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October
31,
2007 Happy Halloween!  Mt Sutro Stewards
working the historic trail
Friday November 2Presidio Plant Patrol Wherry Corridor Stewards Saturday November 3 Mt Sutro Stewards Buena Vista Oak Woodlands Annual Tree Planting Friends of Mt Davidson Fort Funston Nursery Friend's of Lake Merced  Land's End Stewards Presidio Nursery San Bruno Mountain-Brisbane Acres Lobos Creek Valley For more information, contact info, and directions to natural areas and restoration sites, go to the Community Calendar on the Nature in the City website. Become a member of Nature in the City today and get a new map! Go online, email or call 415-564-4107 to join us.  And don't forget to shop at Cole Hardware, the city's favorite hardware store, and help Nature in the City! Calendar Of Events
*For more calendar items, as well as regular volunteer opportunites, go to the Nature in the City Calendar to view all posted events. TopMore
Eco News and Events Yes on A, No on H! (SFBC) Nov. 6  In addition to providing audacious loopholes for SUVs, Prop H will quintuple parking for commuters downtown, choking our already congested streets with more cars. It will also cut down landmark trees, and create thousands of new driveway cuts throughout the city, damaging bike routes and the pedestrian environment. The counter-measure, Proposition A, will bring much needed funds for faster, more reliable Muni and create a Climate Action Plan to lower San Francisco's greenhouse gas emissions. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition needs your help to get out the vote on these critical livable city measures! Phonebanking for Yes on A, No on H will be happening Mon-Thursday at SEIU until the November election, and every Thursday night is SFBC night! Contact Rachel if you can volunteer. Golden Gate Bridge Remains Unscathed (Sf Beautiful)  Thanks to the collective efforts of SF Beautiful and many of you out there who wrote letters and emails expressing your concern, the Golden Gate Bridge District members voted UNANIMOUSLY to reject the Corporate Partnership Program, which would have allowed corporate logos on the Golden Gate Bridge property. Stay tuned to local news stations and papers to hear more about this great victory for our public spaces! Make Healthy Saturdays in G.G. Park Permanent! (SFBC) For the past six months, San Franciscans and visitors have enjoyed much-needed, car-free space in Golden Gate Park. Now, we want to ensure that Healthy Saturdays becomes permanent. We need your help to pass Supervisor McGoldrick's legislation for ongoing, permanent car-free Healthy Saturdays, coming before the Board of Supervisors this Monday, November 5th. If it passes the Board and is signed by the Mayor, there will be car-free space every April thru September on the stretch of JFK Drive between Tea Garden Dr. and Transverse Dr. There are two ways you can help: ◦ Come to the public hearing at the Board of Supervisors' Land Use Committee this Monday, November 5th, at 1pm at City Hall, Room 263. (Email Leah to let us know you're coming.) ◦ Call or send an email to the Mayor and the 11 Supervisors now to ask them to support the permanent Healthy Saturdays legislation. All contact info is here. Viva Healthy Saturdays! |
In
this issue:
News LEJ Letter to the Editor Another Unprinted Letter to the Chronicle GGNRA Big Year Update Mt Sutro Stewards Awarded The Smallest Butterfly The End of the Steelhead? Yerba Buena Island 2008 Park Bond Update Calendar News Clarification on Literacy for Environmental Justice We were in a rush to publish our newsletter last week and neglected to articulate that we did not agree with Matier and Ross's treatment of Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) in the San Francisco Chronicle. The following is an unpublished letter from LEJ. To the Editor: We’re struck by the juxtaposition of stories in yesterday’s Chronicle: on the front page, “Nature Deficit Disorder” describes the lack of connection urban children feel with the world outside. Christy Rocca of the extraordinary Crissy Field Center is reaching out to underserved youth in southeast SF. All well and good. But on B1, Matier and Ross blast Literacy for Environmental Justice for daring to build an environmental education center, a sister facility to Crissy Field, right in the heart of Bayview Hunters Point. As Chronicle readers know—and apparently Matier and Ross don’t—LEJ does more than “conduct workshops,” and Heron’s Head Park is more than an “empty lot” at “old Pier 98.” Each year, 1,000 schoolchildren come to Heron’s Head for LEJ’s free environmental education programs; their thousands of hours of service learning have transformed the 24-acre Park into a vibrant wetland, home to 100 species of birds. At the Park’s entrance is the Living Classroom site, where—thanks to the efforts of the Port of SF, the SF Department of the Environment, the Coastal Conservancy, and gallons of blood, sweat and tears—we will open the facility next year. Yes, it’s costing over a million. Crissy Field’s restoration cost $32 million—does the Bayview deserve less? We welcome Chronicle readers, and writers!, to come down to Heron’s Head and see what community members are doing right here in their own backyard to reduce Nature Deficit Disorder. Sudeep M. Rao and the board, staff and youth of Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) Top Another Unprinted Letter to the Chronicle We need to correct some errors in the Oct 22nd letter by Ms. Blair. Money in the general obligation bond, unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors, would not be for the "Natural Areas Program," i.e., its staff, as suggested. The nature trails piece of the bond would go toward capital improvements to trails and the surrounding natural landscape within the City's natural areas. Trails will be selected from the Significant Natural Resource Areas Plan, a visionary document - currently undergoing environmental review - for the conservation, restoration and stewardship of the 31 natural areas under the jurisdiction of Recreation and Parks. Nature in the City, Golden Gate Audubon Society, Sierra Club, the California Native Plant Society and other conservation organizations have been working together to ensure that San Francisco's natural heritage is conserved and defended, not only from the invasion of noxious weeds, but also from the propagation of misinformation. Thanks! Peter Brastow Founding Director Nature in the City GGNRA Big Year Update The J. Michael Nitschke Fund just cut a check for $10,000 to Nature in the City for the 2008 GGNRA Endangered Species Big Year Project. Brent Plater, a dynamic member of our Steering Committee, secured these funds for his brainchild. We are delighted to work with our Big Year partners to implement this wonderful project! Top Mt. Sutro Stewards Awarded The Mt. Sutro Stewards, with
whom Nature in the City works to restore
habitat on UCSF’s Mt. Sutro, received San Francisco Beautiful’s annual
Beautification Award.
We attended the celebration at City
Hall, where, among an impressive array of awardees, DeeDee Workman
waxed poetically about the role of Mt. Sutro's ecological stewardship
in the conservation of the Twin Peaks Bioregion. The Smallest Butterfly
"'There you are!' I yelled... I was speaking to my first
Western Pygmy Blue I'd seen in the county..." Said Liam O'Brien. "I knew if I ever was going to
see
it, it would've been out here in Candlestick Point, along the alkali
and salt marshes. In 2003, some field biologists noted the
species on
their inventory for the proposed new park. I've been looking
for it
all season, but missed the mention of most field guides that the peak
emergence is, ummm, now -- October." Top The End of the Steelhead? According to the Alameda Creek Alliance, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) is dismissing consideration of the impacts of three dams on steelhead trout in Alameda Creek as part of a programmatic environmental review for retrofits to San Francisco’s water system, and is proposing water supply projects in the Sunol Valley that could further harm fish and wildlife in Alameda Creek. The SFPUC’s failure to include Alameda Creek stream restoration as part of a project to rebuild the seismically vulnerable Calaveras Dam and controversial SFPUC proposals to divert more water from Alameda Creek could unnecessarily jeopardize the schedule for water system upgrades. To read this full press release, click here. Top Yerba Buena Island Nature in the City coordinated another successful stewardship workparty on the Island on October 25th. The embattled, but wonderful to our mind, Department of the Environment, helped us restore habitat on Clipper Cove, removing tons of invasive weeds for native plant and wildlife restoration. Top 2008 Park Bond Update We attended a Park Bond campaign briefing with many other environmental organizations. The City needs 2/3 vote to pass the $185 Million General Obligation Neighborhood Park Bond. This is some threshold, so campaign leaders are going to need all the help they can get to pass this measure, which will provide $5 Million for nature trail restoration in San Francisco natural areas. Top
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