News
Lake Merced Watershed Plan
Community Meeting
Sunset Recreation Center
28th Ave & Lawton
TONIGHT, Tuesday, April 22, 6-8 pm
Lake Merced is among the most significant natural resources in San Francisco. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, with input from many stakeholder organizations, is developing a Watershed Plan for the lake. This community meeting will be the second chance for members of the general public to see the progress and to comment on the plan to date. The focus of this meeting will be on public use of the lake, including which infrastructure will be needed to support lake related activities. Nature in the City, Golden Gate Audubon, California Native Plant Society and others hope to extend habitat restoration around the lake, develop a modest nature/interpretive center and perhaps designate significant parts of the lake as a habitat and wildlife preserve.
Please come and support this effort to preserve and restore the largest and most significant freshwater coastal lake/lagoon ecosystem between Point Reyes and Pescadero.
For more information go to the SFPUC Lake Merced website.
Liam O'Brien and Deirde Elmansoumi's first Green Hairstreak walk of the season went off with a bang! The unusually hot weather was attributed to the fantastic walk, according to Liam:
"Within seconds of approaching the group's meeting place, a Green Hairstreak bulleted past us...two blocks away from Hawk Hill. We didn't even need to go to its summit because hairstreaks were everywhere at the base of Funston; on lupines, on
grasses, on their host buckwheat! Very exciting. So then we set out along the corridor and BOOM - one lands on the hubcap of this guy washing his car in a driveway at the corner of Quintara and Funston. Thrilling to see it so far up the street. The heat had made the brood eclose (Fancy lepidoptic talk for all the butterflies came out of their pupae....) I'd never seen so many flying at the top of Rocky Outcrop where the group was witness to a
spectacular show of at least 75 to 100 little butterflies. Hands down however,
the
highlight-of-the-day:a lone individual observed in the remnant habitat of Golden Gate Heights Park -- the halfway point along the corridor and strangely absent of hairstreaks for the last two years of searching. Tell's us what a vital piece of this corridor puzzle it is. The next walk, on April 27th, should be as equally thrilling."
Don't miss Liam and Deirdre's next walk, April 27 at 1 pm! For a schedule of the Green Hairstreak walks, as well as the project overview click here.
Photos courtesy of Matt Zlatunich.
The Haight-Ashbury Stewards Resurrected
Nature in the City is based in the city's Haight-Ashbury District, an area of town rich in the new cultural ecology of ecological restoration & stewardship.
The natural areas - Buena Vista Park, Tank Hill, Twin Peaks, Mt. Sutro, and the Oak Woodlands of Golden Gate Park - are in very serious need of community stewardship.
Haight-Ashbury Stewards help heal the Haight's habitats, working with agencies to restore the natural communities at these sites. Beginning April 24, the Stewards will be back in action on Tank Hill - one of the few natural areas that doesn't have a designated stewardship group. There will be monthly workparties at 1 pm, for anyone who feels like getting their hands dirty.
Call 564.4107 if you are interested in volunteering to restore habitat in the Haight. For more information, visit Nature in the City.
Check out Joe Eskenazi's article, "An Inconvenient Plant," in April 16's SF Weekly. An in depth, somewhat slightly inflammatory look at the Raven's Manzanita with cameo's by Michael Chasse and Kirra Swenerton of the Presidio, Peter Brastow of Nature in the City and Peter Raven himself. The headline seems to sum it all up in one sentence: "One of the world's rarest plants grows in the Presidio. Plans are under way to save it — and ax thousands of trees in the process." But read the full article yourself, and tell Joe what you think.
SF Supes Oppose Moth Spraying
SF Chronicle
April 15, 2008 - The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved two resolutions today opposing aerial pesticide spraying over Bay Area cities in an effort to eradicate an invasive moth. To read the full article, click here.
Mt. Davidson Tank Project Meeting
Wednesday, April 23
6 - 8 pm
Miraloma Park Clubhouse
This is a special meeting with the SF Public Utilities Commission and their contractors to discuss the plans for seismic retrofits of the tank and pipeline on Mt D.
After considerable effort in 2006-7, the route for the pipeline — the primary concern — was revised to a satisfactory location. The key issue to be monitored as the work is actually done is whether the work in fact gets done according to plan or whether corners are cut and agreements are violated.
Come find out how you can help insure that this project is done with the best interests of the Significant Natural Resource Area kept to the forefront.
Volunteer Opportunities
Wednesday April 23
Presidio Park Stewards @ Inspiration Point
CNPS @ Mt. Davidson
Presidio Nursery
Thursday April 24
Crissy Field Landscape
Lands End Stewards
Haight Ashbury Stewards @ Tank Hill
Friday April 25
Presidio Plant Patrol @ Dragonfly Creek
Saturday April 26
Quail at Harding Park
Alvord Lake
Twin Peaks
Presidio Park Stewards@ WWII Memorial/Sunset Scrub (10 AM, not 9AM today due to Earth Day celebration!)
Corona Heights Grassland
Lands End Stewards
Presidio Nursery
Colma Creek
For more information, contact info, and directions to natural areas go to the Community Calendar on the Nature in the City website.
More Eco News and Events
ACT locally, ADVOCATE globally
Moment of Truth for Martinez Beavers
SF Chronicle
The tale of the Martinez beavers heads into a new chapter tonight [April 16] when the City Council considers ways to stop the busy critters from chewing through $10 million of flood-control work. Council members are expected to discuss seven options for controlling the beavers, who took up residence in Alhambra Creek 18 months ago and whose dams have wreaked havoc on the city's pricey new landscaping and elaborate flood-control measures....
"We looked at plans that enable us to coexist with the beavers in a way that does not bring increased flood risk to the downtown," said Councilwoman Lara Delaney, who sat on the Beavers in Alhambra Creek subcommittee. "We're the city of John Muir - we're a green community," she said. "Not only are the beavers good for the environment, they're good for education and tourism. They're bringing people to downtown."
Read more about the beavers in the San Francisco Chronicle.
A Physicist Remembered
SF Gate
Physicist John Wheeler, who had a key role in the development of the atom bomb and later gave the space phenomenon black holes their name, has died at 96.
"As a professor at Princeton University and the University of Texas-Austin, Dr. Wheeler inspired generations of students ... to transform their curiosity into scientific discoveries," they said. Born in 1911, Mr. Wheeler was 21 when he earned his doctorate in physics
from Johns Hopkins University. In the mid-1930s, he traveled to Denmark to study for a year with Bohr, who won a Nobel Prize for his work describing the nature of the atom.
Read more about John Wheeler at SF Gate.
Retired Subway Cars Used to Create Reef off the Coast of Delaware
NY Times
Sixteen nautical miles from the Indian River Inlet and about 80 feet underwater, a building boom is under way at the Red Bird Reef.
One by one, a machine operator has been shoving hundreds of retired New York City subway cars off a barge, continuing the transformation of a barren stretch of ocean floor into a bountiful oasis, carpeted in sea grasses, walled thick with blue mussels and sponges, and teeming with black sea bass and tautog.
“They’re basically luxury condominiums for fish,” Jeff Tinsman, artificial reef program manager for the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said as one of 48 of the 19-ton retirees from New York City sank toward the 666 already on the ocean floor.
Read the full article here.
To Eat or Not to Eat Dagoba?
TreeHugger
The 3 biggest food processors which have joined the race to be perceived as organic are Kraft, Pepsi and General Mills. Kraft acquired the vegan oriented Boca in 2000 and Organic Milling Inc.'s Back to Nature cereal and granola business in 2003. Pepsi stepped into Naked Juice in 2006. General Mills inherited both Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen with the acquisition of Small Planet Foods in 1999. The nice editors of GOOD magazine made an easy to read graphic, displaying whom is alligned with whom... Take a look.
