Month

October 2021
25
Oct

DFW 150 Years on Patrol, and Work Still Dangerous

Lieutenant James Ober worked as a fish biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for a year before joining its Law Enforcement Division in 2009. “I enjoy interacting with hunters and fishers. Most of them have a great appreciation for the resources and want to protect them,” says Ober about being on patrol. Ober belongs to the tradition of wildlife officers, both personally and professionally. His fifth great grandfather, Edwin H. Ober, was an officer and biologist during the early 20th century, making James the second wildlife officer in his family. Ober is also one of the tens of thousands of officers who have worked to protect the natural resources of the San Francisco Bay since 1871. This...
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25
Oct

Transformative Green Infrastructure

At the summit, the BAAQMD’s David Ralson described three examples of redoing infrastructure to break down barriers separating human ecology and the natural environment.  Three such initiatives are underway in the area around San Leandro Bay, the locale of RBD’s Estuary Commons project. “The I-880 corridor from High Street to 98th Avenue contains the worst-off disadvantaged communities in the Bay Area in terms of health outcomes,” he said. “They are also subject to sea-level rise and groundwater inundation.” Former wetlands are now filled with gray infrastructure. Hidden urban creeks, like San Leandro/Lisjan Creek, offer a pathway to reconnection: “People will say, ‘We don’t know about this creek; we don’t have access.’ But their grandparents may have fished or played in...
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25
Oct

Reconnecting Mill Creek to its Watershed

For thousands of years, Coho salmon and steelhead returned to spawn in the cold waters of Mill Creek, part of the San Vicente watershed in the mountains above Santa Cruz. This ended when a mining and logging company dammed the creek in the early 20th century. Now, an ambitious conservation initiative has succeeded in removing the dam, bringing people together across local land trusts, Native American groups, regional agencies, and researchers from multiple universities. Valentin Lopez, chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, spoke about the dam removal in his session of the Estuary Summit. Mill Creek Dam removal. Photo: Ian Bornarth, courtesy Sempervirens Fund. The San Vicente Redwoods is a large stretch of forest sitting above the coastal town...
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25
Oct

Team Tackles Homelessness

“Homelessness is an experience, not an identity,” said Romie Nottage at the Summit’s afternoon session. Her organization seeks to “provide a path to recover from homelessness” rather than treating homelessness as an end-state of being. The “teams” of Downtown Streets Team are unhoused volunteers that work beautification shifts (cleaning streets and alleyways, for example) for a basic needs stipend (food or transportation assistance) and access to case management. Since 2005, when the program began, team members have on average spent about 6 months before finding housing and stable employment. By working towards community beautification and building a roadmap to stable, housed living, Downtown Streets Team is “changing the way the unhoused are perceived in the public eye,” says Nottage. <<...
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25
Oct

Invasive Species Breakdown

The invasion of the Delta continues, with new plants and animals threatening to upend ecosystems alongside established non-native species like largemouth bass and spartina. Preventative measures, early detection, and rapid response to novel threats are all key in protecting the Delta from further disruption. But the concepts of community involvement and reconciliation ecology also encourage land managers to consider non-natives with nuance. This means accounting for the cultural and ecological values of invasive species and, in some cases, learning to accept their presence on the landscape while still prioritizing natives. These were among the takeaways of the Estuary Summit’s lunchtime breakout discussion of invasive species in the Delta (one of seven breakout sessions, on topics ranging from water quality to...
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25
Oct

Habitat Tramplers Run Amuck – Cows Versus Creeks

The water of a small stream in western Sonoma County flows slowly under a highway bridge, coursing its way through private ranchland to the ocean about seven miles away. Ducks paddle among floating vegetation, and an egret tiptoes slowly through the shallows. At the edge of the waterway, called Americano Creek, a cluster of cattle huddles under the willows. They frequent this spot and have trampled the banks to mud. Hoofprints can be seen leading into the water, and cakes of manure fester beside the stream, which meets the Pacific Ocean a few miles south of Bodega Bay. “With the federal Clean Water Act, the state Clean Water Act, and all the other regulations, you would think this would be...
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25
Oct

Can Birds and Solar Float on the Same Ponds?

In the late 2000s, small-aircraft pilots gliding above the Napa countryside began to notice an odd, glassy glint reflecting off a tennis-court-size patch of land between vineyards. Large solar arrays were less common back then, but the solar panels themselves likely weren’t the reason planes doubled back, flying low, for a closer look: it was their placement in the middle of a pond. Floating solar panels, like the ones Napa’s Far Niente winery finished installing in 2009, could be a real windfall for a watery Bay-Delta region seeking carbon-free energy. Secured to buoyant platforms or pontoons, low over the water’s surface and at a slight angle, the panels can cover a large area without competing with agriculture or housing for primo sun-drenched land. They slow evaporation from the water sources they...
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25
Oct

Breaching Season for Hill & Dutch Sloughs, Pacheco Marsh

In the life of a tidal wetland restoration project, the first levee breach is a major milestone, a kind of graduation. After years of securing funding, navigating the permit process, completing baseline biological surveys, filing endless reports, grading and sculpting the marsh plain, setting out plants—after all that comes the day when the earthen barrier crumbles, the water makes its move, and another marsh can start to regenerate. This fall, that’s happening around the Bay Area as three significant projects—Dutch Slough and Lower Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County and Hill Slough in Solano County—renew long-severed connections between water and land. The three projects involve two state agencies, a county district, and a nonprofit. Dutch Slough is a California Department...
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25
Oct

Tracking Natural Nitrogen Removal

Nitrogen inputs to the San Francisco Bay are among the highest of estuaries worldwide, yet so far have not caused harmful impacts like extreme algal blooms, oxygen depletion, and fish kills. But resistance to this nutrient may not last. Ever since the Gold Rush, excess sediment from pulverized rock has been pouring into the Bay, clouding the water and keeping algae in check by blocking sunlight. Recently, however, that protective sediment has diminished in parts of the Bay, contributing to concerns over nutrient pollution. A new study on a natural nitrogen-removal process is key to predicting whether nitrogen will cause ill effects here, too. The Bay’s nitrogen comes primarily from sewage and, for the most part, this nutrient is not...
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25
Oct

Fog Cool for Oysters

On bright hot days, standing in the shade can feel a lot better than standing in the sun. The same goes for oysters living in the inter-tidal shallows of San Francisco Bay. When the tide is low, the oysters bake in the sun. During extreme heat events they can even die. But in this coastal region there is one factor that could help mediate the heat: fog. Indeed, over the past year, San Francisco State graduate student Alexandra (Allie) Margulies has been examining fog data and monitoring oyster density at five sites around the Bay, and recruitment at 10 sites, building on a long-term monitoring dataset collected by the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.  “Fog can help scatter...
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25
Oct

Estuary Summit Pivots from Science to People

“Make the unseen more visible in your work,” urged Amanda Bohl, opening speaker for the largely cameras-off audience of 600 virtually assembled for the 2021 State of the San Francisco Estuary Summit this October. The Delta Stewardship Council staffer’s remarks at the 15th biennial conference, usually a two-day, science-and -policy-heavy networking event but this year an eight-hour Zoom summit, referred to how many things we all work on or people we work with everyday remain invisible. Some of these often unseen yet important things brought up over the course of the day: the indigenous lands upon which so many efforts to restore the Estuary or “manage” its resources take place; the people in local communities left out of government decision-making...
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25
Oct

Saving Water Under the East Bay

It’s a matter of semantics as to whether the Bay Area ever really left the drought of 2014-2017 before staring down another, more severe one beginning last year. But a huge lesson for our entire state from that “first” water shortage still being learned today is that more attention must be paid to groundwater. That’s true even in the urban East Bay, where the East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD) and the City of Hayward are developing a plan to ensure continued sustainable use of freshwater sitting beneath the East Bay flats from Richmond to Hayward. In September 2014, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law three bills known as the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Among other things, the Act requires...
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cartoon of news room
24
Oct

What’s New? What’s Next?

2021 Is Our 30TH Year of Publication What should our next five look like? Your comments on our past place in your history and suggestions for the future appreciated! Who’s Who These Days? We’re looking to profile people in new jobs or people moving jobs or people retiring or people working under the radar. This year has been a big year of changes, and we’d like to capture people on the move in our next issue of Pearls in December. Please email the editor with suggestions. Want to receive Estuary in PRINT? We still create and print a paper magazine, that great thing for perusing without clicks, reading without blue light, surfing topics with no algorithm trapping you in your silo!...
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