’t have been allowed in the past—including prescribed fire. As the use of prescribed fire by Cal Fire declined in recent decades, its use also declined with private landholders, says Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council, who leads prescribed burning workshops across the state. Scott Stephens, the UC Berkeley professor, concurs. Decades of suppression left the western U.S. with relatively few people (continued on page 48)

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lyngsogarden.com / 650.364.1730 345 Shoreway Road, San Carlos Mon – Sat: 7 to 5, Sun: 8 to 4

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Zach St. George is a freelance reporter living in Oakland who writes about science and the environment.

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Celebrating Trees January 9 - 25, 2018 10 am - 4 pm Daily

PLANTS ILLUSTRATED EXHIBIT

Late October 2017

Northern CA Society of Botanical Artists T

ERSITY o f IV N

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Hikes | Classes | Membership www.pepperwoodpreserve.org (707) 591-9310

FOR

CAL GARD

Thanks to support from people like you, Pepperwood is mobilizing science to help North Bay landscapes and wildlife recover and rebound from the fires of 2017.

Drop by one of our talks or walks.

Late November 2017 Nature demonstrates its resilience as winter rains turn the charred Pepperwood landscape a welcome green

SEE WHAT THE BUZZ IS ABOUT!

JANUARY 20 Walk: Fungal Foray in McLaren Park FEBRUARY 1 Talk: A Bird’s Eye View of Ecology FEBRUARY 17 Walk: Manzanitas of San Bruno Mountain MARCH 1 Talk: Climate Change Impacts on Natives

trained to carry out the work: “We just don’t have that experience to pass on.” But it’s important not to let the current enthusiasm pass, he says—as climate change continues to push conditions toward extremes, as wildfires consume more and more of fire agency budgets, and as the wildlandurban interface expands, it will only become more difficult to bring fire back. During the May prescribed fire at Bouverie, Berleman (who studied in Stephens’ lab) was joined by 12 different fire departments, including members of the National Park Service, the Graton Rancheria, and Cal Fire. There were 75 firefighters there, Berleman says, far more than needed for the 20-acre burn, but the fire was also meant as a training day, an opportunity for firefighters to experience fire in its more benevolent form. Berleman and I continue up the hill. Earlier, down in front of what had been the preserve’s main building, she pointed out a statue of an egret, now surrounded by ashes. People had been comparing the long-necked bird to a phoenix, she says, but she thinks they may be looking too far afield. “I keep telling them they don’t have to turn to mythical creatures for examples of rebirth from fire.” Now, as we climb, we pass turkeys, and a deer, and a flock of roosted doves. The ground is blackened, speckled with golden oak leaves. (FIRE continued from page 46)

Danny Swanson - California Buckeye

cnps-yerbabuena.org

University of California Botanical Garden botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu | 510-643-2755 200 Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA 94720

We’re Serving Up

Spring!

Thank you for all you do to protect Bay nature!

Fruit Trees, Berries & Vegetable Starts Available Now!

Bring in this ad and get 10% OFF on Bumper Crop with a purchase of Fruits, Berries, or Vegetables. Valid through March 31st 2018

4268 Decoto Rd., Fremont 510-797-3222 www.regannursery.com

School group removing French broom near Phoenix Lake. Photo provided by Marin Municipal Water District’s Volunteer Program: marinwater.org/volunteer.

The California Invasive Plant Council has been supporting professional and volunteer land stewards since 1992. Join us! Resources and membership information at www.cal-ipc.org

SAVE BAY THE

Come in and shop one of the largest selections in the Bay Area.

Since 1961, Save The Bay has been protecting, restoring and celebrating the ecological heart of our region — San Francisco Bay. Help inspire care and conservation of our beautiful Bay for generations to come. Bay Nature readers get a free t-shirt when you donate $25 or more to Save The Bay.

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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 September 1, 2017 and November 15, 2017. All Friends receive advance notice of Bay Nature’s “In the Field” outings. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Friends of Bay Nature $5,000+ Bart & Nancy Westcott $1,000–$4,999 Christopher & Kathryn Dann Mark & Paula Lowery $500–$999 Douglas Booth & Margaret Simpson Daniel & Kathleen Brenzel Phyllis Browning Prasad Chakka Herbert & Jane Dwight Sue Estey Tracy Grubbs & Richard Taylor Kathleen Hall & Leslie Murdock Bruce & Leslianne Hartsough Carolyn Johnson & Rick Theis R. Paul Jones Robert Kustel Craig Lanway Mia Monroe Anne Scheer & Jeffrey Wilson Sam Schuchat $250–$499 Janet Alderton Steve Atkinson & Jolane Findley Jan Blum Brian Carr Joe & Sue Daly Philip Gervais Lou Gold Lenny Gucciardi Davis Hershey Louis Jaffe & Kitty Whitman Ann & Michael Loeb Michael Santullo $100–$249 Anonymous (7) Paul Anderson Rebekah Ayers Gordon Benner Charles Thomas Bennett b ay n at u r e

Lisa Buchberg & Ralph Kaywin Paul da Silva Nona Dennis Andrea English & Tom Whiteman Robin Fautley Josh Fodor Christine Halsey Jane Hiatt Darla Hillard & Rodney Jackson Annette Huddle & Gina Solomon Harriet & Robert Jakovina Lee & Winifred Jebian Thomas Johnson William Junor Judith Katz Dave Kwinter James Little Kathy Marshall John & Valerie Metcalfe David Miller Barbara Moulton Peter Neal Karina Nielsen Ruth Nuckolls Phyllis Payne Terry Pedersen John & Penny Pollock Sarah Rivers Martin Rosen Jeanne Marie Rosenmeier Sandra Schlesinger Sara Shumer Susan Smith Annie Somerville & Zach Stewart Robert Strouse Lin Teichman Margaret & Ralph Voorhees $50–$99 Anonymous (2) Elizabeth Agnello Lee Ballance & Mary Selkirk Leslie Barclay Sandy Biagi & David Ogden Avis Boutell & Alice Miller Barbara Callison Elizabeth Carlin Sarah Connick

Joanne Drabek & Thor Start Daniel Drake Mark English Phyllis Faber Charles Garfield & Cindy Spring Valerie Glass Sue Haffner Frederick & Leelane Hines Marc Holmes Vicki Knirck Stuart Koretz Katharine & William Loughman Doug McGlashan Russell Miller & Kirk Pessner Arlee & Dragana Monson Carol Moholt Roberta O’Grady Katherine Ogburn & Grant Thompson Laura Owens Richard Rowland Sue Schoening Ellen & Myron Turbow Dorothy Wachter Arlin Weinberger Kristen Wick Barbara & Tom Wysham $25–$49 Anonymous (3) Mark Bittner & Judy Irving Leif Brown & Sara Webber Matt Cerkel Martha Chase Cheri Collins Sandra Curtis Karen DeMello Phyllis Faber Richard Ferry Andy Fleming Susan Floore Karen Froming Karen Gibson Trish Hare Constance Hunter Elizabeth Littell Peter Ingram & Yvette Pirie Steve McClelland Betty Nelson

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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.

Nadine Peterson & Mike Tuciarone Derek & Janice Ransley Diane & Robert Ross-Leech Susan Scandrett Elaine Michaud & Charlie Stott Linda Wagner Hayley Zemel Funders craigslist Charitable Fund Dorothy and Jonathan Rintels Charitable Foundation Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Jewish Communal Fund Marin Municipal Water District Morgan Family Foundation Publisher’s Circle Members Anonymous (4) Paul & Elizabeth Archambeault Daniel Alegria & Mary Hufty Randy Arnold Marice Ashe & Larry Orman Brian Ashe & Cynthia Rigatti Carol Baird & Alan Harper Valerie Barth & Peter Wiley Louis Berlot & Joyce Cutler Barbara L. Bessey Douglas Booth & Margaret Simpson Richard Boswell & Karen Musalo Connie Bowencamp Stewart Brand & Ryan Phelan

Daniel & Kathleen Brenzel Loretta Brooks & Chuck Heimstadt Phyllis Browning Mary Burns Prasad Chakka Roseanne Chambers Hortensia Chang & John Nelson Jon Christensen Ron & Rosemary Clendenen George & Sheri Clyde Meg Conkey & Les Rowntree Gary Cooper & Brenda Senturia Reed Holderman Cynthia Daniel & Doug Lipton Christopher & Kathryn Dann Thomas Debley Jacqueline Desoer Carol Donohoe Lisa Downey Herbert & Jane Dwight Ed Ehmke & Mary Jane Parrine Paul Epstein & Jennifer Traub Sue Estey Nancy & Jerome Falk Elizabeth Fishel & Bob Houghteling Anne & Mason Flemming Eric Folmer Catherine Fox David Frane & Charla Gabert Harald & Sabine Frey Ilona Frieden & Mark Jacobson Norman Fritz & Fran Mueller Lou Gold Carolyn Greene Tracy Grubbs & Richard Taylor Jommer Gryler Kathleen Hall & Leslie Murdock Margaret Hand & John Hartog Bruce & Leslianne Hartsough

Claudia & Scott Hein Jorgen Hildebrandt Louis Jaffe & Kitty Whitman Harriet & Robert Jakovina Carolyn Johnson & Rick Theis R. Paul Jones Karla Jones Dorothy Kakimoto Jerry & Lola Kent Jaynie Kind Nancy Kittle Gudrun Kleist Robert Kustel Craig Lanway Yvette Lanza & David Sacarelos Matthew Leddy & Gail Raabe Ron & Sandy Linder Virginia Loeb Mark & Paula Lowery Andrea Mackenzie & Jenni Martin John & Valerie Metcalfe Mia Monroe Barbara Moulton Russell Nelson & Sandy Slichter Anita Kelley Pearson Jane & Richard Peattie John & Penny Pollock Frances & John Raeside Maryann Rainey Margaret & Oscar Rosenbloom Sue Rosenthal Mike Sabarese Sara Sanderson & Eric Weaver Guy & Jeanine Saperstein Greg Sarris Anne Scheer & Jeffrey Wilson Bob & Brenda Schildgen Sam Schuchat Susan Schwartz Madeleine Shearer Virginia Slaughter Christopher & Livia Stone

Douglas Temkin Aleks Totic Scott Van Tyle John Waterbury Don Weden Bart & Nancy Westcott David Wimpfheimer In-Kind Donation Gilman Brewing Company Sonoma Land Trust Trumer Brauerei Berkeley Special Thanks Hayley M. Davis Megan Dunlap Jacqueline Gauthier James Hansen Felicia Herron Karen Hipkins Amber Jejune Margaret Levine David Loeb Clark Mosher Phil Osegueda Karen Ramírez Drew Shell Lydia Shih-Day Layla Smith David Wichner Students in San Francisco State University’s “Recreational Use of National Parks & Protected Areas” taught by Dr. Nina S. Roberts, Professor, Dept. of Creations Parks & Tourism: Gracie Anderson Brianna Easley Gracie Ellsworth Makena Guthrie Katie Fitzgerald Jennifer Hauser Sandy Jiang Sharona Kleinman Rainey Korang Lia Monaco Anais Sobczak Grecia Solis Nathan Wong

Join hundreds of Youth

Organize for climate action · Share ideas, solutions and projects Make new friends · Win cool prizes

Saturday, February 4, 24th, 20182018

Laney College, 900 Fallon Street

(right by Lake Merritt BART Station) in Oakland

#Y es C onference

sparetheairyouth.org

Be a presenter!

Email Raquel Trinidad at rtrinidad@baaqmd.gov Deadline: January 3, 2018

The Conference is open to middle school and high school students from the nine Bay Area counties

Alameda ··Contra Costa · Marin · Napa · San Francisco · San Mateo ··Santa Clara · Solano · Sonoma For more information on the YES Conference, visit: sparetheairyouth.org This is a free event. Students are required to have their parents’ permission to attend. The YES Conference is sponsored by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (Air District) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). The Spare the Air Youth Program is a joint-program of the Air District and MTC.

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Birdfeeding Supplies & Binoculars Off Hwy 101 in Novato (415) 893-0500 wbu.com/marin

Specializing in California Native Plants and Habitat Restoration Services

The Watershed Nursery

601 A Canal Blvd., Pt. Richmond www.thewatershednursery.com

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ask the naturalist m i c h a e l q: Which Bay Area salamanders drop their tails when threatened, and how many times can an individual regrow its tail? —Ben, San Francisco a: Well, Ben, when Billy Shakespeare had those witches in Macbeth call for an “eye of newt, and toe of frog” to complete a very special hell-broth recipe, I’m not sure he knew those amphibians could actually regrow those body parts. But they can. And scientists are researching exactly how they do it. We humans can regrow our hair and nails (if we leave the quick), our epidermal skin layer, blood and bone marrow, intestinal mucosa, and some of our liver, and women regenerate the endometrium monthly. But if we lose an arm or a leg we are plain out of luck, with one minor (pun intended) exception—young children can regenerate at least the tip of a finger if a bit of the nail is left intact. In the San Francisco Bay Area there are

e l l i s 11 species of salamanders, including three kinds of newts—the California, roughskinned, and red-bellied. All salamanders are slow moving and therefore vulnerable to predation. So if a scrub jay attacks a red-bellied newt and partially eats or injures the critter, this newt, like tadpoles and most other salamanders, can regrow tails, legs, jaws, ears, hearts, spines, eyes, and even brains. So Ben, all our local salamanders can regrow body parts when lost. Gee, I wish I could regrow brain parts. Let’s say the tail is severed. Immediately some specialized skin cells move to the wound site, seal it, and form a ridge called the apical endothelial cap. In response to molecular signals from the cap, other cells, including fibroblasts (structure-forming cells from skin and connective tissue) and muscle cells, migrate to the damaged area. There they dedifferentiate—revert to a less specialized

state similar to embryonic cells—and form the bud of a new limb, called a blastema. As the blastema cells multiply, they grow into the outline of a new limb and once again differentiate into fibroblasts, muscle, bone, etc. This step is similar to embryonic development that occurs in utero in many creatures, including human beings. The difference here is that no matter what its age, the newt can regenerate almost any body part. Within weeks or months the animal has regrown a new tail. But how many times can they do this? A very patient biologist in Japan conducted a 16-year study. He carefully removed the lens from the eye of a Japanese fire-bellied newt 18 times. And 18 times the newt regenerated a perfectly formed eye. Researchers hope to apply this knowledge in helping humans regenerate body parts. There’s even an initiative at the University of Connecticut to regenerate a human limb by 2030. And where did I find out about all of this? From the newtspaper, of course.

Relax in Alaska

with DOLPHIN CHARTERS www.dolphincharters.com | 510-527-9622 photo by Betty Sederquist

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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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