Bay Nature April-June 2018 by Bay Nature Institute

APRIL-JUNE 2 0 1 8

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Discover Huckleberry Park’s Blooms

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Nature in the City San Francisco Map Your State Parks Seven Years Later Watching Wildlife Move Through Sonoma Valley

Programs in the Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery Exploratorium’s Series Focusing on Environmental Questions upcoming events Nature in the City: Maps Launch with Bay Nature Wednesday, April 18, 2018 6:00–8:00 p.m. Conversations About Resilience: Sediment Wednesday, April 25, 2018 6:00–8:00 p.m. Climate Reality: Science Communication with Cinema Arts Wednesday, May 30, 2018 6:00–8:00 p.m.

The Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery gathers an international crosssection of designers, scientists, policymakers, and artists to grapple with issues that shape the environment in the Bay Area and beyond. Working with partners as wide ranging as NOAA, Resilience by Design, and the San Francisco Estuary Institute, the Exploratorium is committed to engaging dialogue about the environmental issues of our time.

exploratorium.edu/landscape

Lab & Lunch: Sea Level Rise in Venice with Professor Seminara Tuesday, June 5, 2018 Noon–1:00 p.m. Conversations About Landscape: Urban Fellow Sara Dean Wednesday, June 20, 2018 6:00–8:00 p.m.

Pier 15 on the Embarcadero San Francisco 415-528-4444

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WHEN WE PROTECT THE LAND FOREVER, WE PROTECT...

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CASTLE ROCK STATE PARK

1 968 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2018 www.castlerock50.com

contents

april–june 2018

Features 22

Stephanie Penn

Ross MacDonald

Quinton Martins/ACR

HUCKLEBERRY PRESERVE We live in one of the world’s great floral biodiversity hotspots. One of the best places in the Bay Area to see the wealth of California’s native plants is Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve, where rare manzanitas, wildflowers, and trees bloom year-round. by Stephanie Penn

THE NEW CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS Seven years after their financial crisis, California’s state parks still run on dwindling shoestring budgets and grapple with massive maintenance backlogs. But now, with a bond measure on the ballot in June, and new partnerships and new strategies in place, there’s a possible trail to a sustainable future. by Alissa Greenberg

PEOPLE TRAVEL BY ROAD. WILDLIFE TRAVELS BY CORRIDOR. A growing body of science says that animals need room to roam to thrive in a human-dominated world. But how to offer them space when we’ve already fragmented their habitat with highways, levees, and buildings? In Sonoma, conservation groups extol the benefits of wildlife corridors. by Sabine Bergmann

Departments 6

Bay View

Letter from the Editor

Letters & Comments

Feedback from our readers

Opening Shot

The “electric blue tinfoil” butterly

Currents

30 San Francisco

• Prop 68: Money for parks and water • The City Nature Challenge goes global • Bay Area climate change consortium closes • Why fires make mudflows more dangerous • Signs of the Season: Fire- following flowers in the North Bay

14 Conservation in Action

Surf scoters seem to be in serious decline by Mary Catherine O’Connor and Erica Langston

On the Trail A New Guide to Nature in the City A new map captures the migrating green butterflies, eclectic urban canopy, croaking frogs, and other wild nature in the heart of urban San Francisco. by Zach St. George

35 Elsewhere

Filoli Estate; Benicia State Recreation Area; Lower La Honda Creek

46 Local Hero Awards

Conservation Action: Walter T. Moore Interview by Eric Simons

Environmental Education: Lisa Micheli Interview by Nate Seltenrich

Youth Engagement: Sandra Corzantes Interview by Elizabeth Rogers

Ask the Naturalist Jupiter’s Giant Red Spot by Michael Ellis

62 Naturalist’s Notebook

Valuing Buteos by John Muir Laws

VISIT US ONLINE AT WWW.BAYNATURE.ORG

BY VICTORIA SCHLESINGER

bayview

One perennial reason for living in the Bay Area is that there’s no off season for getting out into the parks. In February I went to Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve to explore its self-guided nature trail, where interpretive signs describe the preserve’s unique geology and plant life (page 16). Standing in front of the preserve’s trail map, I chat with a trio of strangers who are curious about the plants, like I am. When I start down the trail, some 200 yards in I pass an elderly couple who say they have hiked the loop; I tell them they’re almost to the entrance. A young guy with headphones passes me, then a couple of runners. I cross paths with a pair of young women chatting happily. I see a hipster couple relaxing on a bench eating, snuggling, and taking in the view of distant Mount Diablo. As I begin to hike up out of the preserve’s canyon, an older woman with hiking poles and I exchange words about the sprinkles of rain starting to fall. She says that while she was sitting in her car tiny beads of hail were bouncing off the windshield. I start walking up the hill a little faster but within minutes the winter rain we’d all been waiting for starts to pelt down in icy, white pebbles. The sound is tremendous, like a great rattle, as the hail hits the thick canopy overhead. I start to run and by the time I make it back to the trailhead the creases in the fabric of my backpack and jacket are packed reservoirs of melting hail. There’s nothing like getting caught outdoors in a good storm to make you feel alive.

Susan Moffatt

letter from the editor

contributo rs Serena Ingalls (p. 8) is a junior at Albany High School and an editorial intern at Bay Nature through the EDSET (Environmental Design, Science, Engineering, and Technology) program. Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth (p. 12) is a freelance journalist and recent graduate of UC Berkeley living in San Francisco. Erica Langston (p. 14) is an environmental journalist and science writer. Her work has appeared in VICE, Mother Jones, and Audubon Magazine. Ross MacDonald (p. 22) is an illustrator, book artist,

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Our parks are where we collect hailstone war stories, where we learn, exercise, socialize, observe, flirt, find solace. Where we ensure animals and plants have space to thrive, and we chat with strangers to encourage and inform each other. So much of the good stuff in life happens in these natural places, and it all depends on our parks functioning in ways we can too easily take for granted. As many readers know, California’s state park system faced a crippling budget crisis in 2011 and as a result 70 of the state’s 280 parks were nearly closed. Since then, it’s been seven challenging years of shoring up and attempting to remake the state system, a subject reporter Alissa Greenberg explores in “The New California State Parks” (page 22), consulting more than 100 sources and people. Not surprisingly, Greenberg found that the climb back from a decades-in-the-making crisis has been messy and complicated, and there’s a long way to go yet. It’s worth taking stock of the progress now, though, because this June a state bond measure that authorizes $4 billion for parks and water projects will be on the ballot (page 9). Since 2011 the parks department has received an average of $121 million annually from the state’s general fund (a fraction of what it costs to manage California’s 1.6 million acres of state parks) making a park bond’s necessity almost preordained. Wrapped up in its passage is whether our park land can continue to provide all of us—in principal the young and old, able bodied and mobility challenged, black and white— with the good stuff that enriches our lives and world. letterpress operator, graphic artist, and cartoonist, who also creates “graphic props” for movies and TV shows, including Hateful Eight and Boardwalk Empire. Lech Naumovich (p. 13) is a resoration ecologist, botanist, and photographer in the Bay Area. Mary Catherine O’Connor (p. 14) is an award-winning reporter whose work has appeared in Outside, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera America, Pacific Standard, and Wired. Stephanie Penn (p. 16) is a fine art and documentary photographer. Her work focuses on California’s nature,

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

Volume 18, Issue 2 april-June 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 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, Tracy Grubbs, Bruce Hartsough (President), Reed Holderman, John Raeside, Bob Schildgen, Nancy Westcott Founder David Loeb Volunteers/Interns Hayley M. Davis, Jacqueline Gauthier, Shidonna Raven Johnson, Milton McClaskey, Serena Ingalls, Phil Osegueda, Sue Rosenthal, Gail Samuels, 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: Fremont’s star lily, or more ominously known as Fremont’s death camas (Toxicoscordion fremontii), is a common native in California that blooms March to May. All parts of the plant contain toxic alkaloids, so don’t eat it. [Stephanie Penn] plants, and wildlife. Elizabeth Rogers (p. 49) is a freelance writer based in Mountain View. Nate Seltenrich (p. 47) is a Bay Area-based, award-winning journalist specializing in science and the environment. Brittany Shoot (p. 35), a freelance journalist and writer, lives in San Francisco. Her writing has appeared in Time, The New York Times, Fortune, and The Guardian. Ann Sieck (p. 35) is dedicated to helping people with disabilities, including those using wheelchairs, find parks and trails they can enjoy. baynature.org/asiecker.

letters & comments A Classic Pairing, Jan-Mar ‘18 I was pleased to read about the cedar waxwings in Sue Rosenthal’s Opening Shot. I have a toyon bush by my front door in Palo Alto, and I have seen these birds feasting on the berries in the past; now I know what they are. But they’re not feasting anymore, not this year or last. I also have a camphor tree in my front yard, which used to swarm with birds when it was covered with black berries. These two plants both still have their berries now…in January! It appears to me that the timing has shifted and when these berries ripen the birds that normally eat them have already left for the winter. Dennis Clark, Palo Alto

[Comments from baynature.org printed with permission] How We Forgot Fire, Jan-Mar ‘18 California has the largest latitudinal range in the western US and comprises a complexity of ecosystems and diverse fire histories and management needs. This article does more to set back public understanding than the author imagines. The need for prescription burning in the Sierra Nevada conifer forests is well documented, and there is clear evidence it is important for replacing frequent natural fires that have been suppressed, and it is playing a role in altering fire behavior of major fire events such as the Rim Fire. This is not the case with other major fire events. Coastal central and southern (Monterey to San Diego counties) California is a totally different fire regime with a very different fire history. Within the perimeter of the Ventura Thomas Fire, there was over 1,000 acres of recent prescription burns and these obviously played no role in altering the behavior of that fire and it is very doubtful in these landscapes prescription burning will solve the fire hazard problem.

Native Americans in lower elevation landscapes most definitely managed their environments with fire, in large part to enhance food resources and provide a more open environment for hunting and travel, protection from grizzley bears, reduce fire hazard etc. They manipulated the natural environment to suit their immediate needs. We can do that too but we certainly shouldn’t justify that decision because Indians did it. The use of traditional ecological knowledge about Indian burning has already proven its value in a number of forests in the northern part of the state. These forests have had a deficit in the frequency of natural fires over the past century and are in need of prescription burning. However, the coastal region in central and southern California has had an excess of burning in the past century. These are nearly all ignited by people, and the much higher human density makes it likely that the level of burning is occurring at a substantially higher frequency than Native Americans practiced. As a result of this excess of fires, Californians have played a major role in the massive invasion of native ecosystems by non-native exotic grasses and forbs. This not only diminishes the conservation value of these landscapes, it has negative impacts on ecosystem services such as watershed hydrology and it has greatly increased the length of the fire season. As evident by the recent Tribal Climate Summit in San Diego, it is apparent that native tribes are increasingly concerned about these and other global changes and are working with management agencies throughout the region to reduce the frequency of contemporary burning. Jon E. Keeley, USGS Sequoia National Park Thanks for this article. To respond to a couple of the previous comments: Over the past century, the coastal region of central and southern California, like other areas of the state, has had an excess of randomly ignited wildfires but a deficit of Indigenous cultural burns, strategically aimed at propagating a fire-adapted suite of

resources. In all these areas, correctly timed and scaled burns would favor culturally valuable plants over undesirable forbs, grasses, shrubs, and trees, and these good fires could also positively affect watershed hydrology. Today, Indigenous practitioners and other cultural burners are dealing with invasive weeds, a changing climate, dynamic fire seasons, challenging economics, and, sometimes, with scientists, activists, and land managers who work against cultural fire programs by romanticizing a mythological, wildernesscentric, hands-off approach to fire. The history of the benefits of cultural burning is clear, and culture evolves— we do not have to choose to relegate an engaged, fulfilling interrelationship of people, land, fire, and water to the past. Jared Aldern, Former Co-Director of Comparative Wests Project, Stanford I think this is a great article. For those of us living in northern California, there is a significant and pressing need to get fire back on the landscape using prescribed fire. (Clearly the issues are different for southern California ecosystems, as Jon eloquently describes). I hope your article can help move public opinion in the direction of accepting a bit of smoke and limiting liability to allow for prescribed fire in northern California. The other part of the equation— and one of the take-home lessons from the North Bay fire—is that we all need to take responsibility to ensure our homes, and the first five feet around them, are prepared to withstand coming wildfires and the ensuing ember storms. I encourage your readers to take the time over the next few months to enclose all vents and other openings into their homes with metal screening (hardware cloth), and clear the first five feet around their homes of any ignitable materials. For more information, please visit “Living with Fire in Northwestern California” at humboldtgov.org/DocumentCenter/ View/59108. Tracy Katelman, ForEverGreen Forestry april–june 2018

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opening shot

PRETTY EARLY The Sonoran blue is a small butterfly, but it leaves a mighty impression

Sonoran blues arrived early this year. The first week in February saw

on those who see it in flight. Its combination of pale blue and vibrant

temperatures in the high 70s across the entire Bay Area, uncomfort-

orange is visually stunning; Bay Area lepidopterist Liam O’Brien likens

able weather for humans expecting it to be winter but just right for a

it to “electric blue tinfoil.”

small insect looking to find a partner and start a family. After mating, a

Actually spotting a Sonoran blue (Philotes sonorensis), however, can be difficult, and not just because of its one-inch wingspan. Sonoran blues only inhabit a few specific areas along the coast from the

female Sonoran blue lays a single egg on a dudleya leaf. The caterpillar that hatches bores into and lives inside the plant. Sonoran blues are generally described as “intensely local,” meaning

Bay Area to Baja, places where they host on dudleyas (succulents in

that while their overall range is large they are only to be found in very

the Dudleya genus). Sonoran blues emerge as adults to fly for a few

small pockets within it. A subspecies on the San Gabriel River went ex-

weeks a year, sometime near the end of winter through the begin-

tinct when its habitat was destroyed in 1968. But where their habitat is

ning of spring.

preserved, the butterflies still fly on warm days in the season we used

Following an unprecedented winter heat wave in February, the

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to label winter. —Serena Ingalls

t o n y i wa n e , t o n y i wa n e . c o m

news & notes from around the bay

CURRENTS

Proposition 68 Index On June 5, 2018, Califor nia voters will find Proposition 68—the Parks, Environment, and Water Bond—on the ballot for their consideration. Below is a breakdown of some of what the bond will fund should voters suppor t it. Total amount authorized in the bond: $4 Money for parks and natural resources:

billion

$2.83 b Money for water-related projects: $1.27 b

Average cost of the bond to each Califor nian: $100, plus $50 in interest over 30 year s Period of time for bond disbursement: pro bably 4-5 years Money to create and expand parks in park -poor neighborhoods: $725 m Grants for local parks on per capita basi s: $200 m Grants for local park districts, open spac e districts, and open space authorities to create, expand, or restore parks: $30 m Grants for local agencies with local park revenue measures: $40 m Money for existing state parks and improvi ng public access: $218 m Grants for non-motorized access to park and waterway projects: $30 m Grants to improve outdoor infrastructure and recreation in rural communities: $25 m Grants for the California River Parkways and Urban Streams Restoration program s: $162 m Money for various conservancies, the Wil dlife Conservation Board, and the Natural Resources agency: $767 m Of the $767 m, grants from Coastal Con servancy to match San Francisco Bay rest oration (Measure AA) funding: $20 m Money for ocean, bay, and coastal protect ion: $175 m Of the $175 m, money for the San Francis co Bay Area Conservancy Program: $21.2 5m Money for climate preparedness, habitat resiliency, resources enhancement, and innovation: $443 m Of the $443 m, money for the San Francis co Bay Area Conservancy Program: roug hly $14 m Clean drinking water and drought prepared ness: $250 m Groundwater sustainability: $80 m Flood protection and repair: $550 m Regional sustainability for drought and groundwater, and water recycling: $390 m

april–june 2018

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CURRENTS

beginnings & endings

A few years ago, Alison Young from the California Academy of Sciences

find a list at citynatu-

and Lila Higgins from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

rechallenge.org.

County hatched an idea for a weeklong nature-finding competition

You don’t have

pitting the Bay Area against Los Angeles. They launched the first City

to join an event

Nature Challenge in 2016, and when a reporter from the Los Angeles

to participate (or

Times called about the event, she asked Higgins how many observa-

even know you’re

tions of animals and plants—be they birds or bunchgrass—the team

participating): Any

thought they’d get. Ten thousand, Higgins said.

observation added to

“When I said 10,000,” she says now, “I was like, ‘Mouth! Shut up!’

City Nature Challenge 2018

City Nature Challenge Returns April 27-30

iNaturalist counts if it’s made in one of the competing

We’re never going to do that!” Yet in one week in April 2016, more than 1,000 people in the two

cities. Just find something alive, or even evidence of something that

regions recorded more than 19,000 observations in the nature app

once was alive, like scat or a shell. Take its picture, and upload the

iNaturalist. Los Angeles scored a narrow victory, and Higgins became

photo to the app along with its location and your best guess at what

the seer of the City Nature Challenge.

the thing is. During the second part of the competition, from May 1 to

Last year the competition expanded to 16 cities across North Amer-

3, experts will weigh in with identifications for as many observations

ica, and Higgins predicted 100,000 observations. It seemed “equally

as they can, to try and determine which city or region found the most

insane,” she says, especially given that the time window was short-

species. Winners in three categories—most observations, most species,

ened from a full week to three days. Didn’t matter: more than 4,000

most participants—will be announced on May 4.

people recorded more than 125,000 observations of more than 8,000 species, with Dallas–Forth Worth emerging as the winner with 23,957

So. How many observations does Higgins say they’ll record this year? “I’ve thought 500,000,” she says. “Which sounds ridiculous to me. Maybe I should be more conservative.” —Eric Simons

observations. This year, April 27–30, the competition goes international, with 70 participating cities worldwide, including London, Berlin, Mumbai, Kolkata,

Join Bay Nature and the San Francisco Public Library to bioblitz San

Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Bogota, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong. There will be free

Francisco’s Noe Valley at 3:30 p.m. on April 27. Find this and more events

bioblitzes and nature-finding hikes daily around the Bay Area; you can

near you at citynaturechallenge.org.

End of an Era for BAECCC, a Group Dedicated to a Climate-Smart Bay Area The name is a bit of a mouthful (Bay Area Ecosystems Climate Change Consortium), but the acronym was surprisingly apt (BAECCC, pronounced “bake”) for an organization dedicated to confronting the challenges—such as rising temperatures and sea levels—of climate change and their impacts on the Bay Area’s natural habitats, watersheds, and shorelines. BAECCC was founded in the spring of 2009 as a collaborative effort of four public resource agencies (California State Coastal Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, U.S. Geological Survey) and the nonprofit Point Blue Conservation Science. The idea, Point Blue CEO Ellie Cohen says, was to “work across boundaries to come up b ay n at u r e

april–june 2018

with viable climate-smart solutions and to incorporate ‘natural infrastructure’ into the region’s response to climate change.” BAECCC, Cohen says, stepped in to “break down the barriers between scientists and natural resource managers, who shared objectives but operated in different worlds,” and eventually expanded to include the active participation of some 30 organizations and institutions. However, at the end of 2017, BAECCC’s funding ran out and it transitioned from a staffed organization to a listserv and website (baeccc.org). It leaves behind a legacy of successful collaborations, but its closing is a potential setback for regionwide action on climate change. What happens now that BAECCC is gone? BAECCC Executive Coordinator Andy

Gunther says the collaborative did its job in “accelerating the preparations for our future climate. Prior to BAECCC,” he adds, “the concept of ‘natural infrastructure’ wasn’t part of the lexicon” utilized by public agencies and corporations in addressing climate change impacts. Now it is. Cohen agrees. “BAECCC definitely broke down barriers and advanced climate-smart conservation,” she says. But “in truth, BAECCC is needed now more than ever,” she adds. “There is an urgent need for those cross-boundary collaborations to help move us beyond studies and vulnerability assessments to actual demonstration projects on the ground and at sea, to determine what works and to share that knowledge.” —David Loeb

Bobcat photographed by motion-activated camera in the post-fire landscape at Pepperwood.

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.

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

science

WHY FIRES MAKE MUDFLOWS WORSE The damage from California’s recordsetting 2017 fires didn’t stop when the flames were finally extinguished. Much of the North Bay saw flash flood warnings early in the winter, while devastating mudslides in the Thomas Fire burn area killed 21 people in Santa Barbara County in January and prompted evacuations in early March. Why do chaparral fires create such a mudflow hazard?

water, creating a hydrophobic soil that is “like covering hillslopes with Saran Wrap,” San Jose State geologist Emmanuel Gabet wrote in January in a comment on the California weather blog Weather West.

april–june 2018

1. The waxy leaves of chaparral plants like chamise help retain moisture in dry Mediterraneanclimate summers. But in a fire, 2. the waxy molecules vaporize in the heat and 3. condense at or just below the cooler soil surface. 4. The condensed wax layer repels

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5. Clay soils usually hold together, preventing small particles of soil from being carried away. But after a fire, when there’s no protection provided by plants, raindrops falling on exposed soil blast apart the soil to create a debris field of smaller clumps. These smaller pieces are more susceptible to being carried away by water runoff—which the hydrophobic soil provides. “Everything conspires,” Gabet wrote, “to increase both the erodibility of the soil and the erosivity of the runoff.”

Kaitlyn Kraybill-Voth, kaitlynkraybillvoth.org; Source: Emmanual Gabet, San Jose State

CURRENTS

signs of the season

CURRENTS

Only weeks after the destructive forces of our rare flora, and yet of the North Bay fire last fall, new life our protected habitats are started to emerge on the land. Viewed no longer subject to the across the more than 200,000 acres of landscape-scale disturbance blackened landscape, some burn patterns that might clear the way for were familiar, like the 1981 Atlas Peak those early succession speFire’s imprint, while others wandered. cies to thrive. Entirely new areas were also torched— Resprouters are a unique for instance, the Sonoma Mountain area, group of hardy, resilient formerly untouched by fire in modern plants often able to surrecord-keeping. A unique combination vive even the hottest of of Diablo winds, fire weather, vegetation fires; they tough it out age, and sheer chaos created an unprecand then quickly rebound. edented burn perimeter that will surely Traits making this possible lead to botanical surprises this spring. include thickened bark; a In the area around Atlas Peak, the diversity of lightly or severely burned landscape In some areas, the fire seemed to due to the North Bay Fires remains evident in February 2018. swollen, bud-filled root move slowly and quietly, only burning crown (lignotuber) that althe forb (non-woody) layer nearest the earth and lightly scarring massive oak trunks. lows resprouting, and expansive root systems These sites show a low burn severity, which will likely yield a vegetation community very that store carbon. In particular, live oaks, cotsimilar to what existed the preceding year. In other areas, the fire severity was extreme, tonwoods, coffeeberry, toyon, and some (not erasing nearly all above-ground biomass and often leaving a gray pile of ash. Manzanitas, all) manzanitas can stump-resprout and then ceanothus, and a suite of surprising fire followers can erupt from these more severely make use of the increased light and nutrientburned areas. The intensity of the burn on the landscape, and its vegetation, greatly rich ash to grow and recover with amazing influences which species awaken where. speed. These plants are likely the single most The annual fire followers always steal the show in the first year after a moderate- to high- important means of preventing soil erosion severity burn. Seeds lying dormant in the soil, sometimes for nearly 100 years, await their cue after a fire, since their extensive belowground to germinate. An admired fire follower, the sunshine-colored whispering bells (Emmenanthe root networks in symbiotic relationship with penduliflora), commonly carpets moderate- and high-severity burns in Southern California, cov- fungi (mycorrhizae) create an effective soil seering blackened soil with pale and golden hues. It will likely make an appearance in the North curity net. Bay this spring (as it did the first spring after the 2013 Morgan Fire on Mount Diablo). As we continue to learn to live with fire Another notable fire follower, blueblossom (Ceanothus thyrsiflorus), is a fast-growing in the Bay Area, how can land managers and shrub that germinates in high-severity burn areas. It replaces stands of coastal scrub and residents embrace making space for botanical other shrubland types. Although annuals are typically associated with burned areas, this wonder? Is it possible to preserve fire-adaptperennial makes a longer home on the landscape; we should be seeing it for 10 to 20 years ed systems near the wildland-urban interface? after the fires. The blueblossom’s perfume is intoxicating to people and pollinators alike, I certainly hope so, because one of the most especially when it forms dense stands in steep gullies and on ridges. destructive forces of nature also gives birth A duet of flowering plants that often emerge together after fires is the sky lupine to some incredible displays of beauty, evo(Lupinus bicolor) and California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). This pair particularly ben- lutionary adaption, and wildlife persistence, efits from low-severity burns where fire has moved through the landscape quickly; the creating a space for wonder to occur. contrasting charred black remains combined with the bluish-purple and orange blossoms —Lech Naumovich, make for fantastic post-fire imagery. Golden Hour Restoration Institute Fire is historically unusual in the Bay Area, only naturally occurring once every 50 to 100 For a treasure-hunt list of rare and unique years (although California Indians burned areas more routinely). This long pause between plants to look for in the North Bay this spring, burn events makes some fire followers unique and rare in our area. Such plants require fire read more online at baynature.org/extra. to stimulate their germination in tandem with the abundance of nutrients and clearing of vegetation. The disturbance created by fire on the land is critical to conserving much april–june 2018

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Lech Naumovich, lechphoto.com

What Wildflowers Will Tell You About the North Bay Fires

Male surf scoters are hard to miss with their yellow, red, and white lumpy bill, pale eyes set against black feathers, and the white patch at the nape of the neck. Also, listen for their squeaky, honk-y call.

BY MARY CATHERINE O’CONNER & ERICA LANGSTON

conservation in action

Steve Zamek, featherlightphoto.com

the alarm, the response from the rest of the world has been muted. “The fire alarm didn’t go off,” he says. “But it should have. There is definitely something going on here.” One reason concern has been hard to rally is that efforts to pinpoint the cause of such a precipitous decline in the Bay estuary have been spotty at best. Researchers have suggested several contributing factors, including the 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill, which killed 1,147 surf scoters; population fluctuations in scoters’ preferred food of herring roe; increased exposure to heavy metals; and the impact of climate change on the birds’ Alaska summer nesting grounds.

Where Have All the Surfer Scoters Gone?

The case of the Bay’s disappearing sea duck

hen John Takekawa first started W monitoring waterbirds 30 years ago, the Bay was a seeming oasis for sea ducks, a historically understudied ornate tribe of birds wedged between the seabird family and waterfowls. Over the last few decades, however, Bay Area researchers like Takekawa have revved up efforts to better understand and track sea duck behavior and migration patterns, revealing a disturbing trend for one species in particular—a large, charismatic diving duck called the surf scoter. The surf scoter’s Pacific Flyway population has been in decline since at least the 1980s, even as other diving b ay n at u r e

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ducks, like scaups, buffleheads, and canvasbacks, maintained or even increased their populations, according to an analysis published by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2014. “In 1987, we were counting 30,000 surf scoters in San Francisco Bay,” Takekawa says. From 2013 to 2016, fewer than 3,000 scoters were counted on average, using the same survey methods. California Audubon estimates that as many as half the world’s surf scoters overwinter in the Bay in some years, making a loss of this magnitude serious. But Takekawa said that while he feels like he’s spent the last decade sounding

Grass Isn’t Greener in the Bay Surf scoters tend to congregate over the Bay’s eelgrass beds, joining tens of thousands of other waterbirds in scooping up the herring roe laid there in the winter. But fluctuating herring populations after the Cosco Busan oil spill, coupled with a reduction in the Bay’s second-largest eelgrass bed, in Richardson Bay, which supports healthy herring spawns, may have taken their toll higher up the food chain. Eelgrass is sensitive to changes in salinity, temperature, clarity, and sediment load, and a 2017 aerial survey performed by Audubon California points to a human role in the plant’s apparent Richardson Bay decline. The survey data, captured during low tide at the end of eelgrass growing season, was overlaid on an image of the location of boats that have been anchored over the beds for many months or years. The resulting picture shows round, denuded patches in the eelgrass, which Takekawa likened to crop circles and believes were formed by anchor chains dragging along the mudflats, ripping out the eelgrass, as tides move in and out. Many of these vessels appear abandoned, and some leak fuel. These

so-called anchor-outs have been a fixture in the Bay since the 1960s, but their numbers have more than doubled since 2008 and have recently swelled to more than 200.

Alice Zhuk, zhukphoto.com

Legacy Pollutants In addition to the impact from derelict and illegally anchored vessels, decades of contaminants have settled into the Bay’s estuary from urban runoff, agriculture, mining, and industrial waste. Many pesticides and heavy metals, including mercury, are persistent in the Bay’s ecosystem and increasingly problematic for diving ducks like surf scoters. A study in 1985 showed that surf scoters overwintering in San Francisco Bay had higher concentrations of arsenic and selenium in their bodies than scoters that wintered in the Northwest. Another study from the 1980s compared the Female scoters can be tougher to identify (as compared to the males) with their brown feathers and black bill; look for the white patches near the beak and behind the eye. Here, a female socializes with two males at Mountain View Shoreline Lake.

livers of surf scoters caught in the Bay to a control group of captive mallards that had been fed a diet containing 0.5 parts per million of mercury over three generations. Not only did the Bay Area scoters have a higher concentration of mercury, but the concentrations of selenium, some heavy metals, and organochlorines (a group of pesticides, including DDT, most of which are banned in the United States) in their systems also increased the longer the birds were in the Bay. The Bay-to-Boreal View and Overall Obstacles Outside the subtidal estuary of San Francisco Bay, changing conditions in the surf scoter’s Pacific wintering grounds, which extend from Southeast Alaska to the central Baja coast, as well as in its breeding grounds in the boreal forests of the Northwest Territories, could also contribute to the species’ decline. Surf scoters’ vast range, coupled with their skittish behavior and their similarity to the white-winged

scoter, makes them a particularly difficult study subject and complicates their candidacy for conservation. Even if their habitat were to rebound overnight, research wildlife biologist Susan De La Cruz worries that the scoter population will be slow to return to the flock sizes seen in the late ’80s and early ’90s. “One thing that really makes it so hard [for surf scoters] to recover is that they rely on adult survival to keep the population going,” she says. “They will not reproduce if they are not in good condition.” While it’s not impossible that the birds just found more favorable wintering grounds, De La Cruz says that’s extremely unlikely, because the species has such high site fidelity, breeding and feeding in the same place year after year. The birds’ disappearance from the Bay and the Pacific Flyway more broadly is alarming, Takekawa says, not just because people like them, but because “it is a species that helps us understand the quality of habitats it goes into.” If the surf scoter is any indication, the alarm bells should be ringing.

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DISCOVER RARE BLOOMS AROUND THE BEND

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Exquisite plants flourish on the fog-catching slopes of Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve Story and Photos by Stephanie Penn for Bay Nature To examine the white bud pads of

A short spur trail heads northeast off the Upper Huckleberry Loop Trail where a western leatherwood and canyon live oak are identified with interpretive signs.

the western leatherwood plant, Iowa State professor of horticulture Willim Graves once wrote, is “almost like staring into a starry night sky.” It’s a rare celestial vision, though. The winterblooming shrub’s entire global range is confined to six counties in the Bay Area, including the Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve in the East Bay Hills. Thanks to the preserve’s interpretive trail, the western leatherwood is easier to see growing wild here than maybe anywhere else on the planet, along with a handful of other uniquely Californian plants. This winter, just as the leatherwood began to bloom, I hiked the preserve to find some of its stars. Rare plants are, ironically, not uncommon in California. We’re in one of the world’s botanical biodiversity hot spots, and so many of the state’s plants are adapted to confined geographic locations (among other rarity-inducing factors) that the California Native Plant Society estimates about 20 percent of the state’s native flora is rare or endangered. California botanist and explorer Lester Rowntree, an early advocate for California’s plants, wrote that “it is this wide variation of climate and terrain which for the past two or three decades has inspired in me—at first intermittently and at last with dogged persistence—a passion for observing, each in its own place, the natural plant life of these diversified regions.” Some of these regions, like the coastal oldgrowth redwood forests and the spring wildflower displays of the Carrizo Plain, are well known and widely treasured. Others, like the maritime chaparral of Huckleberry, are subtler. Maritime chaparral is adapted to the cool temperatures, moisture, and fog characteristic of marine-influenced climates. Because Huckleberry sits on a northeastfacing slope in the direct path of sea breezes blowing through the Golden Gate, the conditions are opportune for this rare ecosystem. The first morning I hike Huckleberry the air

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The rare and endemic western leatherwood’s (Dirca occidentalis) golden flowers typically bloom during the winter months, from January to March.

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rains. Landscape architect Sherri Osaka joins me to help find some of the plant highlights and offer her perspective on them as a designer. We start the walk by winding along a northeast-facing slope as we drop 200 feet into the San Leandro Creek basin, where steam rises over a verdant canopy of California bay , coast live oak, Pacific madrone, and California hazelnut. Along the trail Osaka points out a handful of California natives that are familiar parts of both designed and wild landscapes: pinkflowering currant, western sword fern, and California huckleberry. Even in a dry year, “everything is surprisingly lush and green here,” Osaka says. As we pass an exposed outcrop, I run my hand over the damp crumbling layers of rocks, releasing a sweet, earthy smell. The jagged texture of the rocks is interrupted by the soft forms of green moss mounds. Goldback ferns cling to the vertical surfaces, their roots extending into rock fractures, widening these with each passing season. The almost imperceptible daily erosion of the rock surface by roots, rain, and weathering results in massive changes on the geologic timescale. As I pull my hand away a small sharp fragment breaks off, landing on the pile below, hinting at this ancient process. Although the stars of Huckleberry are its rare plants, the firmament that makes it all possible is an unusual rock pattern. Huckleberry’s ridges and rock walls are made of chert and siliceous shale uplifted from ancient seafloors, both of which create soils low in nutrients that make it difficult for many plants—particularly weedy nonnatives— to figure out. Michele Hammond, a botanist with the East Bay Regional Park District, says the pale soil in the chaparral areas at Huckleberry is comparatively free of the invasive plant species that clog up many other open spaces in the Bay Area. But California plants adapted to unique soils and fog thrive here. The first time she, as a botany student, saw the park, Hammond says, “I was amazed and surprised at the diversity of plants along this trail. We were using the Jepson Manual to key out species and as you walk through the oak woodland

East Bay Regional Park District/Bay Nature (map)

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and into the upper loop chaparral sections there is a lot to see, making it stand out among East Bay locations.” following the creek, Huckleberry Loop Trail doubles back toward the hill and climbs sharply. Osaka and I hike up out of the dense bay forest into an oak-bay woodland. We detour onto a spur trail that leads us to a “manzanita barren,” , , an exposed, rocky outcropping, where we warm up under the bright sun and can see the canyon below and Mount Diablo in the distance. Manzanitas, with their smooth bark and striking sculptural forms, have garnered attention from gardeners and botanists alike. “Few native plant groups are as symbolic of the California landscape as the manzanitas,” horticulturist Nevin Smith wrote in Native Treasures, his 2006 California native gardening handbook. The California Floristic Province (which spans most of the state) is home to more than 100 manzanita species and subspecies, with an incredible diversity of shapes and sizes ranging from low sprawling ground covers to plants reaching the height of small trees. Manzanitas readily adapt to demanding, site-specific conditions, evolving into species that exist only in limited areas. One of the rarest and its cousin grow in Huckleberry: pallid manzanita and brittleleaf manzanita , both flowering in profusion on our visit. The two species typically grow near each other and can look similar, but the rare pallid tends to have almost heartshaped, grayer leaves, with lobes that appear to clasp the branch. And at the base of a brittleleaf sits a lumpy, woody mass known as a burl. Dormant inside the burl are densely packed buds waiting to sprout in the wake of a fire that burns off the shrub’s upper branches. It’s a survival strategy that means a burl can be both very old and correspondingly slow to adapt to change. Pallids, on the other hand, resprout from seeds, and the seedlings either thrive or die in their environment. Manzanita seeds can lie dormant for long periods waiting for the heat of fire and chemicals found in smoke to trigger their germination.

Pallid manzanita (Arctostaphylos pallida), a rare endemic to the East Bay hills, blooms between November and March.

After about a mile of

Pacific hound’s tongue (Cynoglossum grande), a common California native, blooms from February through August, but peaks in winter. It grows both in woodlands and chaparral.

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As we step into the center of the barren, we hear the electric wingbeats of Anna’s hummingbirds. They are making short, sharp calls from bushes and shrubs in every direction, their bright red throat feathers catching the sunlight. Flying high into the air, some chase each other before diving back down. Hammond describes the pallid manzanita and its white blossoms as “particularly beautiful when it is flowering because it is covered with butterflies and hummingbirds.” Manzanitas provide pollinators with an important midwinter source of nectar. California natives flower year-round in a profusion of sizes, shapes, and colors that enable pollinators to stick around, too, one of many reasons the rich native plant diversity at Huckleberry, and elsewhere, matters. Farther along the main trail we en-

counter a second spur; this one takes us past a western leatherwood , its flexible branches reaching up hopefully, though no star-buds yet. If the buds caught Graves’ attention, (continued on page 54)

Huckleberry’s unusual geology— bands of chert and shale uplifted from ancient seafloors—is easy to spot along the Upper Loop Trail. The chaparral species are adapted to this nutrient-poor soil.

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HIKING HUCKLEBERRY GETTING THERE: Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve is off Skyline Boulevard in Oakland (7087 Skyline Blvd.). There’s a small paved parking lot, pit toilet, shady picnic table, water, and a map and brochures detailing the self-guided plant walk. Dogs, bicycles, and horses are prohibited in the preserve. Park website: ebparks.org/parks/huckleberry

TRAIL: The Huckleberry Loop Trail—a 1.7mile trail with an elevation change of 277 feet—loops around the 241-acre preserve through a mature California bay laurel forest on the lower trail and a swath of maritime chaparral on the upper trail. Thanks to a Habitat Conservation Fund grant, trail improvements and updated informational signs, installed in 2017, will lead visitors on a self-guided walking tour of the plants. For a short, easy stroll that allows you to see many of the unique maritime chaparral species, head southeast on Upper Huckleberry Loop Trail and then turn back before reaching the connector trail. For more information about EBRPD

naturalist-guided walks in the preserve, see the park’s activity calendar: ebparks.org/ activities.

SPRING FLOWERS: • Bee plant (Scrophularia californica) • Evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) • Snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) • Douglas iris (Iris douglasiana) • Fringe cups (Tellima grandiflora) • Jimbrush (Ceanothus oliganthus var. sorediatus) • Small-flower alumroot (Heuchera micrantha) • Woodland tarplant (Anisocarpus madioides) • Western columbine (Aquilegia formosa)

CONSERVATION & RESORATION Join volunteers who meet once a month with the East Bay chapter of the California Native Plant Society to remove invasive weeds from the preserve. For more information email sibley@ebparks.org or visit meetup.com/ebcnps.

You are invited to

Support Your Regional Parks!

FREE Estate Planning Seminars Topics covered include: • Wills and Trusts • Health Care Directives • Powers of Attorney • Retirement Plans Light refreshments will be provided. Several dates available...

Photo: RM Ramu

THE NEW CALIFORNIA STATE PARKS The Most Visited State Park System in the Nation Is Remaking Itself and Wants Your Buy-In By Alissa Greenberg Badges Courtesy of Ross MacDonald

On a Sunday afternoon in midwinter, tendrils of thin afternoon light drift through the branches of the oldest avocado tree in Santa Cruz County, illuminating a courtyard carpeted with deep green grass and framed by walls of centuries-old adobe. At a picnic table under the tree, Bella Kressman leads the Meuse family—8-year-old Stella, 3-year-old Skyler, and their parents, Eric and Sarah—through a traditional craft workshop. They chat as they work. “Have you ever been to an event like this?” Kressman asks. Eric says no; until today, he didn’t know the historic mission was here at all, though he and his family often camp at the many state parks around Santa Cruz. “Longtime listeners, first-time 22

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callers!” he jokes. It would be easy to find versions of this scene in state parks all over California: community members enjoying well-preserved historical and natural spaces and engaging a little more richly with their world. But look closer and there’s an important difference. Once the family leaves, Kressman goes back into the park store to run the cash register. A sign over her shoulder reads, “Thanks—your purchase supports local state parks and beaches. Get a 15 percent discount by joining Friends today.” In this case “Friends” means Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks. It’s thanks to Friends’ marketing efforts that the Meuse family read about the craft workshop in a local newsletter. Friends runs all the cultural

events here at Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park. It worked with the community to create the park’s rainbow-tiled welcome mural and paid to replace malfunctioning toilets; it also pays Kressman’s salary. Welcome to the “new” California state park, where programming, logistics, and even day-to-day park operations and finances are increasingly outsourced to external groups. These partnerships between the state and more than 100 outside organizations—including nonprofits, for-profits, and other government agencies—support virtually every one of our 280 state parks. Park partners often fundraise and plan activities and educational programming; in some cases, they have signed comprehensive operating agreements that make them responsible for entire state parks—including some 15 in the Bay Area. Which is to say, the guide leading your Sunday hike in all likelihood isn’t an employee of the state. A nascent version of the park partnership model has been around for almost half a century, but the role of organizations like Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks grew starting in 2011 when a budget crisis threatened to close 70 parks. Santa Cruz Mission State Park was on the list, and Friends stepped up to help operate and keep it open. Per its agreement with the state, the nonprofit makes money from the park store while splitting proceeds from parking, camping, shower, and firewood fees with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. From that income, Friends funds the mission’s lecture series, First Friday events, and the annual Mole and Mariachi festival—all at a park slated for closure just seven years ago. Statistics on the number of parks run by outside partners vary, but the specifics are less important than the on-the-ground dynamics of those partnerships—especially in the context of California Proposition 68, the Parks, Environment, and Water Bond that will appear on the California ballot June 5, 2018. The proposed bond contains $2.83 billion for parks that would be disbursed over four to five years, including $218 million for existing state parks and significant funding for so-called “park-poor” neighborhoods and affordable coastal accommodation—a sign of the state’s new emphasis on drawing more diverse users to its parks. And it offers $5 million for the exclusive use of outside organizations running entire parks to begin to address a billion dollars in pending park maintenance. Since the 2011 crisis, the parks department has sought to redefine how state parks are run and whom

Contributions from the general fund to the state parks budget declined nearly 30% in a decade.

they are meant to serve in an era when state funding vacillates between uncertain and nonexistent. In theory, a park partnership model brings together parties with unique strengths and welcomes voices traditionally uninvolved in shaping parks policy. But critics argue that a culture clash between the state and park partners, as well as insufficient oversight, have kept those partnerships from living up to their potential. And, regardless, unless the state substantively addresses its maintenance backlog, this new paradigm is unsustainable. The parks world remembers the golden years fondly, back when money from the state’s general fund and parks bonds approved by voters every four years or so kept the lights on and rangers digging trenches, leading hikes, and patrolling campgrounds. But in the late 1980s, both sources of money began to dry up. Cutting parks funding, which even at its most robust represented a small fraction of the state budget, became a visible way for politicians to signal their tough stance on spending. Finally, after repeated budget cuts surrounding the 2008 recession, funds hit a critical point. Proposition 21 appeared on the ballot in 2010 to save state parks, proposing an annual $18 addition to vehicle registration fees to cover the department’s operations and ballooning maintenance costs for, as retired ranger Bill Krumbein pointed out to me, “the price of a deluxe pizza.” But the initiative failed, and in January 2011, Sacramento cut the department budget by another $22 million, causing a staffing crisis that compelled Governor Jerry Brown to call for the closure of 70 parks. At the same time, scandal hit the department. Some $54 million of unreported funds turned up in parks accounts, having accumulated over decades due to an accounting error. Public furor drove Ruth Coleman, director of the parks department, to resign, and funding continued to bottom out. In total, the parks budget covered by the general fund declined from $182 million in the 2000 fiscal year to $121 million in 2011, or nearly 30 percent in a decade. The larger picture is even more grim: the portion of parks funding that came from the general fund declined from 91 percent in 1980 to 28 percent in 2014. Support from organizations like Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks and the California State Parks Foundation and general public outcry led to new legislation that allowed nonprofit organizations used to supporting roles to take on full responsibility for april–june 2018

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state parks, a last-ditch attempt to keep those on Governor Brown’s closure list open in arrangements that Resources Legacy Fund president Michael Mantell describes as “held together by bailing wire.” At the same time Mantell and his organization helped set up the Parks Forward Commission, a group of industry outsiders whose goal was to help the department reform financially and remake itself in a time of crisis. Given the lingering scandal, the commission quickly hired the consulting firm FTI to look over state parks books. In a blistering report, FTI called the department’s financial system “antiquated” and its projected annual funding gap of $100 million “truly alarming.” In 2015, Parks Forward issued a list of recommendations for department improvement, focusing on sustainable funding, a major upgrade in accounting practices, increased focus on parks access for a more diverse swath of Californians—and more emphasis on partnerships. Other states were having this discussion, too. Bryan Martyn, who ran Arizona State Parks from 2012 to 2015 when the state was forced to close almost half its parks, remembers talking with colleagues at a National Association of State Park Directors conference during that time: “Everybody was trying to figure out, ‘OK, how are we going to make this work?’” he says. (Arizona ultimately went the park partner route as well, contracting with the city of Yuma, a historical society in Flagstaff, and an Indian tribe to run its parks.) Nationally, the park partnership model is on the rise, according to Eric Hamp of the National Recreation and Park Association. The NRPA works with thousands of state and municipal park agencies, he says, “and many of them are engaged in public-private partnerships.” His organization even has a snappy name for these arrangements: P3s. In the P3 ideal—a vision repeated to me again and again as I reported this story—each party contributes its strengths to create the best possible park. The state brings a deeply rooted mission, “to provide for the health, inspiration and education of the people of California….” as well as a century of experience and expertise; it thus maintains infrastructure, stewards the natural and cultural resources of each park, and provides law enforcement. In turn, a nonprofit manages daily park operations and brings a culture of nimbleness and innovation, as well as community ties that tap into the needs of both locals and donors. This last ingredient reflects the fundamental change wrought by park b ay n at u r e

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funding woes. Income is essential to the new paradigm, and in some park partnerships it is incumbent upon the outside organization, not the state, to meet a bottom line and ensure a park’s survival. Almost every nonprofit employee I spoke to for this story believed that if it weren’t for their organizations, their parks would be closed. Many P3s have succeeded in at least this capitalist sense, stabilizing and modernizing parks whose attendance levels were previously semi-comatose. “As a nonprofit it doesn’t take us long to make decisions and make changes,” says Michele Luna, executive director of Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods, which operates Armstrong Redwoods and Austin Creek. “When we started operating, we had a credit card machine in the kiosk within a day. We had Wi-Fi, we bought a truck; all these things we just did without having to have approval processes and get delayed.” Park partners say their stature and physical presence in their communities helps address that hungry bottom line. The money they bring in stays within their parks, rather than heading to a state fund and trickling back, as it used to; Luna says Stewards’ park users especially appreciate that. Martin Lowenstein, director of Friends of China Camp in Marin County, adds that local nonprofits are better equipped to nurture partnerships with local businesses for “gifts in kind.” He points to a February 2017 storm that washed out a 20-foot section of trail; Friends of China Camp rebuilt the trail using 300 tons of rocks and gravel donated by a local quarry. “I don’t know if state parks can develop those kinds of partnerships from Sacramento,” he says. The department carefully monitored the rebuilding of that trail; such oversight is central to the P3 model. Every park partner with an operating agreement must document in-depth their operations, financial, and resource management plans annually. Any new project beyond day-to-day work requires a project evaluation form (PEF) signed by the state. “That’s how State Parks keeps an eye on us,” Lowenstein says. He sees their supervision as essential to ensuring that park resources are protected. With their chimera status, parks run by the likes of Stewards, Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, and Friends of China Camp challenge conventional state park identity. They take marketing seriously, offer photography classes, host weddings, and throw themed costume parties. Santa Cruz Mission hosts pop-up picnics; Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, has become well known for its summer

Broadway Under the Stars performances. These activities might be unconventional, but they’re essential to Jack London Park Partners’ vision of the future of parks, says the group’s executive director, Tjiska Van Wyk. “We could have 30 people come to this park a day, or we could have a month like this November when 8,000 people came. If they come to Broadway Under the Stars, they have that experience. They’re here for the first time and looking around and think, ‘I need to bring my family here.’” Jack London is routinely held up as the poster child for the P3 model. In its first year, JLPP increased the park’s hours, raised parking fees slightly, held more special events—and more than tripled revenue, halving the park’s previous operating deficit. Each partner contracted to run a state park submits a financial statement as part of its annual review, and the trend is clear: growth. In one year, China Camp’s Reserve America reservations increased some 20 percent, while income from its annual passes increased by 40 percent. At Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Sonoma County, income from entrance fees increased 75 percent in three years and income from events—led by the park’s popular Funky Fridays concert series— increased 737 percent. And at Jack London, the park continued to make up its operating deficit with fundraising, ending 2017 $400,000 in the red in operations but making up the difference with contributions ($74,000), memberships ($90,000), sponsorships ($54,000), grants ($40,000), and, most significantly, fundraising events ($182,000.) Los Angeles State Historic Park, in the heart of L.A.’s Chinatown, embodies the department’s attempts to transform and push the boundaries of the conventional state park in another way. Many of its users are people of color, and they had a say in its creation: In its infancy, the park borrowed the Latin American “prometores” model of public health, with outreach workers talking to the community about the kind of park that would fit their needs. The result is a state park offering the likes of yoga classes and healthy food workshops. If the Legislature determines the pilot is a success, they’ll repeat it elsewhere; Candlestick Point State Recreation Area in San Francisco may benefit from lessons learned in Los Angeles. This push is also rooted in Parks Forward’s work. Recognizing that California’s demographics are changing, the commission recommended the department expand its focus from the “traditional”—i.e. older, whiter, richer—park user to include the state’s growing population of younger people of color. Jon Christensen, an adjunct assistant professor of Environment and Sustainability at UCLA who has studied

“California is America in fast forward...If you’re not broadening access, parks are dead.”

the relationship between communities of color and parks, sees an important trend here: Over the last 20 years, conservation measures at the ballot box in California have passed because they’ve been supported by Latino, Asian-American, and African-American voters, he says, even more so than by white voters and even though the money usually did not create parks where they lived. Through Parks Forward, the department took notice and decided inclusion ought to be a priority from both a social justice and a policy standpoint. “Los Angeles is California in fast forward, and California is America in fast forward,” says Lance Conn, who sat on the commission. “It’s going to be younger and browner. If those constituents are not engaging with parks, it’s existential. If you’re not broadening access, parks are dead.” That’s how Parks Now, a coalition of groups like Outdoor Afro and Latino Outdoors, ended up working with the department’s Partnerships Office to increase park access for underserved communities. To that end, Proposition 68 includes a whopping $725 million for parks in neighborhoods that don’t have them (read: urban, poor, lacking public resources), as well as $60 million for low-cost coastal accommodations on both park and conservancy land, since research by Christensen and others showed that the price of hotels or other lodging plays a major part in discouraging low-income communities from visiting California’s beaches. Ben McCue runs a program called Outdoor Outreach that exposes low-income and refugee youth to the outdoors in San Diego, and his organization is an active member of Parks Now. Although he previously avoided working on his programs with state parks because of their bureaucratic hurdles, he sees the Parks Forward Commission’s emphasis on park diversity as a gesture of good faith. In his work with the department, McCue hopes to create a new kind of partnership. His idea: What if the department also signed contracts with the Parks Now groups—to bring in young people from underserved communities and help them to learn to love the outdoors—and compensated the groups accordingly? “These are things that the department really can’t do on their own,” he says. “We run programs in Spanish; our staff speak Arabic and Vietnamese. We’re able to connect with the youth we serve and introduce them to the value of these areas in a way that someone who looks like a law enforcement agent—and many times is—couldn’t do.” When the dust settled from the 2011 crisis, for-profit companies were running four California april–june 2018

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state parks. This elicited the most gasps of incredulity from friends and colleagues as I reported this story. The existence of these parks pulls at something deep in the entrails of the idea of public land, and talking about them inevitably leads to a barrage of horrified questions: What kind of system allowed that to happen? Does that mean the park was privatized? What does this mean about the P3 model in general? Information about California’s privately run state parks is hard to come by. The only solid facts I found are already a few years old: For example, that the camping and outdoor company American Land and Leisure paid $50,269 in rent in 2013 to operate Brannan Island State Park in Sacramento County, some of which money goes to maintenance; in return the company earned $478,751 in income during the same period. But beyond that, parks department staff say the hand-over predated them, and American Land and Leisure didn’t respond to my interview requests. So, on a winter day, I drive to Brannan Island to see for myself what a for-profit state park looks like. Past the empty entry kiosk and an aging display about area birds of prey, I find a little closed visitor center. Its concrete is stippled with raccoon tracks; its offices are empty but for an ’80s-era cash register, a sign that proclaims “no diving within the state park system,” and the ruins of an exhibit on wetland ecology. Nearby, a little wooden amphitheater with crooked, flaking benches sits roped off with caution tape, overlooking the flat water of the river. The tiny marina is grown over with rosy duckweed. By the main launch area, I meet Phillip Lees, who has been coming to Brannan Island for 50 years, since before it was a state park. He remembers this place when it was just dunes and says the marina has been closed for at least three years. Still, he sees American Land and Leisure’s tenure as largely positive: The state’s worst crisis years were a “dormant period” for the park, he says, and things improved after the hand-over. Matt Rickard, another camper who’s been coming to the park for more than a decade, says the transition was “fairly seamless.” Even Ruth Coleman, who was parks department director at the time, doesn’t quite remember how American Land and Leisure ended up with Brannan Island. She guesses the contract was amended during the worst of the budget crisis. “This was an opportunity where we could keep the venue open, people could still go there, and you already had an operator on site,” she says. “They’re better than the state at b ay n at u r e

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The new California State Park forces us to acknowledge our discomfort with the mixing of public and private and to begin to interrogate.

doing things like boat rentals, and nonprofits aren’t particularly good at that.” Perhaps therein lies the rub: a for-profit company running a park feels like an extension of allowing any outsiders into the state park system, the result of taking that choice to its logical extreme. The idea taps into our fear that any entity focused on a bottom line, even a nonprofit, couldn’t possibly run or protect a park as it’s meant to be run and protected. But people come to Brannan Island for camping and boating, and Coleman argues that at least in an ideal world, the P3 system lets a partner with relevant expertise do that work. In finding new solutions for serving parks and their users—regardless of whether those solutions come by way of the state or the nonprofit or forprofit world—the new California State Park forces us to acknowledge our discomfort with the mixing of public and private and to begin to interrogate it. For Conn of the Parks Forward Commission, that means reading between the lines. He remembers a widespread but diffuse unease during the 2011 crisis around the new park partnerships, a discomfort that never quite resolved into specifics. Conn saw something else in those concerns: a fear of change. The struggle to change—and its accompanying air of mistrust and tension—is painfully clear in the public records of the last six years. While today both the department and its partners acknowledge “bumps” along the way, there were moments when the new partnerships teetered on the edge of collapse. A lengthy Failure to Comply warning issued by the department in 2014, as well as supporting documents that followed, shows that the state reprimanded Jack London Park Partners (then known as Valley of the Moon Natural History Association) for allegedly breaking its operating contracts and violating state and federal laws in a number of ways. The warning alleges that among other incidents, Valley of the Moon cleared native brush, created new visitor areas that were not ADA accessible, built a rock retention wall, pruned trees, turned a historic building into an event venue, installed a mural, graded a road, and repaired a culvert—all without the department’s permission or proper permits. The documents cite 13 unauthorized Valley of the Moon projects and alleges 32 counts in which state or federal law—including the Clean Water Act, Environmental Quality Act, and Endangered Species Act—were violated. An executive summary of

the state’s investigation of Valley of the Moon recommended “immediate termination” of the organization’s contract. Records also show the Sonoma Ecology Center, which operates Sugarloaf Ridge State Park, received a Failure to Comply notice two years later. The 2016 notice alleges that SEC cleared vegetation to enable off-road parking, constructed a raised stage and shed, and prepared and sold food without permits or permission—all in service of its Funky Friday concerts, whose audiences were officially limited to 125 people but at their peak were over 500. The letter also notes that SEC redirected a creek tributary without permits and did not remove an unpermitted new picnic facility, despite repeated instructions to do so. Danita Rodriguez, then the parks district superintendent, writes that given all this, she feels that SEC “may not be exerting good faith efforts” to complete its duties as park operator.” Both Jack London’s Van Wyk and John Roney, the park manager at Sugarloaf since 2012, say most of these allegations were the result of misunderstandings, while others were outright false. “Some things we did in violation were done intentionally; we just didn’t know they weren’t acceptable things to do,” Van Wyk says—like trimming a tree with hanging branches that had recently injured a child. And according to Roney, some of the Sugarloaf alleged infractions were actually SEC addressing problems the department had left unsolved—the “redirected tributary” was another broken culvert, he says, and the graded road was the emergency egress from the park, which had been blocked with fallen trees. Roney says the Failure to Comply letter came without warning and that the department didn’t communicate its concerns beforehand. He wishes someone had come out to discuss things in person “rather than going to code red”; similarly, Van Wyk remembers that in the first years the department was “understaffed” with “little time available to train us.” She describes that year—which included raising funds from scratch, resolving urgent maintenance issues, and even furnishing empty state park offices—as taxing and exhausting. “I was stressed, angry, frustrated, and tired,” she says. “I think both parties would admit that there wasn’t a whole lot of mutual respect at that time.” Roney and Van Wyk say that communication eventually improved, with an established schedule of regular phone calls and meetings. Funky Fridays found a new home, and both organizations took steps to

resolve the issues raised in their exchanged letters. In September 2016, Rodriguez issued a joint statement with Sugarloaf that said, in part, “SEC and its partners took action to correct issues raised [in] the letter, and there are no outstanding issues at this time.” A May 2016 update to Jack London’s Failure to Comply letter references the “many conversations” between the department and Valley of the Moon, discussions that Van Wyk says started out fraught but ultimately built trust. Jack London Park Partners retains Valley of the Moon’s contract; she posits that “at the very highest levels nobody wanted to see us kicked out because it could have represented a black eye [for the department].” The solution was those frequent meetings, she says, and a mutual dawning recognition that “both parties have a fundamental love and desire for making these parks exceptional.” Despite these improvements, concerns about the new system linger. The California State Park Rangers Association (CSPRA, pronounced “sea spray”), a group of about 800 current and retired California parks professionals, has taken up the mantle of watchdog over the past six years, closely monitoring the department and its partners. CSPRA played a role in the Failure to Comply investigation at both Sugarloaf and Jack London, and from its perspective, those cases are yet to be resolved. The organization prepared a lengthy report this winter on continuing park issues that it plans to present to the department. CSPRA member Bill Krumbein, who worked as a ranger in Sonoma and Napa for 26 years, helped with that report. He feels the urgency to save parks caused the department to lose touch with the “purity” at its foundation. “The highest priority has been placed on a business model for state parks and making money,” he says. “You lose perspective on why you have the state park there.” He mourns a “parks ethos” of warmth, passion, and connection with nature lost somewhere in the melee, and he wonders: Do we really need these shows, events, and parties in our state parks? For Jeff Price, who heads CSPRA’s “Park Threats” committee, the problem is not the idea of park partnerships, but a lack of oversight and accountability in their execution. The way he sees it, “the district superintendent, the director, they just said, ‘Give them the keys.’” The most common analysis I heard is that park partnerships engender a cultural and practical mismatch if not executed well. As a government entity, the april–june 2018

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department moves slowly and presents many layers of bureaucracy before a project can be approved. Nonprofits aren’t used to that pace, especially when the stakes are high both practically and financially. Slowing down to fit that pace can even cause a nonprofit to lose its donor, says Robert Doyle, general manager of East Bay Regional Park District, which operates several state parks. “It happens all the time. When somebody gives you money, they want to see that project done and done well.” Take Jack London’s culvert repair. The department took issue with Valley of the Moon’s failure to submit a PEF, to get a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, or to do studies about impacts on the environment or prehistoric artifacts in the area. But the culvert was washed out suddenly in a heavy storm. In a conversation paraphrased in documents from the state’s investigation, Van Wyk asks her interlocutor in a moment of frustration, in effect: Are we supposed to wait and leave the trail closed and impassable for visitors, while we wait a year for the state to approve repairs? The P3 debate, then, becomes one of purists versus pragmatists. Price and Krumbein maintain that the challenges can be resolved with a champion in the Legislature, an increase in general funding, and more bonds like Proposition 68. “When the governor said we were going to close parks, that’s what we should have done,” says Price. “The Legislature and ultimately California voters needed to see something concrete that would help them change the outcome.” Conversely, after spending much of his academic career studying the park political ecosystem, Christensen of UCLA has embraced pragmatism; he recently got involved with Los Angeles River State Park Partners. “Yes,” he says of Price’s stance,“in an ideal world, but we’re not there.” In his work at LARSPP, he says, he’s putting “my money and sweat equity where my mouth is.” Christensen cautions patience to critics who see the Parks Forward process as unproductive; like many people I spoke to, he compared this kind of change to turning a ship around, a sentiment parks Deputy Director Elizabeth McGuirk echoes. “Five years sounds like a long time, but it’s really short in terms of state processes,” she says. “We’re undergoing a culture shift.” They’ve had some help. The California State Parks Foundation has played an essential facilitator role, first providing pro bono legal support for the five nonprofits that run state parks and then running skill-building trainings and conflict management workshops to help bridge that cultural gap. The 28

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Although the park partnership system was sold as a temporary fix, it’s clear seven years later that P3 is the new reality.

work has been so successful that CSPF is now pivoting away from focusing on P3 dynamics, according to Director of Programs and Advocacy Holly Martinez. “They’re at a place where they’re having these conversations without needing additional resources,” she says. That’s a good thing because although the park partnership system was sold as a temporary fix during the 2011 crisis,it’s clear seven years later that P3 is the new reality; even the department calls them “the way of the future.” Instead, as contracts from the crisis era start to expire, the department is learning from its mistakes—McGuirk acknowledges that the original P3 model was built “under duress”— and evolving. Starting this year, park partners are signing more detailed and specific “co-management agreements.” The process begins with face-to-face discussions about mutual goals and is followed, ideally, by frequent check-ins and clear delineation of responsibilities, which Van Wyk learned the value of firsthand at Jack London. After the Failure to Comply letter came, “it was like, OK, wait a minute, let’s step back: What actually requires permission?’” she says. “What do we have the authority and responsibility to do?” Park partners who have had smoother relationships with the department attribute that success to longevity and accrued experience, as well as the kind of consistent communication that eventually helped Jack London and Sugarloaf. Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, which began in the 1970s and is now considered a pioneer in park partnerships, makes policy decisions with the help of a committee that includes both Friends and department representatives; members discuss park issues and even hold social events for state and Friends employees. This kind of cooperation “reflects how partnerships should work,” says Christina Jaromay, head of the new state park Partnerships Office. “We should never as a state enter into an operating agreement with an entity and turn around and walk away.” Jaromay’s office is training more park liaisons to provide oversight in the field, but there’s still an essential element missing: money. The department’s budget continues to dwindle. Between 2016 and 2018, it was cut more than 20 percent. Without adequate funding, there may not be enough department staff hours for liaisons to do their work answering questions and smoothing regulatory processes, a limitation several nonprofit employees I spoke with noted with concern. “We might have a cooperative liaison assigned, but is that all that they do?” Jaromay says. “Is it someone who’s really involved, (continued on page 52) and that’s the majority of their

The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District permanently protects the diverse agricultural, natural resource, and scenic open space lands of Sonoma County for future generations. Learn more at www.sonomaopenspace.org

on the trail

SAN FRANCISCO NATURE MAPPED Our intrepid writer reflects on the new Nature in the City map while trekking 19.4-miles through the wilds of San Francisco by Zach St. George

an Francisco, judged in the usual way, is a pretty unnatural place. Out of the dunes and scrub, humans have raised some 49 square miles of concrete and asphalt, timber and steel. But even for such a built place, is “unnatural” really the right word? Most boundaries between human and nonhuman start to seem pretty sloppy when you really look at them—take, for example, my apartment, which I co-occupy with 13 plants of various species, sugar ants, fruit flies, spiders, at least three types of moth, and one synergistic colony of fungi and bacteria that I occasionally pull out of the fridge and use to leaven waffles. Even the organisms I invited into this space are only nominally under my control. Our shared space definitely isn’t “natural,” but it’s not completely unnatural, either. This pleasant sloppiness, basically, is the idea behind a newly released map of San Francisco. The map was put together by a collection of humans—including writer Mary Ellen Hannibal and graphic designer Leah Elamin—employed by and volunteering for the nonprofit Nature in the City, the Presidio Trust, the California Academy of Sciences, the Exploratorium, and various branches of the city government and is called, simply, “Nature in the City.” The front side of the map shows a standard street map of San Francisco overlaid with a dusting of street trees and shaded spots that represent its former shoreline, with scattered illustrations of animals and plants (rendered b ay n at u r e

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in loving detail by artist Jane Kim). The back of the map contains four smaller maps: one that shows the city’s waterways, soil types, and geological formations; one that highlights its public gardens; one that shows the migration routes of various animals across the Bay Area and beyond; and one that shows the location of native plant nurseries and the effects of projected sea level rise. Together, the five maps are meant to encourage city dwellers to see nature as something that can be found right in their neighborhoods, says Amber Hasselbring, Nature in the City’s executive director. It’s a broad survey of the natural world and one that creators hope will leave viewers wanting to know more: “It’s a tool that invites more inquiry,” she says. On a rainy day in January, I walked across San Francisco, looking for nature in all its forms. I confess—I didn’t have the map with me. That’s because it was raining, and it would’ve turned to mush. It was fine, though. Physical navigation isn’t really what the map is for, anyway. There was debate among the mapmakers about whether the map should be a navigational tool, says Peter Brastow, Nature in the City’s founder and now biodiversity coordinator in the city’s Department of the Environment, but in the end most of the mapmakers agreed people would rather use the GPS on their phones for getting around. “There was a very strong feeling that it’s not a way-finding device,” he says. “It’s an inspiration device.”

i m a g e s e xc e r p t e d f r o m N at u r e i n t h e C i t y M a p

»THE ONCE AND FUTURE SHORE I set out from the Ferry Building, accompanied by Rebecca Johnson, of the California Academy of Sciences, and Bay Nature editorial director Eric Simons. Walking south along the waterfront, we immediately spot a seal, some pigeons, gulls, a row of palm trees, and what Simons tells me is a water gum tree, Tristaniopsis laurina. As Johnson says, learning new species is like learning a new word—“suddenly you see it all the time.” It’s true. The things are everywhere. We follow the shoreline south to Mission Creek. The front side of the map shows the shoreline as it existed in the early 1800s. Compared to the shoreline of today, hard-edged as a Lego set, the historical shoreline was wavy and uneven, cutting deep into the current South of Market, Marina, Dogpatch, and Financial District neighborhoods. Lindsay Irving, a freelance data visualization consultant and the map team’s project manager and cartographer, says the historical map data was provided by the San Francisco Estuary Institute, which in turn got its information from old documents and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surveys. The map also offers a glimpse of the possible future. One of the mini-maps, built using sea-level rise projections from NOAA’s Sea Level Rise Viewer,, shows the shoreline of 2100. “Ironically, the historical shoreline mirrors what the future projected flood zone would be at the end of the century,” Irving says. “Water has a great memory.” She hopes that when people look at the map’s past and present shorelines, they’ll think long-term thoughts about “how time exists on the landscape.” San Francisco spent the last 150 years expanding out into the Bay, but it seems that Nature—which I use here in the John Muirian, animist sense of the word—will eventually take back what is hers.

Resilient City map

»TREES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS Johnson, Simons, and I trace the (now mostly subterranean) path of Mission Creek southwest to Dolores Park, then veer south through Noe Valley to Billy Goat Hill. There we part ways, and I continue on through the redwoods and brush of Glen Canyon Park, up and down and up and down the grassy and befogged Twin Peaks, then into the towering eucalypt forest/plantation (yes, we hear you) of Mount Sutro. It’s not only the city’s parks that are defined by their trees or lack thereof. One of the key differences between this map and its predecessors from 2005 and 2007 is that this version includes street trees, which appear on the map as a sort of variegated greenish tinge, like lichen on a tree trunk. Brastow says the mapmakers chose to include the layer to better illustrate just how close nature is to all the city’s residents, so everyone can look at the map and say, “There’s some degree of nature just down the street from me,’” he says. Very often, that degree is a tree. Some parts of the city, as the map clearly shows, have far fewer street trees than others. South of Market and the Sunset are particularly bald. Compared to other large American cities, San Francisco as a whole has a sparse urban forest, with less than 14 percent of the city shaded by trees, compared to 24 percent april–june 2018

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of New York City and 30 percent of Portland. There’s room for more, though. According to a survey published in 2014, the city currently has about 105,000 street trees and vacant spots for as many as 100,000. But should we really be planting more street trees? As many have pointed out—especially in arguing for the removal of certain Australian blue gum eucalyptus forest/plantations—prior to European settlement, the San Francisco Peninsula had hardly any trees. But Doug Wildman, deputy executive director of the non-

profit Friends of the Urban Forest, which helped conduct the street tree survey, says this concern isn’t really relevant. Street trees reduce cooling costs in adjacent buildings, soak up storm water runoff, and absorb pollution. He points to studies that show that where there are trees, there is less crime, as well as slower traffic and healthier people. “It’s the environmental and psychological and physical benefits they provide,” he says. There are discussions of natural and unnatural, and then there’s the fact that life is just better with trees. Call it human nature.

»A HAIRSTREAK STREAK I descend from Mount Sutro through the Forest Hill neighborhood. I pass Hawk Hill, which is marked on the map as part of the “Green Hairstreak Corridor.” The corridor is something of a pet project for Nature in the City and a tie to the way San Francisco once was. The butterflies are residents of coastal sand dunes, says Hasselbring. Over the years, as the dunes covering much of San Francisco were converted into human habitat, the butterfly’s range in the city dwindled to the dunes above the Presidio’s beaches and to two small patches in Golden Gate Heights. The latter two locations are only 10 blocks apart, but even that distance is too much for the butterflies, which, Hasselbring says, are “bright iridescent green, the size of a nickel, and almost invisible unless you know what you’re looking for.” The tiny populations seemed like they could disappear at any time. In 2006, working with lepidopterist Liam O’Brien and the help of volunteers, Nature in the City began re-creating patches of sand dune flora. They ripped out nonnative grasses, ice plant, oxalis, and in their place planted coast buckwheat, seaside daisy, dune strawberry, and dune knotweed, creating a little constellation of butterfly habitat, each near enough to its neighbors for Shaping the City map the butterflies to

find. The patches don’t always look like much, Hasselbring says—scrubby sections along stairways and in street medians. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you probably wouldn’t even notice them.

»THE GREAT FROG RESCUE Eventually I arrive at Golden Gate Park and head west. I pass South Lake, one of ten lakes in the park. Some of these lakes are human-made, others not. All are infested with the likes of crayfish, red-eared slider turtles, mosquito fish, or some combination thereof. People introduced these creatures as a way to improve the lakes. But ideas about what nature should look like change. Now, many people would rather the lakes held chorus frogs. The mapmakers included an illustration and side panel information about the diminutive tree frogs for the simple reason that, as 32

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Brastow says, “it’s an amazing story.” Once, Pacific chorus frogs were common in the city. In 1928, a herpetologist found them in both Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, but in 1966, another herpetologist judged them to be “reduced or nearly exterminated.” By the late 1990s, according to local lore, the last of the city’s chorus frogs were holed up in a small pool of water that collected at the base of Potrero Hill. The pool was hemmed in on the downhill side by a construction site and on the uphill side by an invasive grass, which threatened to shade out

the pool, rendering it useless to the frogs. But there was a man who really loved Pacific chorus frogs*, and instead of letting them die out, he gathered up their eggs and carried them in secret to lakes and ponds in Golden Gate Park and in the Presidio. “These frogs just showed up,” says Jonathan Young, a wildlife ecologist with the Presidio Trust. As a graduate student, he helped the frogs spread out from a small seasonal pool in the Presidio, which, it so happens, was the only place the rescued frogs were thought to have survived. But moving the frogs farther turned out to be difficult. Like the lakes in Golden Gate Park, most of the Presidio’s lakes and ponds were infested with frog-eating fish. Young was also worried about spreading the deadly chitrid fungus—currently decimating amphibians worldwide—to terrestrial salamanders. He devised a type of floating egg carton, to keep the frog eggs safe from hungry dragonfly larvae and crayfish. Now, after years of work, “the chorus frog in the Presidio is doing pretty well,” he says, especially compared to its prospects in the rest of the city. But even in the Presidio, the frog’s long-term survival is likely *The people I’ve talked with who know this man (who was actually maybe a small group of people) won’t tell me who he is/they are; probably because what he/they did is illegal even if he/they really did love the frogs.

dependent on sustained human attention. “You have to manage and maintain this kind of habitat,” he says of the rehabbed lakes. The Pacific chorus frog in San Francisco has become something akin to a houseplant or sourdough starter. But maybe that’s just falling back into the standard trap of what is nature and what isn’t. The line is sloppy and always has been. The frogs at the Presidio actually weren’t the only population of refugee frogs that survived. Charlotte Hill, then an employee of the educational nonprofit Kids and Parks, helped orchestrate another frog resettlement, into a specially built pond at Visitacion Valley Middle School, in the city’s southeastern corner. The frogs have been there now for more than ten years, successfully reproducing, she says. During the rainy season, you can hear them from a long way away. “Oh, they’re loud; they make a racket,” she says. “People love it.”

»SPREAD THE MAP The Nature in the City map is for sale at natureinthecity.org. You can also help get the map shared more widely! Over 5,000 maps have already been donated to the San Francisco Unified School District. Nature in the City is now raising $10,000 to support putting the map into the hands of as many San Francisco families and community members as possible. Donate at natureinthecity.org and write “maps” in the comments box.

» april–june 2018

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Connecting the City map

»ON WHALES Finally, in the late afternoon, more than 15 meandering miles from the Ferry Building, I reach Ocean Beach. I cross the line of sea scudge and dried seaweed, pass a graffitied concrete block, and stop at the edge of the waves, looking out at the gray ocean. The map shows a blue whale out there, which surprises me. It seems fantastic, like the monsters old-time cartographers used to fill the space where they weren’t sure of the reality. Later, I ask Johnson about the whale. She explains that they come to the waters off of Northern California in the spring and summer to feed off of krill and other tiny creatures, which in turn are fed by nutrients carried by an upwelling of cold water from deep in the ocean. Bay Area residents are more likely to see gray whales or humpbacks, she says, but the mapmakers ended up choosing the blue whale because the presence of the world’s big 34

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gest creature seemed more likely to surprise people, as it surprised me, for the way it seems to expand the realm of possibilities. The whales, which can be found in all the world’s oceans, also serve to anchor the map. “I like to think of how we’re connected to the rest of the planet through these animals,” Johnson says. Which, essentially, is the whole point of the Nature in the City map. We build walls to separate the inside from the outside, to separate what is ours from what is not. Here in the city, this collection of many walls, it can sometimes seem like no room remains for anything that isn’t ours. But there is still nature here. Once you know what it looks like, you begin to see it everywhere. Zach St. George is a reporter in Oakland. He writes about science and the environment, and is currently working on a book about the future of forests.

solano county

Dan Hill

sa n mat e o c o u nt y

Frances Freyburg

sa n mat e o c o u nt y

trail

Gretchine Nievarez

elsewhere... on the

Filoli Estate Trail

Benicia State Recreation Area

Filoli, a historic estate in Woodside owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has opened a one-mile loop trail that crisscrosses the San Andreas fault and offers access to a small nature center highlighting life on the property’s 654 acres. At the estate’s visitor center, we purchased wristbands that grant access to the Filoli mansion, manicured gardens, and the Estate Trail. Visitors follow marked signs on the Estate Trail as the flat path turns to gravel and you pass clusters of soap plant and dogbane, and towering redwoods, valley oak, and California bay laurel. After the previous night’s rain, the dirt sections of the path were easily passable hard mud. In a wooded grove halfway along the trail, we explored the Sally MacBride Nature Center, where taxidermy exhibits highlight the range of regional wildlife, including canids, catamounts, owls, and shrews. We saw Steller’s jays and Filoli volunteers on our walkabout, no other ramblers. The trail is more enjoyable the farther you walk, sloping and narrowing briefly through a fern- and deer-filled forest, before coming full circle in a clearing by the access road. May through early November, longer docent-guided hikes in the estate’s nature preserve are available for a fee. Before leaving the property, we detoured to the estate lawns to smell the cultivated roses, the walled gardens a pleasant but surreal diversion in sharp contrast to the untamed nature nearby. DETAILS: $20 adult entry fee. No non-service dogs, bicycles, or smoking allowed at Filoli. The nature center is open Friday to Sunday; Filoli is closed Mondays. Filoli.org. —Brittany Shoot

To the thousands of commuters who cross the peculiar double bridge over the Carquinez Strait, the Sacramento River may seem only an expensive obstacle, but these narrows are where the Sierra Nevada snow water that flows through the delta meets the Pacific Ocean. At every incoming tide the river retreats, rising about four feet as the current flows east. At slack tide, the wide water lies still as a lake; then it reverses to chase the receding sea. Twice a day this happens, in a rhythm like the heartbeat of the earth. The State Recreation Area in Benicia is a wide marsh providing habitat for otters, muskrats, and beavers. The Bay Trail here is a little-traveled one-lane road out to the riverside, passing the Forrest Deaner Native Plant Botanic Garden—3.5 acres of attractive terraced paths and nice specimens of manzanita, yerba mansa, and elderberry maintained and defended entirely with heroic volunteer labor and modest grants. If handto-hand combat with invasive species or planting blue-eyed grass appeals to you, this would be a fine place to do it on Earth Day! From the garden, the San Francisco Bay Trail climbs over grassy toyon-dotted Dillon Point, providing an overlook of strait and bridges. You can make a twomile loop—or walk all the way to Vallejo. Or explore a rougher spur path along the water’s edge, near clusters of diving ducks, to watch boat traffic ride the current that eddies around riprap seawalls and derelict pilings. DETAILS: Day use fee; dogs and bikes permitted; map, toilets, and picnic areas provided. —Ann Sieck

Lower La Honda Creek Six miles of hiking and horseback trail recently opened to the public at Lower La Honda Creek Open Space Preserve, with the next batch of trails slated to open in autumn 2020. Part of the 6,142-acre parcel managed by Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, the hilly grassland is home to raptors, deer, and the occasional coyote. The parking lot is located off Sears Ranch Road in the small town of La Honda. There is a 6-mile single, wide path, Harrington Creek Trail, along the well-maintained gravel fire road. Open seasonally, the Folger Loop Trail extends the in-and-out trail another 1.3 miles. After three-quarters of a mile, we reached a heavy metal pedestrian gate marking the edge of a working ranch, where hikers share the grassy landscape with cattle and the flat terrain turns pleasantly hilly. By an old outbuilding, we stopped to watch a flock of two dozen wild turkeys dust-bathing and rummaging through underbrush. We meandered another mile, slowly descending about 200 feet into the valley over gently sloping hills—no sudden drop-offs in sight. We heard burbling Harrington Creek before we 2 reached a newly constructed bridge across the water, where we stopped in a rare patch of shade. The trail continued on, but we did not. Heading back uphill, we enjoyed 1 1 expansive views of faraway ridges 33 and a glittering swath of the Pacific Ocean, heard California red-legged frogs croaking in unseen ponds, and steered clear of a bellowing cow luring her calves along the path. DETAILS: Paved parking lot with 22 spaces. One pit toilet; no potable water. No dogs or bikes allowed at preserve. —Brittany Shoot

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 april–june 2018

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Thank you for all you do to protect Bay nature!

Students from Cal’s Pre-Pharmacy Learning and Leadership Society volunteering to remove invasive ivy in Berkeley’s Tilden Park. Photo courtesy of Friends of Five Creeks.

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

May 2, 3 and 5, 2018 Bldg. 1064, Ft. Cronkhite, Marin Headlands Details: 415-426-5290 or www.ggro.org

The Golden Gate Raptor Observatory is a program of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in cooperation with National Park Services.

Pamela Rose Hawken

2018 Volunteer Info Meetings

Count or band hawks one full day every other week, August to December. All training provided. Must be able to walk gravelly hills.

Cooper’s Hawk - juvenile molting into adult feathering, photo

A little molt got you down? COME VOLUNTEER with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory.

Your All-Season Resort in the High Sierra

Sorensen’s

Hiking • Fishing • Birding • Country Cafe

Special Events

Alpine Aspen Festival Historic Gold Rush Trail Trek Alpine Wildflower Hike

Hope Valley

Just south of Tahoe in the High Sierra 800.423.9949 • www.SorensensResort.com

PRODUCED BY BAY NATURE FOR SONOMA L AND TRUST

PEOPLE TRAVEL BY ROAD.

WILDLIFE TRAVEL BY CORRIDOR.

by SABINE BERGMANN

Sonoma Land Trust

CREATING CONNECTIVITY IN SONOMA VALLEY

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maze of human habitats. In fact, the strip of vegetation that will bring her through the valley to the Mayacamas has narrowed to less than three-quarters of a mile wide. She has reached the thin neck of an hourglass. Whether she makes it across in the future depends on a collective human effort to keep that small passageway open.

etween the dark crevassed hills to the west and east, there’s a thread of green along the valley floor. This is the Sonoma Valley wildlife corridor as seen from a satellite. Zoom in on the satellite image and it becomes clear that vineyards and buildings abut the filament of tree cover. Two thoroughfares, Arnold Drive and Highway 12, slice perpendicularly through the corridor, breaking the patches of oak woodland, savanna, and evergreen forest into segments. This splintering of land, known as fragmentation, presents problems for wildlife: At its most extreme, it strands animals within ever-smaller islands of habitat. The study of island biology goes back more than a century, at least to Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, but as the human footprint expanded exponentially in the 20th century, biologists started to wonder whether nature reserves on land—when surrounded by development—could mimic the isolation of islands in the ocean. In 1975, ecologist and biologist Jared Diamond published a pioneering paper on the subject titled “The Island Dilemma.” In it he outlined six basic principles for preventing species in nature reserves from dying off, and one of them was the idea of connecting reserves through strips of protected habitat: so-called corridors. The idea of corridors appeared elsewhere, too—in wildlife ecologist Larry D. Harris’ 1984 book The Fragmented Forest, in conservation biologist Reed Noss’ papers identifying the need

Alice Zhuk, zhukphoto.com

er four paws pad softly along the golden grass of the Sonoma Valley floor’s oak savannas, her black-tipped ears alert for the approach of danger or the rustle of prey. She’s only about eight or nine months old—still a juvenile—but a young bobcat cannot stay within the range of her mother indefinitely. She must establish her own territory—find a place to hunt her own food and raise her own young. She has to venture out. As she leaves the foothills of the North Coast Range and Sonoma Mountain behind her, she moves through a patchwork of habitats. If she walked in a straight line, she would only cover five miles to reach the Mayacamas Range on the other side of the valley. But far from traveling in a straight line, she explores some of the 10,000 acres of the valley floor. She is learning where the wetlands and creeks provide water and safe passage; where the oak woodlands give way to savannas; where the strips of concrete fill with tens of thousands of cars each day; and which human-made crossings she can sneak through to avoid a collision on the highway overhead. And she is just one among the multitude of animals making their way around the forests, grasslands, hills, and riparian corridors of Sonoma Valley—one individual in the whirl of wildlife searching for food, water, mates, and prey. As she heads east toward the Mayacamas foothills, she encounters more driveways and houses, vineyards and roads. Occasionally, a thick, woven-wire fence forces her to double back, or she discovers a highway underpass is too inundated with water for her to slide through. In contrast to the expanses of hay-bald and oak-studded hills to the west and the slopes of forests and chaparral to the east, the valley floor is a crowded

Looking west from the Mayacamas Mountains, the land slopes down into the Sonoma Valley and then rises again becoming Sonoma Mountain (left). Over one year, camera traps snapped over 83 photos of bobcats in underpasses. They were particularly active in summer.

to connect protected areas of Florida, and elsewhere. But by the end of the century, only a few dozen studies had been published on the subject. “It can take a while for an idea [like corridors] to sink in,” says biologist Paul Beier, one of the biggest proponents of corridor ecology. “It takes decades before people realize, ‘Oh, the landscape is fragmented! Oh, we built a national system of highways without even thinking about wildlife!’” Beier first recognized the importance of corridors in his Southern California work with mountain lions, which he noted were traveling between protected areas to find the resources they needed to survive. In 1998, Beier and Noss published a review of corridor research and found that although studies with solid empirical data were few and far between, they all pointed to one conclusion: Corridors promoted animal movement between

Sonoma Land Trust/Stephen Joseph Photography

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habitat patches. Corridors, the research shows, allow animals to access more of their preferred habitats, which offer the resources they need to survive, like food, water, and mates. Without that access, animal populations can suffer from dwindling food stocks, competition for limited territory, and inbreeding. What’s more, wildlife with fewer options to move has fewer options to adapt to intensifying climate change. In the last decade, connectivity conservation—the focus on connecting ecosystems through mechanisms like wildlife corridors—has come into its own. New technologies, like computer modeling and GIS mapping, have strengthened the wave of empirical evidence in favor of corridors. Ballooning land prices have incentivized environmental organizations to purchase small, strategic parcels. Meanwhile, expanding human development has made safe passage between protected areas even more crucial for wildlife survival. Now, connectivity work is being implemented on various scales all over the world, from Berkeley to Bhutan. In a previous era of conservation, when acquiring large swaths of land for protection was the norm, the thread of green through Sonoma Valley would have seemed insignificant. But according to Wayne Spencer, chief scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute, the concept of connectivity is everywhere now. “We’re past baby steps,” he says. “We’re serious now. Connectivity is the key thing in conservation.”

ooking at the connectivity of the Bay Area’s habitats and wildlife populations requires a landscape-scale view of conservation, and in 2010, SC Wildlands provided one in the form of a map. Laid out on the Bay Area’s nine counties were outlines of “critical linkages” that allow wildlife to move between undeveloped april–june 2018

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areas. These corridors were said to facilitate the movement of all Studies like these help researchers understand where and which kinds of life, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, animals travel the corridors, Diamond says, and how to make invertebrates, and even plants. The Sonoma Valley wildlife corridor them more usable. Along with her research partner Ahiga Snyder, was one of those linkages. Diamond developed Pathways for Wildlife, a research organization “When we saw the map of the Sonoma Valley linkage,” says focused on wildlife connectivity. As the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Tony Nelson, a wildlife ecologist and Sonoma Land Trust’s Corridor project kicked off in 2013, Pathways partnered with stewardship program manager, “we immediately noticed an opSonoma Land Trust on a highway underpass study and discovered portunity, and also a threat.” The opportunity lay in the 5,000 a staggering amount of wildlife moving through underpasses. acres of permanently protected lands within the corridor. The “As the months would go by and we were entering the data, threat lay with several parcels smack in the middle of the corwe thought, ‘This is a lot of data!’” Diamond says. “And now ridor, which were not only unprotected, but actually for sale. that it’s all together, we’re just completely blown away. The One of these unprotected parcels, the state-owned Sonoma amount of movement and biodiversity is tremendous.” The Developmental Center—with its 700 acres of open wildlands— study yielded 8,949 detections of animals at just nine culverts was about to close, triggering an assessment for new land use. and underpasses along the valley floor. Over the 12 months of One strategy for addressing that challenge was clear: Work to the study, some of the culvert cameras provided up to 1,500 imacquire the three small parcels of land for sale in the center of ages of wildlife—each. The results reveal that practically every species of mammal in the Sonoma the corridor. But Nelson saw Valley, from foxes and deer to coyanother opening for Sonoma “WE’RE JUST COMPLETELY otes and bobcats, uses an underLand Trust. While the linkpass—or several—to cross ages map compiled by the Bay BLOWN AWAY. THE AMOUNT the roads. Even species Area Open Space Council and OF MOVEMENT AND BIODIVERSITY thought never to use underSC Wildlands was extensive, IS TREMENDOUS.” passes, like river otters, were it was also broad. When it came down to the linkages themselves, including the corridor caught on camera. “We’d through Sonoma Valley, there was practically no information see these whole families on the wildlife that supposedly used it. “Buying land or putting traveling through,” Diamond says. “They are in stream-channel an easement on it is one thing,” Nelson says, “but when I saw areas, but a lot of these areas aren’t by a big delta or by a big that map, I thought, ‘Does anyone know how to manage these bay. I didn’t know they would cross such terrestrial places where corridors? Does anyone know how to make them better?’” there’s maybe only a small creek.” The river otter photos repWhen Sonoma Land Trust approached the Gordon and resented the first time the species had been shown to be using Betty Moore Foundation, they pitched a corridor project that culverts and bridges in the Bay Area. included not only acquisition, but also an in-depth study of ut Sonoma Land Trust’s corridor study didn’t just look the wildlife living there. The proposed project would involve at how animals crossed the highways; it also addressed two years of assessments, including camera traps, underpass the animals crossing the valley itself. A series of 44 cameras arstudies, biological surveys, and an advisory group that walked ranged in three arrays caught thousands of wildlife snapshots through the corridor. “We wanted to see if animals were movduring the two years of the study. The animals most frequently ing through the corridor. No one had any data on that,” Nelson observed were black-tailed deer, wild turkey, and western gray says. “So, within a month of seeing the linkages map, we sent squirrels. But black-tailed jackrabbits, gray foxes, bobcats, rac[the foundation] a proposal.” Since then, the Moore Foundation coons, skunks, opossums, coyotes, and even mountain lions has provided Sonoma Land Trust two grants totaling $3,915,738 made appearances too. “We just wanted to see if there was for purchasing land and funding studies and improvement projany data that animals are freely moving through this corridor,” ects within the corridor. Nelson says of the study. “And we got that.” n the Sonoma Valley wildlife corridor, a wild animal’s ability The study was the first to establish a baseline of wildlife to traverse it can boil down to specific landmarks: whether movement in the corridor, but it also revealed how each species’ the border of a property is blocked by an impenetrable fence, a movement depends on its surroundings. Gray foxes, for instance, swollen creek has blocked a wildlife road-crossing structure, a were much more likely to be photographed in areas of chaparlack of vegetation forces animals to move through open exposed ral rather than forest. Gray squirrels, on the other hand, were areas. So, while landscape-scale thinking might have sparked the less likely to be captured in chaparral; they preferred areas with connectivity conservation movement, it’s the smaller-scale wave greater canopy cover. of technology and research that’s fueling it. Camera studies are remarkably powerful because they reveal “The next step is to ground-truth the linkage design with movements of animals that can be largely invisible to us. When cameras and roadkill and telemetry studies,” says wildlife ecoloDiamond sets out to do camera studies, she often finds that gist Tanya Diamond (no relation to Jared Diamond). people are incredulous at the placement of her cameras, saying

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Daniel Dietrich, danieldietrichphotography.com

eople pass by this corridor all the time and aren’t aware of it,” says Anne Teller, owner of Oak Hill Farm. “Once you’re aware of it, it changes everything.” Three large properties provide the majority of open wildlife habitat on the eastern edge of the corridor. One of these is Glen Oaks Ranch, a Sonoma Land Trust property. Another is Bouverie Preserve, owned by Audubon Canyon Ranch. The third is Anne Teller’s property. Oak Hill Farm spans 677 acres, though only a few dozen of these are used for farming. The vast majority of the property is untouched. Teller has a conservation easement with Sonoma Land Trust in which she has agreed to not further develop these lands. But the trust is now working with landowners on other aspects of corridor health besides the preservation of undeveloped land. A main focus is removal of certain barriers to wildlife movement. The most obvious type Gray foxes were the second most is fencing. Nelson and Teller have joined forces on common animal documented a fence-modification project, which involves taking in the underpasses during the camera trap study. They traveled out old, unused fences and investigating the use of through them most often in wildlife-friendly fences where needed. the fall, almost five times more frequently than in the spring. Teller’s land also flanks Highway 12; a 2016 traffic census estimated that roughly 14,000 cars pass that they haven’t seen much wildlife for her cameras to detect. her driveway every day. The best way for wildlife to cross the “And then at nighttime, the animals are there,” she says. “It goes highway is through a culvert that abuts her property, and she to show how well animals have learned to live with us. I think we agreed to allow the land trust to clear the blackberry bushes have a hard time learning to live with them.” that were blocking access to the crossing. Oak Hill Farm also While the corridor camera studies have captured snapshots has three creeks running through it that serve as critical riparian of animals moving around the valley, a research project based corridors; Teller’s daughter is working to clear at least one of at Audubon Canyon Ranch is using telemetry, via radio collars, the creek beds for animal crossings. to track the movements of individuals—specifically, mountain Aside from removing barriers, maintaining healthy habitats lions. The study shows that the corridor doesn’t just connect is key. Oak Hill Farm plants hedgerows with native vegetadifferent animals’ territories: For one male mountain lion, the tion in order to better mimic animals’ preferred habitats. As corridor is actually more central than that. the camera studies showed, “I thought that maybe we might end up having one male wildlife can be particular about [mountain lion] on the western side of Highway 12, and one on the habitat type they will use the eastern side,” says Quinton Martins, the lion project’s princito cross the valley. “What pal investigator. “But for [this] male, the corridor is an important we’re finding,” Martins of the part of his range. He patrols his territory, cutting through the mountain lion study says, “is corridor, every month.” that it just has to have the The fact that the corridor lies within the male lion’s territoright habitat.” Sonoma’s nary might have come as a surprise, but the lion’s range is actually tive habitat types—chaparral, oak woodland and savannas, quite typical for a male in Northern California. And “typical” grasslands, evergreen forests, is quite large: His territory covers between 250 and 300 miles. and wetlands—provide homes “Often, when one is in wilderness areas, one tends to think, ‘Oh, and sustenance for all kinds I wonder how many cats live in this area,’” Martins says. “But here, (clockwise from right) Researchers set up a camera trap at a culvert that of wildlife, “whether it’s in a one can—one should—do the reverse, and ask: How many people carries water under Highway 116. In live in one cat’s territory?” regional park, or a preserve, or one analysis, deer made up almost 50 percent of the individual animals According to the Audubon Canyon Ranch study, there private land doesn’t really matusing four underpasses monitored are at least 17,000 private land parcels in this male mountain ter,” Martins says. with camera traps, while mountain lion’s territory. Sonoma Land Trust points lions were noted 14 times. b ay n at u r e

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to the efforts of Oak Hill Farm as an example of private landowners who nurture native habitats with few barriers to movement. The changes might be small—planting a hedgerow here; taking down an old fence there; clearing a blackberry bush or two—but when enough landowners undertake them, they can be vital. “I think [corridor management] has to be a consortium of private and public efforts,” Teller says. “No one person or organization can do this alone.”

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Quinton Martins / Audubon Canyon Ranch

s the connectivity of landscapes comes to the forefront of conservation work, so has an entirely different type of connectivity. “All of our projects have multiple partners. All the land trusts not only are working with each other, but we’re all working with Caltrans or the local transportation authorities,” Diamond from Pathways for Wildlife says. “The multi-partnership has been so powerful.” Given the number of institutions, organizations, and people within the Sonoma Valley corridor, cooperation is mandatory for achieving what’s known as permeability—the ease with which animals can pass through a landscape. The partnerships have already proved fruitful. The results of the underpass study have sparked a conversation between Sonoma Land Trust and Caltrans on improving wildlife crossing structures

throughout the corridor. And private landowners like Teller are starting to implement changes that make their properties friendlier for wildlife. Even public lands are under assessment. A research team from the Wildlife Conservation Society is working with Sonoma Land Trust to study the effects of recreation on the corridor. In a place like the Bay Area, where the population is both active and increasing, human recreation on public lands can significantly impact wildlife. Sarah Reed, the lead researcher for the Wildlife Conservation Society team, has found that in the North Bay, the mere presence of hikers, bikers, and equestrians in protected areas can lead to a fivefold decline in detections of coyotes and bobcats there. Such declines can be detrimental to species survival if land use isn’t managed properly. But people recreating in the corridor can help. “Anyone who visits the area has a role to play,” says Reed. The public’s interest in and love for the area especially matters when

it comes to the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC)—the state-owned care facility, in the heart of the corridor, that will close at the end of 2018. Currently, development on SDC is limited to a small campus of stately buildings set on tidy lawns, which represent just 200 of the more than 900 acres of the property. But this could change. “If we lose [SDC] to development, the corridor shrinks down to a very narrow regional park,” Nelson says, “and a lot of the permeability value of this entire corridor will disappear.” april–june 2018

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Luckily for the corridor, however, a partnership of people and organizations is advocating to maintain the undeveloped land on the property. As the state conducts its property assessment and looks for public comments on future uses for the land, people have been pointing to the importance of the open space for wildlife movement. “It’s been really heartening and exciting to see the public’s support for the corridor,” Nelson says. In conservation work, it’s not uncommon to scramble for public support only after a property is at risk for development. “But in this case, we’re not playing catch-up,” Nelson says. “Because of the corridor study and the outreach we’ve done, we already have support; we have a coalition ready.”

WILDLIFE CORRIDORS WORK AROUND THE BAY

Silicon Valley, has taken on mapping, protecting, and enhancing even larger wildlife corridors,

The Sonoma Valley wildlife corridor is one of many corridors connecting open spaces around the Bay Area, and the efforts to study and protect these linkages are widespread. In November 2016, the East Bay Regional Park District installed motion-activated cameras along the forest corridor connecting Tilden Regional Park and Sibley Regional Preserve. The study confirmed that the Caldecott wildlife corridor is a critical passageway for animals such as raccoons, deer, possums, skunks, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, and even three mountain lions. The wooded-area crossing is a much safer alternative to Highway 24 below, where more than 160,000 cars travel each day. In the South Bay, a similar alternative is under development for the animals crossing Laurel Curve on Highway 17 in Santa Cruz County. Transportation authority Caltrans has committed $3.1 million to building a wildlife tunnel under the highway to strengthen the corridor linking the Loch Lomond watershed and the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. And in Coyote Valley, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority and researchers from Pathways for Wildlife and UC Berkeley have collared 20 bobcats to study their movements across the corridor connecting the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Diablo Range. Like Quinton Martins’ mountain lion radio collar study in the North Bay, these efforts will help researchers better understand the intricacies of individual animals’ corridor use. Meanwhile, the Urban Wildlife Research Project, best known for its studies of gray foxes in

hese days, Sonoma Land Trust has such as the marsh and mountain corridors that circle the Bay. its sights set on the conservation The study and enhancement of wildlife corridors in the Bay Area is a robust regional efof an even larger landscape corridor, fort—and it is growing. from Marin to Napa County. In fact, connectivity conservationists around the globe are expanding the sizes of the cor“Now, our work is not just on ecological connectivity,” says ridors they advocate for. Bhutan is looking to connect most, Spencer, of the Conservation Biology Institute, “but human if not all, of its national parks, which would make it the network connectivity.” first nation with more than half of its territory under proRegardless of a corridor’s scale and size, the benefits are felt tection. In North America, land trusts are signing conservaindividually and locally, in an extended tree canopy for a squirtion easements to strengthen a corridor between Yellowstone rel, an open underpass for a family of otters, or a section of National Park and the open spaces of the Yukon in northfenceless oak savanna for a nine-month-old bobcat making her ern Canada. And in his recent book Half-Earth, biologist way through a fragmented landscape. E.O. Wilson advocates for corridors that cross continents.

Sabine Bergmann is a Berkeley-based travel and science writer and the co-founder and editorial director of the quarterly travel magazine, Hidden Compass. Wildlife Travel by Corridor was produced by Bay Nature magazine with the generous support of the Sonoma Land Trust for publication in the April–June 2018 issue of the magazine. Additional copies of this publication can be obtained by contacting Bay Nature Institute (baynature@baynature.org) or Sonoma Land Trust.

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BayNature Bay Nature magazine is a quarterly publication of the Bay Nature Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to connecting people to the San Francisco Bay Area’s natural world and motiving people to solve problems with nature in mind. For more information, or to subscribe to the magazine, visit baynature.org or email baynature@baynature.org.

Sonoma Land Trust believes the land is the heart of the community. Since 1976, the nonprofit Sonoma Land Trust has protected more than 50,000 acres of scenic, natural, agricultural and open land for future generations, and is accredited by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission. For more information, please visit sonomalandtrust.org. #ProtectThePicture ...to project the land forever

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Can you imagine the Big Sur coastline as a series of seaside developments? Thanks to the donors of Big Sur Land Trust, many of the spectacular landscapes and iconic views in Big Sur and beyond have been protected. Join our supporters who, since 1978, have conserved and cared for over 40,000 acres throughout Monterey County. Please donate at bigsurlandtrust.org.

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MEMBER PREVIEW SALE & SILENT AUCTION

One Tam congratulates our partner and friend Dr. Lisa Micheli. For her leadership, support, and contributions to improve our collective understanding of the health of Mt. Tam and to the Marin Wildlife Picture Index Project, she is unquestionably a Bay Area conservation hero!

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MEET OUR LOCAL HEROES

H E R O E S

Bay Nature Institute’s three Local Hero Awards—Conservation Action, Environmental Education, and Youth Engagement—are given annually to individuals selected by the board and staff of Bay Nature Institute for their outstanding work on behalf of the natural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. The 2018 awards will be presented to the following people at Bay Nature’s annual Local Hero Awards dinner on Sunday, March 25, 2018.

CONSERVATION ACTION AWARD

Walter Moore

Walter Moore can show you the place where he first understood the power of a local land trust. We’re walking at Bair Island along a shoreline trail over the site of what 30 years ago was a salt plant slated for residential development. But in 1997 the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which Moore had just joined as general counsel, bought the 3,000 acres of land and turned it over to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to restore as part of the national wildlife refuge. Now Moore is pointing out pelicans as they soar over restored baylands, and great egrets as they pick through the growing wetland. Moore began volunteering for the Peninsula Open Space Trust in 1993, took a job as its general counsel in 1995, and became the organization’s president in 2011. Over his tenure, POST has protected more than 75,500 acres of open space, farms, and parkland around Silicon Valley. He led several organizations in the purchase of 8,500 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains and coast, which became the new Cotoni–Coast Dairies National Monument, and led successful campaigns for bond measures to fund the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. In recognition of his two decades of work to preserve land around the Bay Area, Moore is Bay Nature’s 2018 Conservation Action Local Hero. bay nature: You started out at POST as general counsel in 1995.

What was it like in Bay Area land conservation, and in conservation generally, then relative to now? walter moore: Simpler times. I still have a lot of fun, I love what I do, but back then we were just out doing deals. Not deals in the sense of wheeling and dealing, but signing up and b ay n at u r e

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buying properties at a time when we could still negotiate these things, at a time when there was a remarkable supply. We have these wonderful maps in our office that show our area in 1977, when POST was founded, versus today. There was zero green [protected land] in 1977, and over time we filled it in. We had more projects to choose from back then and could be more judicious about negotiating price. Our job now is to connect it all. We’ve provided this base, but it’s not a network yet; it’s individual isolated islands of land. And each link is important, and the landowners know it. bn: When did you first start to think of connecting pieces of land together? wm: It was right at the time we were transitioning from Audrey Rust to myself as head of the organization. I was thinking about what’s next for POST, and there were two things I was starting to hear about, both having to do with connectivity. One was, you look at the map and think, OK, these are isolated islands of land. We’ve got to connect them for wildlife, for recreation, for all the natural resources. The other connection was what we’re working on now: connecting broader populations to this work, in a way that makes sense. bn: So what do you need to do to change? What are the steps? wm: The first thing is a lot of diversity, equity, and inclusiveness training. Training first. We’re doing a survey next—internal staff, board, external partners, and the external community—to understand how we’re perceived and what we need to do. Then, we’ll build a plan based on that feedback to figure out how p h o t o g r a p h s b y a n d r e a l a u e , s pa r e b e a u t y. c o m

to appropriately connect with broader audiences. One of the things I don’t want to do is have false starts and stops with new communities. That means we also need to hire and engage people who can be our representatives and our guides, who are legitimate in those communities, number one. And number two, we must have an open heart, mind, and ears to what they want, not what we want. bn: Are there places where if you moved away, you’d have to come back and see it? wm:We’re standing on one of them, Bair Island. Right after I came to POST this project was happening. I saw the incredible impact a small organization could have on the livability of an entire area—the fact that this will be permanently available for people and wildlife to enjoy. This incredible experience we’re having now—there are planes flying overhead, eight lanes of cars on one side, and yet we’re looking at the incredible Bay, egrets, herons, and all kinds of wildlife out here. It’s just remarkable. And that’s before we ever talk about the positive environmental benefits that this area provides to the region. I think it’s something that will keep this region sustainable and beautiful for a long time to come. The other is one of POST’s first projects, Windy Hill. That’s what POST is known for; it was our first big project. It’s important for that reason, but it’s also where I was able to connect with my daughter when she was going through rough times. That’s the most meaningful thing about the work I do. It provides places for people to connect on such a deeper level than any other context I can think of. These lands, whether you’re hiking, enjoying a picnic space, a soccer field, cricket, whatever, it’s a different experience when you are in nature and have all of your senses engaged. Then you’re really able to come together

with another person. bn: So where does POST go from here? wm: There will always be a natural function for us and need for us in two ways, and likely there’s a third. First is that we are building and have in place a stewardship fund, so that no matter what happens to us as an institution, there will be the financial resources to continue to monitor and enforce conservation easements and act as a watchdog over the lands we’ve helped transfer. Boards change, things change, but these protections, so clearly documented in the deeds transferring these lands, allow us to step in and say, “Nope, that’s not why we transferred this.” Number two is that we’ve been able to add value to the public agencies in our area via private nonprofit fundraising and resource development. I don’t see why either of these two functions would ever go away. The third one will be an interesting transition for POST, because it’s not where we came from. It’s that role of engaging the broader community with open space by working in conjunction and partnering with public agencies and others, to dramatically expand the number of people who personally feel close to our work. I hope POST can evolve into that. I’m going to set the platform for POST to do this over the next decade. But that will be a decision for our board, a decision for the future. We’re always asking, “Is POST the best one to play that role or is that somebody else?” We’ll have to decide over the next eight to 10 years. I believe it will be very important. I think that will be essential. If a majority of people don’t continue to be as supportive of open space protection for all of its myriad benefits as they are now, we run the danger of future generations saying, “You know, we really need these lands for something else.” —Eric Simons

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AWARD

Lisa Micheli

Perched on a ridgeline in the Mayacamas Mountains northeast of Santa Rosa, Pepperwood Preserve spans 3,200 acres, protecting the headwaters of three watersheds that feed the Russian River and offering refuge to more than 900 species of native plants and animals. President and CEO Lisa Micheli, who took the helm at Pepperwood in 2009, has led the private preserve’s transformation into “a field station of global significance” recognized by the National Science Foundation. More than a dozen research projects—studying anything from climate change and hydrology to grasslands and phenology—are underway at Pepperwood at any given time, while the preserve and its 9,400-square-foot Dwight Center for Conservation Science also serves as a lab and natureeducation center for students and citizen scientists of all ages. Research, teaching, and outreach have come together at the preserve under Micheli, who holds a civil engineering master’s in Environmental Water Resources and a Ph.D. in Energy and Resources, both from UC Berkeley. In recognition of april–june 2018

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Pepperwood’s commitment to world-class science, environmental education, and community involvement, Micheli has been named Bay Nature’s 2018 Local Hero for Environmental Education.

and other community members? lm: What makes us different from many of our sister organizations is our science focus—and that we’re really trying to bring science to everyone in the community. Here in Sonoma County, bay nature: Let’s start with the Tubbs Fire’s impact on 85 percent of our natural areas are privately owned, so we need Pepperwood. You’ve made wildfire mitigation a major focus of everyone to be equally good stewards. research at Pepperwood. In terms of recovery and then preparaOur youth programs focus on raising the bar on science edution for the next fire, is this an opportunity for land managers cation and getting children out on the preserve, because even in in the region to do some things differently? the North Bay, many kids don’t necessarily have outdoor educalisa micheli: It’s almost like the clock is being reset on our tion opportunities. We help them perform better with respect to forests, so we have this critical window to come in and start the state’s science standards tests and invite them to have a really more aggressively managing them. At Pepperwood, we benefit welcoming relationship with nature, which can improve health from input from scientists and also from our Native American and activity levels and empower them to feel safe and know how council, whose people used prescribed fire as a landscape manto handle themselves outdoors. I am especially proud that our agement tool in our region for millennia. We are at the table youth and family programs are delivered in a bi-lingual Englishwith the decision-makers saying, “We need to start thinking of Spanish format, and that we are committed to diversifying the fuels management as another one of our objectives like ecology pipeline of conservation professionals. and water quality and property values.” For example, some of That whole bailiwick is the work of Sandi Funke, our educathe erosion-control methods that people use have fuel-loading tion director. I have a long friendship and collegial relationship consequences. I think the lesson is that more than ever, we need with Sandi. Before Pepperwood, we worked together at another to integrate environmental and natural-resource considerations nonprofit for about six years. We were really lucky that she came into our emergency-response measures, before the to Pepperwood. At the time we basically had a kids’ emergency happens! field-trip program and a college field-trip program, NOBODY’S bn: How does that work fit into your broader objecand she turned it around and said, “How can we tives around climate-change research at Pepperwood? really leverage the value of Pepperwood as an on-site A HERO lm: Our goal is to translate global science for local learning center for everyone in our community?” applications. Some of the work we’ve done with our Nobody’s a hero by themselves. At Pepperwood BY HERSELF. science affiliates has been on the increased risk of we have educators participating in science projects, fire and potentially increased fire intensity as a result and scientists participate in education projects. We of climate change. We’ve also been raising awarerealized early on that we wanted to cross-fertilize. bn: You’ve personally been involved in both research and outness about the likely increasing frequency of drought. Now we’ve reach, as well as fundraising. How did you arrive where you are experienced a record-breaking drought and this fire that moved today, and what part of the job do you enjoy most? at unprecedented speeds through our landscape. People are relm: My path was quite meandering. As an undergraduate I was ally looking to Pepperwood to help them interpret the science to interested in physical oceanography and thought I was going to understand these events, and the implications for land and water work on ocean science. But I had trouble picking one major, and management. We’re one of the few organizations at the interface I kind of wanted to do all the majors. I’ve always been interested of trying to find the best science and sharing it in a way that in a developing a multidisciplinary perspective. I love science and I people can understand it, to inform our conservation priorities wanted to have science as a credential and work on that side of our right now, with immediate applications. Pepperwood as a science environmental challenges, but I am not that good at specializing. entity is different from a university or academic research center My first job out of college was at the San Francisco office of because our focus is on serving the open-space managers, owners, the Environmental Protection Agency. At age 23 I was running a and stewards of our Bay Area region. We really are trying to listen four-state EPA wetlands enforcement program. That experience was to what they need. bn: Yet as far as conducting long-term climate research across such an important education in issues facing California’s environthe Pepperwood landscape, you would seem to be contributing ment, in people, in how decisions get made. to a global knowledge base as well. Building teams has evolved as my strength: helping to idenlm: That’s part of what we’re doing—making sure the data we tify the right people and really listening closely to what they collect here is fed into global databases, and then it’s available need. Science is a sweet spot for me, but as a manager I use the for work at multiple scales. And as an earth-science nerd, I find same skill set working across the entire Pepperwood team of 17 this work at multiple scales really compelling. So we have the people, some of whom have biology degrees, education degrees, data for understanding Pepperwood Preserve, or even a particuand have business and fundraising backgrounds. There is nothing lar forest grove at the preserve, and yet our scientists are also quite as satisfying as seeing a terrific team all pulling together contributing to analyses of trends across the globe over time. and making a real difference in our community and for our bn: How does Pepperwood translate its science for students planet! — by Nate Seltenrich b ay n at u r e

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Sandra Corzantes gathers critters from Alpine Pond for a youth educational program at the David C. Daniels Nature Center in Skyline Ridge Open Space Prserve near Cupertino.

of the kind of places and spaces Corzantes has committed to finding, stewarding, and sharing. Corzantes, Bay Nature’s 2018 Youth Engagement Local Hero, tracks raptors with the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory and helps negotiate permission from various state agencies to track them in new and higher spots. She’s a docent with the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, where she works as an outdoor education leader for elementary school kids at the Daniels Nature Center at Skyline Ridge Preserve, and she volunteers for MidPen digitizing archives. She leads hikes with Latino Outdoors and volunteers with the Sierra Club’s Inspiring Connections Outdoors program. Along with her numerous nonprofit commitments, Corzantes recently received her California Naturalist certification and in 2015 started a job as a park ranger for the city of San Mateo. bay nature: Let’s talk a little

YOUTH ENGAGEMENT AWARD

Sandra Corzantes Sandra Corzantes knows how to find pockets of unseen nature. When I suggested we meet outdoors to talk about her efforts to connect more diverse communities to nature, she suggested Fort Funston, then led me down a dusty path and past the dog-walkers, through a tunnel of branches to a natural clearing formed underneath a tree completely hidden from the rest of the park. It’s a place she found by accident while following her dog, Mojo, but has returned to many times since. The bustling outside world may as well not be there (except for the occasional bark)—it’s a small universe apart, and an example

bit about why we’re meeting here at Fort Funston—why this particular area? sandra corzantes: I found out about this place when I was living in San Bruno. I had my dog, I wanted to explore the areas around me, and this was practically in my backyard. Even though I live in Burlingame now and it’s more of a drive, this is my backyard. It’s not limited to my block or my city park. The Bay Area is my home, and within an hour’s drive I can be in a redwood forest, at a beach. As an adult I want to take advantage of these opportunities. bn: Is the diversity what you find so interesting about Bay Area nature? sc: There are a lot of endangered species here that aren’t found in other areas. I feel so blessed to live here. My parents were immigrants from Guatemala, so I’m first-generation Guatemalan-American. They could have gone anywhere, and we had connections in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I’m blessed enough to have been born in an area with space. I live with this april–june 2018

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H E R O E S 50

mindset: I don’t want to miss out. This is why I do what I do. This is the area to do it, to make those connections. bn: What motivates you when you’re doing your work? sc: I just know there’s a lot of healing that takes place when there’s people-to-people contact and community. At 14 I decided to become a police cadet with my local department, San Mateo, and it’s really instilled a sense of respect for teamwork and how my actions can contribute to a greater good and giving back to my community. It’s also this philosophy where you receive tenfold what you give. I live by that philosophy. bn: How did you get involved with what you’re doing now, especially with Latino Outdoors? sc: I got connected to Latino Outdoors because I was a docent and a volunteer with the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (Midpen) and an email went out: “We need docents for this hike through Latino Outdoors and Midpen, just let us know.” It piqued my interest and I thought, “I can totally volunteer.” It was my first time really being a docent. I met Jennifer [Adams, Latino Outdoor’s South Bay regional coordinator]. Talking with her, seeing what the nonprofit’s mission was, I was totally in line with it. I continued to be the Midpen docent for those events until I expressed that I wanted to volunteer for Latino Outdoors. From there, I started working with Jennifer and I think what really solidified it was that I wanted to become a California naturalist, and

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there was a program where you could be sponsored by Latino Outdoors and get certified in Tomales Bay. bn: How did you first get interested in nature? Were you always outdoorsy? sc: I would say my interest in nature has always been with me, but the concept of becoming outdoorsy didn’t start until around 2015. That’s when my connection merged with engagement and actually starting to go on hikes and explore the Bay Area on my own terms. I found it to be healing and cathartic, so I decided I wanted to get more involved with the community. bn: What can you say about your experiences as a Latina woman spending time in parks and in nature? sc: After a time I started to feel lonely: As much fun as I was having in my experiences, there was a yearning to connect with other people I could identify with. Initially when I started to get involved with the outdoor community, I felt as though I didn’t belong, but I acknowledged and let go those feelings of discomfort because I knew it was coming from a place of anxiety. I pushed myself to try new things and put myself in new situations because the personal growth I experienced on my own had been tremendous, and I knew that through a community it could only grow exponentially. Best decision I have made so far in my lifetime! —Elizabeth Rogers

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(CA PARKS continued from page 28) work?”

The question may be moot in the face of the biggest obstacle of all: the department’s massive “deferred maintenance” bill, from decades of broken pipes and crumbling foundations left unaddressed as the budget bottomed out. Price points out the term itself is an oxymoron. “Maintenance implies advanced preventative action,” he says. “It’s actually deferred responsibility.” The deferred maintenance total costs I find in my research vary wildly. Determined to get information from the source, I experience a moment of cognitive dissonance in conversation with McGuirk and Jaromay, when they simultaneously speak in glowing terms about their new multitier computer system for precisely tracking maintenance costs to the dollar and refuse to specify a total beyond saying it’s “above a billion dollars.” They’re focusing on something called “annual maintenance” for now, they say, using funding from marijuana and transportation legislation. I try to learn more about what exactly annual maintenance entails, but after my conversation with McGuirk and Jaromay, the department responds to my follow-up questions and interview requests only just as this article is going to print. The data they give me from the new tiered system, difficult to parse through email, seems to indicate that the department is juggling 5,023 deferred maintenance projects totaling slightly

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less than $1.2 billion. What they don’t say is how they plan to pay that bill. Meanwhile, virtually every park partner struggles with the realities of deferred maintenance on the ground. At Santa Cruz Mission, Friends relies on fundraising for its most urgent needs, like replacing a blocked French drain this past year (“This whole building is made of mud,” says Amanda Segers, Friends’ Program Manager. “We don’t want it to melt.”). Doyle feels strongly about the matter, calling this kind of obligation an “unfair burden.” Take Lake Del Valle, which East Bay Regional Park District operates for the state and which attracts 400,000 visitors a year. “The water system was built in 1960, and we can’t patch it anymore,” he says. “That’s probably three million dollars. Should we spend that money to replace what the state built?” I ask Conn, who has made a career in finance, if, with deferred maintenance, the P3 system is sustainable. “Well, it’s more sustainable than the alternative,” he says. Neither he nor anyone else I spoke to is sure what the answer is here, but they are emphatic that Proposition 68 is a start. The bond’s $218 million for existing state parks could be put toward maintenance, and the $5 million will give operators the opportunity to address urgent issues themselves. It also sets a precedent of enabling bonds to earmark money explicitly for park partners, paving the way for future funding.

And yes, a change in leadership in Sacramento wouldn’t hurt. A commonly repeated statistic points out that one year of parks funding is one-tenth of one percent of California’s budget. The funding “is there,” Krumbein says. “It’s just not pointed toward us.” It’s a clear day at China Camp State Park near the city of San Rafael, and San Pablo Bay is slate blue and gently ruffled. The park is filled today with mountain bikers and families wandering the ruins of the last Bay Area Chinese shrimping village. Dogs run in the waves; a few curious onlookers squint at the replica Chinese junk tied to the ramshackle pier. Friends of China Camp’s Martin Lowenstein walks the beach and the ruins of the village, its corrugated metal roofs glinting, walls endlessly patched. He shows me the ten-or-so pilings holding the old houses up over the Bay that urgently need to be replaced. One has a hole clear through it with a view to the sand on the other side. He says he hopes people in the community will help him raise funds for it where the department has not. The local harbormaster offered to do it for a deep discount, “but it’s not that simple,” he says. He knows he will have to submit a PEF and get the project authorized. Who knows how long that would take? For now, Lowenstein and his programming director, Sheila

Coll, are doing their best with the resources at hand, as they push to put the department’s broader transformation efforts into action on a local level. Coll says her plans for the future of China Camp include programs on the park’s indigenous history that will bring in community members from the Canal district, a nearby area with large low-income Latino populations. She’s especially excited about working with a local facilitator for blind and sight-impaired groups on a tour of the park that focuses on the senses, including a pause to smell native plants and the dried shrimp the village once produced. We stop at the old snack bar, which until 2016 was run by Frank Quan, the last of China Camp’s residents. “Fresh cooked crabs, sandwiches, fresh shrimp cocktails,” a faded sign says. Next to it, a paper tacked to the window: “in transition due to Frank Quan’s passing.” The cafe is just as Quan left it, with his menu still written on a white board. His friends continue to gather on Saturdays to drink coffee and eat doughnuts on the old wooden bar. “This was and is a community hub,” Lowenstein says. The daffodils Quan planted still bloom outside his cafe, as if in reminder. Alissa Greenberg lives in Berkeley, where she writes about strange science, international affairs, hidden histories, and community ties, with a generous dose of quirk.

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then the shrub’s cascade of stamens and yellow February blooms may have been what inspired the plant’s original namer. Its genus, Dirca, is derived from a Greek myth’s spring and references an ancient fountain near Thebes. Discovered in the “mountains near Oakland” by J. M. Bigelow in 1853, this species has likely been in North America for tens of millions of years. A hundred yards or so beyond the spur, we’re surrounded by the park’s maritime chaparral—a thicket of manzanita, golden chinquapin, jimbrush, coast silk tassel, pink-flowering currant, and toyon. A common plant found throughout the preserve and along the trail is the evergreen huckleberry , a shrub that produces glossy purple-black berries every fall and accounts for the park’s name. The edible berries have long been enjoyed by people; in the preserve, the birds and rodents rely on the berries. Native to coastal California, and in the East Bay found only in the Oakland-Berkeley hills, the huckleberry blooms with whiteand-pink bell-shaped flowers in spring. Huckleberry presents a challenge to the rare manzanita. Chaparral plant communities depend on fire for their health and rejuvenation, and without it huckleberries and other large shrub oaks, and ultimately bay laurels will naturally overtake and shade the manzanitas, creating conditions that eventually kill them. It’s a natural process called succession. But given the preserve’s proximity to houses and structures, fire suppression is necessary (HUCKLEBERRY continued from page 20)

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april–june 2018

at Huckleberry, which also puts chaparral species at risk. Hammond explains that “now that humans have removed fire from the system, we need to think about other ways to help maritime chaparral continue to thrive.” The park district is considering careful pruning or removing of competing plants, primarily nonnative invasive species, that shade out the manzanitas. Hammond also encourages folks to explore another park during rainy weather when soil from the trail can stick to shoes, to help prevent the spread of water molds in the genus Phytophthora, soilborne root-rotting pathogens that rapidly kill plants. In 2017 they were found to have infected some rare shrubs along the upper loop trail in Huckleberry, according to Hammond. As Osaka and I leave the park, she recalls the shift, about a decade ago, when clients began to request California native plants in their landscape designs. It’s not hard, driving past the urban gardens of the Bay Area, to see those gardens someday playing host to maritime chaparral species. Still, there’s something to the sensory overload of seeing all these rare plants together in the wild. A designer might convincingly pull some of those stars into a garden. But to walk through Huckleberry, to smell the earth and listen to the birds and admire the brilliant combination of botanical texture and color and architecture that reflect natural California’s unique character, is to get a sense of the cosmos.

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Photos: Mike Oria (top); Hank Christensen (top inset); Dave Gordon (left)

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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 November 15, 2017 and February 27 2018. All Friends receive advance notice of Bay Nature’s “In the Field” outings. Donors of $500 or more become members of the Publisher’s Circle and receive Friends of Bay Nature $5,000+ Jorgen Hildebrandt

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Darla Hillard & Rodney Jackson Jan Hintermeister Anastasia & Randall Hobbet Jim Hogg Elizabeth Hook Richard & Terry Horrigan Glenn Howard Susan Jacobson & Michael Tigges David Johnson in honor of Evelyn Steffy Thomas Johnson Giselle Jurkanin Matthias Kaehlcke Judith Katz Mary Kenney & Joe Pasqua Jerry & Lola Kent Jeff Keohane Steve Klimczak & Janet Maughan Kathy & William Korbholz Elise Kroeber Bill & Beth Krumbein Dana Kueffner Hildegard Kural Henri Lamiraux Linda Lancione James & Beverly Lane Victoria Langenheim & Kevin Schmidt Carol LaPlant & Phil Brown David Larson Barbara & Phil Leitner Steve & Dianne Leonoudakis Ron & Sandy Linder Joe Luttrell & Sherry Goodman Bonnie MacKenzie & Arthur Tressler Larry Madsen Peter Mangarella Bob & Karen Martin Jill & Piero Martinucci Claire Max Christine Maxwell in honor of Beckett Maxwell & Latoya Boyd Susan McAllister Sandy McCoy & Natasha Beery Nancy McKown Carole Meredith John Michels Russell Miller & Kirk Pessner Louise Millikan Bob & Norma Minor Kelly Moran & Mark Eliot Fran Mueller & Norman Fritz Kathryn & Peter Muhs Kevin Murphy Marianne Nannestad

Arleen Navarret & Stuart Moock Audre & Roger Newman Elizabeth O’Shea Peter Oboyski David Ogden & Sandy Biagi Susan & Stephen Ohanian Jane Orbuch & Bryan Cockel David Peacock Carole Plum & Claire Wing Stephanie Poley Mary & Matt Powell Matt Ritter Sarah Rivers Lennie Roberts Wayne Rodoni Jennifer Roe Michael & Alma Rogers Martin Rosen Jeanne-Marie Rosenmeier Alice & Terry Rossow Michael Roth Mike Rozmarin Greg Rozycki Josh Schechtel Thomas Schlesinger Sandra Schlesinger Leonard Schwab & Rita Brenner Sandy Scott Larry Seiders Mary Selkirk & Lee Ballance Sandra hannonhouse Alice Shiffman Sara Shumer Warren Siegel Ellen Simms & Thomas Colton Cynthia & Rick Simons Sharon Singer Shirleymae & Igor Skaredoff Ellen Slack Susan Smith Tim Smith Doreen & Vernon Smith Linda Smith Gina Solomon & Annette Huddle Zach Stewart & Annie Somerville Max Stoaks Louis Stoddard Beth Stone & Joshua Kardon Kathryn Strachota Robert Strouse Toshi Suzuki Sally Taylor Patricia Thomas & Scott Atthowe Laurie Umeh Clem Underhill Donnell Van Noppen Inta Vodopals Randy Vogel Margaret & Ralph Voorhees Linda Wagner Cynthia & Robert Wantland

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 Executive Director Regina Starr Ridley at (510) 528-8550 x101 /regina@ baynature.org. You can also donate directly online at baynature.org/donate. Thank you for your continuing interest and support. Wallace Ward Merna Richardson & Larry Wright Nancy Wright Lyle York & Matthew Wilson Karin Zahorik $50–$99 Harvey & Linda Abernathey Elizabeth Agnello Andrew Aldrich James Allen Peter Alley & Carolyn Strange Joe Balciunas Ronald Barklow & Viola SaimaBarklow Christine Bartels Donald & MaiLiis Bartling Kim Batchelder Philip Batchelder Maria Beamer Marcia Beck Jill Beckett Susan Bellone Nancy Benjamin Marc Benson Jorgen Blomberg Fred Booker Connie Bowencamp Ann & Winslow Briggs Robert Brittain China Brotsky Denise Brown Arden BucklinSporer Barbara Callison Caryl Carr Bob Case Gordon Chamberlain May Chen Thomas Chipman Ellie Cohen & Miki Goralsky Neil & Judy Collier Fred & Joan Collignon Wayne Cooper Elizabeth Crane Ann Cross George Crowe Patrick Crowley Sylvia Darr & Terri Elkin Robert & Margaret Davenport Sheryl Davenport David De Leeuw Adrienne Debisschop Bill Delucchi Karen DeMello George Doeltz Diane Dougherty Donald & Elaine Dvorak Henry Elliot Phyllis Faber Joyce Fahey Ron Felzer Richard Ferry Erik Fisher Michael Fitzgibbon & Wendy Eliot Robert Fox Anil Gangolli Lisa Garrard

Wendy Geise John Gerbracht Roger Glassey Rosalie & John Gonzales Maria Gounaris Jennifer Graber Hugh Graham Kelly Graham Patrick Graney Douglas Gray Daniel Greene Wade & Elizabeth Greene Karen Greig Herb & Norma Grench Joyce & Marty Griffin Russ Griffith Bruce Grimes Andrew Grimstad William Guilford & Marcella Lillis Douglas Hale & Joanna Biggar Noble Hamilton Caryl Hart Russell Hartman Christie & John Hastings Faye & Tom Hendricks Daniel & Yone Hill Leanne Hinton Peitsa Hirvonen Lynn Horowitz Eliot & Martha Hudson Donald & Virginia Humphreys John Igoe Sam Jackson Eric Jaeger Linda Judd Kathy Kahn Ann Kapoun Deborah Kearney Mary Kelley & Susan Rose Thomas & Jane Kelly Airdrie Kincaid Pamela Kirkbride Chaparala Kishore Jun Kodani Arvind Kumar Michael Kwong Virginia Lanphear Tara & David Lee Leslie Levy & C.Cardea H J Lindqvist Andrea Lopinto Marsha Lowry Lynn Lozier & Larry Serpa Carol & Edward Lyke Marty Lynch & Eileen Carey Robert Mauceli Jeanie Mayall Vivian Mazur Don McLaurin Susan Mellers Jamie Menasco Gerald & Barbara Meral David Miller Sara Miller Donna Mollenhauer

Michael Mooney Marie Moore Alden Mudge & Mari Loria Debra Muro Sharol NelsonEmbry Natala Nicoloff Mary Norling Dolores Norris Stephen & Susan Pace James & Marcia Parker David Parks & Maggie Sharp in honor of David Loeb Jeff & Paula Pearce Doris Petersen Tom Peterson Mary Pierce Penny & John Pollock Martha Powell Bernadette Powell Hanson Quan Caesar Quitevis Elaine & Robert Raisler Pat & Gil Raposo Delanie Read Joyce Renaker Anne Rerolle Joanna & Thomas Reynolds Christina Ricci Bruce Riordan Amy Risch Mertin Ritchie Katherine & Krehe Ritter Deborah Robbins Loria Rolander Christa Romanowski Greg Rozycki Deven Ruehl Dianne Safholm Josh Schechtel Eric Schroeder Ned Seawell Marge Sussman & Cindy Shamban Drew Shell George Sherman Nancy Slavin Patrick Sotelo Elinor Spellman Kira Stoll Maria Streshinsky & Steve Katz Roy Takai Karen Tandy Glen Tepke Sandra Threlfall Bill Treddway Sharon Tsiu Douglas Vaughan Dorothy Wachter Isabel Wade Eileen Wampole Scott Watson Alice Webb Karen Wehrman Karl Weigl Arlin Weinberger Ronald Welch Julia Wenk Carolyn West Joli Wilson Martha Winnacker Stephen Wood

Greenbelt Alliance March Conservation Redwood Circle Fund Mechanics Bank Monthly Midpeninsula Donors Regional Open Alice Miller & Space District Avis Boutell Peninsula Open Betty Nelson Space Trust Daniel & Lynne Pepperwood Russell Preserve Debra Muro Presidio Trust Derek & Janice San Francisco Ransley Public Utilities Dragana & Arlee Commission Monson Elizabeth Littell Santa Clara Valley Water John Igoe District Leslie Barclay Save Mount Mark English Diablo Mary & Matt Save The Powell Redwoods Nancy Reyering League Penny & John Shute, Mihaly & Pollock Weinberger LLP Russell Miller & Sonoma County Kirk Pessner Agricultural Sue Schoening Preservation Trish Hare and Open Valerie Glass Space District Walter & Sonoma County Eugenie Water Agency Halland The Trust for Public Land Funders The Alms for the Union Bank Foundation Arts Fund craigslist In-Kind Donors Charitable Body Time Fund Channel Islands Gordon and Adventure Betty Moore Company Foundation Clif Family Jewish Winery Communal Commerce Printing Fund Djerassi Resident Dorothy and Artists Program Jonathan Michael Ellis, Rintels Footloose Charitable Forays Foundation Finca Exotica Ecolodge Event Sponsors Todd Gilens Individual Heyday Books Carol Baird & Inn at the Alan Harper Presidio Dr. Barbara L. Island Packers Bessey Cruises Louis Berlot & Obi Kaufmann Joyce Cutler Susan Kaveggia Kim & Robert Kermit Lynch Carroll Wines Catherine Fox LagunaVista Marilyn & Nat Villas Goldhaber Las Palmas Jorgen Oceanfront Hildebrandt Boutique Resort Reed Holderman Harriet & Robert McEvoy Ranch Michael Jakovina Marciano David Loeb Mount Diablo Andrea Interpretive Mackenzie Association Mia Monroe Maryann Rainey Nick’s Cove Point Arena Sue Rosenthal Lighthouse Don Weden Presidio Trust Bart & Nancy Rodney Strong Westcott Vineyards Institutions Sue Rosenthal Conservation Savvy Rest Strategy Group SF Bay East Bay Adventures Municipal Unbeaten Path Utility District Tours East Bay Regional WestCoast Park District DMCC Google Daniel Woodward Welma Wool

Celebrating 25 Years of Conserving Nature We want to celebrate the natural and working lands around us, and just as importantly, celebrate our constituents, who have been so supportive of our work all along the way. We invite you to take every opportunity to get outside and enjoy nature. Learn more at: openspaceauthority.org/25years

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CONSERVATION ACTION

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m i c h a e l q: I hear NASA has learned a bunch of new

information about Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot. What’s the latest? —Sam, San Francisco a: By Jove, Sam, I’m happy to answer

that question. The Greeks and Romans named the celestial orbs they gazed upon after gods and goddesses, so it makes perfect sense our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter, has the moniker of their supreme god of the sky. In fact, Jupiter is twice as big as the seven other planets combined. In 2011, NASA launched a satellite called Juno, which incidentally is the Roman name for the wife of Jupiter, to probe the mysteries of this giant gaseous planet. And since July 4, 2016, the satellite has been traveling in an elliptical, 53-Earth-day orbit about 62,800 miles above Jupiter’s clouds, sending scientists new glimpses into the planet’s mysteries, including that Giant Red Spot (GRS). Jupiter’s chemical constitution is about the same as the primordial soup that formed the rest of the solar system—90 percent hydrogen and 10 percent helium. If Jupiter had been a bit

e l l i s more massive, it could’ve become a small star. By studying Jupiter, astronomers hope to gain insight into our solar system’s early formation. Some say early astrologers believed people born under the sign of Jupiter were influenced by that god’s personality. I guess since Jupiter was the big boss, he was very happy, content, joyful. Yep, it’s good to be king. Hence our term jovial, whose late Latin origins mean “of Jupiter.” When Galileo pointed his telescope at Jupiter, he discerned four moons circling it. This was the first empirical evidence that Earth was not actually the center of the universe, upending the prevailing Ptolemy point of view. (A finding the Catholic Church vehemently disagreed with, and as punishment for his blasphemy Galileo was confined to house arrest for the remainder of his life.) This May, from the evening of the 8th through the morning of the 9th, you too, with a reasonably good pair of binoculars, can glimpse Jupiter flanked by its moons. As the planet swings in as close as it’s going to get to Earth in 2018, the sun illuminates it, making it visible

the entire night. That GRS, a giant oval of red clouds, is a storm that has likely been raging for more than 350 years. When observed in 1830 it was more than twice the diameter of Earth, but it has shrunk and is only 10,000 miles across now (1.3 times our planet’s span). The Juno probe peered into the storm and discovered that its roots are at least 200 miles deep, with winds peaking at about 400 miles per hour. “Winds are associated with differences in temperature, and the warmth of the spot’s base explains the ferocious winds we see at the top of the atmosphere,” Andy Ingersoll, a Juno coinvestigator, said in a NASA statement. Juno also detected a very strong radiation zone with hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur ions moving at almost the speed of light. Scientists suspect that two of the moons—Europa and Io—are the source of these elements. As they fall into Jupiter’s atmosphere, their electrons are stripped away, leaving highly energized particles (radiation). So, I doubt we will be offering a human journey to this planet any time soon! “The closer you get to Jupiter, the weirder it gets,” as one scientist said. OK then….

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

ask the naturalist

About 8,453 miles above the swirling clouds of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, Juno captured this color-enhanced image on December 16, 2017 at 10:12 PST. Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

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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 los servicios de los individuos que viven y respiran la política durante este tiempo critico en la historia del cuidado del hogar a nivel Federal y Estatal. CUHW, al salir de la burbuja, emerge con nuevas ideas ahora que estamos en período electoral este agosto. Nuestras elecciones estatales incluirán dos semanas en las que puede votar en línea o llamando 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 de texto que alertan a los miembros de los últimos acontecimientos de IHSS. Yo personalmente quiero salirme de la burbuja en la que se considera la reforma de IHSS en California y sugiero que empecemos con

de que se nos haya dañado o se haya abusado de nosotros mentalmente. •Merecemos el derecho de que se nos pague bajo el esquema del Seguro Social por una vida de trabajo por un miembro de la familia. •Merecemos vacaciones pagadas, merecemos el derecho de que se nos trate con compasión y respeto por las

dificultades que enfrentamos en nuestros trabajos por una paga justa, beneficios médicos y oportunidades de educación, al igual que las otras fuerzas de trabajo. ¡No solamente lo merecemos,