Save The Bay Blog

It was a brilliantly sunny day with a strong breeze kicking up whitecaps on the Bay when around 100 founding Save The Bay members gathered at The Berkeley Yacht Club for Save The Bay’s annual Founding Members’ Tea. Save The Bay co-founder, Sylvia McLaughlin was on hand to greet the crowd of old friends.

A Storied Spot
There couldn’t be a better location to celebrate our longtime members and their vision and accomplishments than the site of Save The Bay’s first success—stopping Berkeley from paving three miles out into the Bay off the shoreline where the Yacht Club sits now, adjacent to McLaughlin Eastshore State Park.

An Accomplished Honoree
Dr. Doris Sloan, geologist, local environmental icon and adjunct professor at UC Berkeley, was honored for her work over the years with Save The Bay. Sloan praised founding Save The Bay members for having the courage to take on the fight for San Pablo Bay back in the 1980s. Developers wanted to put 4,500 new homes on the wetlands at this far northern edge of the San Francisco Bay Estuary. The plan included a disastrous scheme to transport water and sewer over the Napa River from Vallejo. Sloan’s grad students did the research that eventually led to the defeat of the development. Sloan is also the author of the highly regarded natural history book, Geology of the San Francisco Bay Region (UC Press, 2006).

“I am very pleased to be honored at the Founders’ Tea,” said Sloan. “My association with Save the Bay goes back almost four decades, and I have always been proud of the many ways that Save the Bay has found to protect and restore our wonderful Bay.”

Inspiring Speakers
Additional speakers included Board Member Michael Katz, our Executive Director, David Lewis, and Regional Administrator for Environmental Protection Agency Region 9, Jared Blumenfeld.

Blumenfeld reminded the audience that the Bay is the reason for the lively atmosphere of creativity, energy, and innovation in the Bay Area, and thanked the founders for laying the groundwork for his agency’s efforts to protect the Bay.  “The Bay is a symbol of environmental progress over the past 40 years,” he said. Blumenfeld added that the current generation must continue to care for the environment, saying, “my goal is to make sure my children inherit a healthy bay, but government can’t do it alone.”

David told founders about our bold initiative to carry on their great work by continuing to engage new people who care about the Bay and are willing to take action to protect it. You too can follow in our founders’ footsteps and do something to protect our most precious resource. Sign up to volunteer, donate, or sign our petition to the San Francisco Water Board telling them to get tough on polluters and keep porpoises in the Bay.

Check out this week’s Weekly Roundup for breaking news affecting San Francisco Bay.

Los Angeles Times 5/15/13
Volunteers pull tons (and tons) of trash from California waterways
The Ocean Conservancy has run the numbers, and over the course of a single day in September 2012, more than 500,000 volunteers from across the globe collected 10 million pounds of trash from beaches and waterways. The top three most common items collected were cigarettes and cigarette filters (2.1 million), food wrappers (1.1 million), and plastic beverage bottles (1 million).
Read more>>

San Jose Mercury News 5/13/13
River otters are making a comeback in the Bay Area
On a cool winter evening just before sunset, birdwatcher Helen Daley spotted something entirely unexpected slithering in the waters of Los Gatos Creek.
“I turned the binoculars on it,” Daley said. “It was moving, and the water was shaped like a ‘V.’ It dived under, and its tail slipped up. It was a tapered, long tail. It wasn’t like that of a rat or beaver.”
Daley, a nurse who lives in the Cambrian Park area of San Jose, rushed home and confirmed online that the animal she saw was a North American river otter.
Read more>>

Grist 5/13/13
Green vs. green: The slimy battle for Drakes Bay
It’s springtime at the Point Reyes National Seashore, about an hour outside of San Francisco, and the cold wind whips off the sea and through the tall grass along the cliffs. Cows wander and graze along the fingers of land that reach out into the estuary’s tiny bays, an area altogether encompassing just over three square miles.
Beyond the estuary, at the outer edges of the seashore, seals sun themselves on the beaches, packed in tightly and squirming along the shoreline.
From March through June, the estuary is quiet. The seashore boasts more than 28,000 acres of agricultural land, most of it for beef and dairy production — but it’s pupping season for the seals, and the National Park Service has instated its annual ban on the motorboats that usually zip around the estuary, planting and harvesting millions of oysters for the Drakes Bay Oyster Company.
Read more>>

Marin Independent Journal 5/10/13
Environmentalists, officials turn out in Tiburon to cheer SF Bay wetlands designation
With choppy Richardson Bay as a backdrop, dozens of people gathered at the Lyford House in Tiburon on a breezy Friday afternoon to celebrate the naming of San Francisco Bay as an international Ramsar “wetland of importance.”
The designation adds the bay to a list of protected areas under an international treaty among 163 countries signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971 to limit damaging development along ecologically important waterways.
“It took more than four years to make all this happen,” said Rowan Gould, deputy director of operations for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Wetlands are not only internationally important, they are important in the communities we live in.”
Read more>>

Daily Kos 5/12/13
Costa Introduces Legislation To Strip ESA Protections For Delta Fish
Congressman Jim Costa (D-Fresno) has introduced legislation to exempt the Central Valley  and State Water projects from Delta pumping restrictions required under the Endangered Species Act to protect Central Valley salmon and Delta smelt.
Costa claimed the  “More Water and Security for Californians Act” would “significantly increase” the water supply in the Valley and growers who receive water from the Central Valley Project (CVP) and the State Water Project (SWP) would see greater “water security.”
Read more>>

Grist 5/14/13
Determined kids in small California town push for plastic bag ban
You may have read about some hardworking, smart, and civic-minded students who, back in 2011 and 2012, fought to keep their local river park open. Fought and won, actually. Well, students from that same school, Grass Valley Charter in Grass Valley, Calif., are now on to another battle — with the help of students from other area schools, they want to push Nevada County to put a ban on single-use plastic bags and start charging for paper bags. These kids are unstoppable.
Read more>>

Wetland Habitat means more and healthier fish!

Restoring wetland habitat around San Francisco Bay will strengthen fisheries. Photo credit: Flickr user nchill4x4.

A new report from our partners at Restore America’s Estuaries (RAE) provides yet another strong argument in favor of restoring our shorelines and wetland habitat.

More Habitat Means More Fish, the most recent in a series of reports on the fragile state of our nation’s wetlands and marine environment, makes the case for additional resources to protect and restore vital estuaries like San Francisco Bay.

In the last 150 years, San Francisco Bay has lost more than 90% of its historic wetlands, which when combined with the urbanization of the early 20th century, resulted in a disastrous fall in aquatic species and populations. Fifty years after residents realized the need for restoration and pollution controls, and following significant work, the Bay is on the mend.  But much remains to be done.

The RAE report reminds conservationists that marsh restoration isn’t just about enjoying a weekend out on the water.  Salt water fisheries like the Bay support some 1.7 millon jobs, and contribute nearly $200 billion to the national economy.  Fortunately, following the conversion of Bay wetlands from salt production in the 1950’s, an estimated 30,000 fish from 41 species have returned to San Francisco Bay.  This is proof positive that if you restore it, they will come (back).

We’re encouraged by the work of our partners, and hope that you can get more involved as well.  Want to dip your toe in the water?  Take our For The Bay Porpoise action today and tell the Regional Water Board to keep San Francisco Bay clean and healthy.

You can also read more about the RAE report, and the critical role of wetlands in our economy and our environment here.

Now, time to grab that rod and reel and head out for an afternoon on the Bay!

Pavan receives John Muir Association’s, “Youth Environmental Education Conservation Award”. Pictured (left to right): JoAnne Dunec (President, John Muir Association), Pavan Raj Gowda, Tom Leatherman (General Superintendent, Contra Costa County), and George Miller (Congressman)

Pavan Raj Gowda was recently honored with the President’s Environmental Youth award for his environmental stewardship work engaging children with environmental issues. 

Caring for the environment has always been part of who I am. At age 8, I expressed my thoughts openly about how a community needs to come together to care for the environment through a story called, “Two Lakes”, which was later included in my first published children story book, Two Tales from a Kid.

With my parents’ encouragement and support, I pursued my passion for caring for our planet by starting my own website, GreenKidsNow.org and published my articles, stories, tips, and ideas. In order to help me take action on my ideas, my parents registered Green Kids Now, Inc., as a 501c(3) non-profit organization. My organization has now completed three years, and in this time frame we have been working hard in many ways to take action.

Moving into our fourth year, my organization will also be focusing on science and innovation. It is very important for everyone to understand that innovation and environmental sustainability should not be seen as two separate things. Most of the issues we are seeing today with us not knowing how to use our raw materials and how to dispose of an item properly — like plastics — is because when people created products they did not consider these things.

But now we know from our previous mistakes and from the issues we are currently facing today, that the right way is for us to think about environmental sustainability from the beginning of creating any product or solution. That’s why my organization will be focusing on showing kids how to responsibly innovate. It is time for us to rethink everything around us today that was created by our past generations. We have a lot of rethinking and redesigning work to do.

Everything we do on land has a direct impact on the oceans too. From ocean warming, toxic chemicals mixing in the waters, our waste floating away and reaching even the most remote parts of oceans, are some examples of how our actions have caused negative consequences. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am able to appreciate the majestic nature of the sea, and love learning about marine life. I can also see first-hand how our actions are negatively impacting ocean processes and ecosystems, which not only impact the marine web of life, but also impact the global balance of life on the land.

The first step in involving people to take action is to first raise their awareness on the environmental issues. People have to come forward by themselves to take action, only then it would be more effective. For that, providing all the data and sharing of information is very important. Through my second published children science fiction, Geckoboy –The Battle of Fracking, I have introduced Biomimicry, as the new method of Innovation, and also showed the side effects of fracking, a method used by oil companies to extract natural gas and oil from the underground.

Let’s all take effort to continue to learn, and do our part in protecting our planet!

– Pavan Raj Gowda

About the Author:
Pavan Raj Gowda, 13 years old, from Fremont, CA, is a passionate environmentalist, published author, and founder of non-profit charity organization, Green Kids Now, Inc. He is also the founder of Green Kids Conference.

Beardless Wildrye helps stabilize the transition zone along the edge of the Bay.

Beardless Wildrye, Elymus triticoides, (formerly of the genus Leymus), is a beautiful and highly adaptable grass species that historically occupied large swathes of lowlands and floodplains throughout the salt marsh transition zone throughout the Bay Area.  Its range extends from California to Washington, and inland to Montana and West Texas.  It is found in meadow landscapes, from dry to moist soils, often where soils are more saline.  It is a cool-season, perennial grass and is considered to be strongly rhizomatous, or sod-forming.

Save The Bay propagates this species by collecting rhizomes – underground, horizontal stems that produce new plants — from a variety of locations near our project sites. A small percentage of rhizomes, shoots, and roots are carefully dug out of the soil and brought back to the nursery to be divided and grown in individual containers for one season, and finally planted during the winter months to colonize locations formerly occupied by non-native annuals such as mustard, radish, Italian thistle, and fennel.

This grass is part of a suite of species that grow by rhizome in the transition zone.  These sod-forming species form layers of roots below the soil surface, somewhat like threads of fabric that stabilize the soil and prevent invasive species from growing.  Above ground, dense vegetation provides critical habitat for insects, small mammals, and ground nesting birds.  As shoots die back each season, thick layers of thatch form, providing more layers of habitat and preventing other species from entering into the system.  Rushes, sedges, grasses, and broadleaf herbaceous perennials, work together and share site dominance over time. During years of higher precipitation, certain species thrive in more freshwater and during drought seasons, other more salt-tolerant species will dominate the system.    This is a very important function of established transition zones in terms of sea-level rise and increasing hydrological fluctuation.

To learn more about propagating beardless wildrye and other native species that grow along the edge of the Bay, join us at our native plant nurseries the first and second Wednesday of each month from 1-4pm.  Check out our website for more information on how you can get involved.

Happy spring!

– Doug Serrill, Nursery Manager