collaboration. We work together to preserve land, parks, trails, farms, ranches, forests, watersheds, and other open spaces. We have been around since 1990. This is our blog.
Partnership Preserves Livelihoods and Fish Stocks. A lifelong fisherman, Mr. Fitz is part of a very unusual business arrangement with the Nature Conservancy, an environmental group that is trying to transform commercial fishing in the region by offering a model of how to keep the industry vital without damaging fish stocks or sensitive areas of the ocean floor. (NY Times)
Thankful for State Parks. This Thanksgiving, we are feeling thankful for state parks. And thankfully there has been a lot of positive park news this week. Here’s a recap. (CA State Parks)
Videophilia: Implications for Childhood Development and Conservation. Direct experience with nature is the most highly cited influence on environmental attitude and conservation activism. Yet our research (using U. S. national park visits asa proxy) suggests a trend away from interactions with nature and a concurrent rise in theuse of electronic entertainment media. We suggest this trend represents evidence of a fundamental shift away from “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes,” or“biophilia” (Wilson, 1984) to “videophilia.” (The Journal of Developmental Processes)
Fed grant targets transit-oriented development in the Bay Area. Mayor Ed Lee and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were joined in San Francisco by a host of regional and federal officials this afternoon to celebrate the awarding of a nearly $5 million federal grant to plan for Bay Area projects that create affordable housing and jobs along transit corridors. (SF Chronicle)
This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.
Your weekly helping of Bay Area conservation news and inspiration...
The First 70 trailer on Vimeo. Click here to watch if you're reading this on email.
Saving a park near you. People who care about California's state parks met with the Open Space Council on Thursday to imagine how new kinds of partnerships could save some of the 70 parks now marked for closure. (Press Democrat)
Beyond the Bounty at Food Landscape Forum. On Wednesday night, November 16, a sold-out audience of 180 people filled the theater at the David Brower Center to hear from people running farming and farm-education enterprises from the San Mateo Coast to San Francisco, West Marin, and Santa Rosa. (Bay Nature)
Capturing Hearts & Minds. Can conservation organizations thrive in a vacuum of permanently protected landscapes without taking other community objectives into account? On the other hand, can a land trust take up challenges like food security or affordable housing and still remain true to its mission? (LTA's Saving Land)
More U.S. land conserved as parks, farms, nature areas. Despite a weak economy, more U.S. land is being voluntarily conserved as urban parks, family farms, forests, gardens and farmers' markets — a total of 10 million new acres since 2005 (USA Today)
Bleak future for Bay area tidal marshes? A new study, led by PRBO Conservation Science (PRBO), projects a bleak future for San Francisco Bay's tidal marshes under high-end sea-level rise scenarios that are increasingly likely. (YubaNet)
Three Favorite Mountain Bike Spots to Close This Year. The Bay Area may be the birthplace of mountain biking, but today it can be hard to find enough legal singletrack to satiate even the intermediate rider. And over the next few months, it’s going to get even harder. Three of our best local mountain bike spots are slated to close this year due to state budget cuts. (7x7 SF)
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This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.
Thanks to all 100 of you that came to last week's Harvest Gathering. Scroll down to read more about it. And save the date: January 19, 2012 for our Rainy Season Gathering. Topic, speakers and location TBD.
Over 100 people filled the Tamalpais Room at the Brower Center to hear from a panel about, and discuss themselves, the state parks crisis and the partnerships that are forming because of it. Much thanks to:
Our distinguished and fantastic panelists for their time and work!
Our next Gathering will be January 19, topic and location TBD. Stay tuned here for more information. If you are so in love with the Open Space Council that you'll attend no matter what, click here to register.
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12:36pm: We're wrapping up and going to lunch. I'll post Traci's and Danita's presentations here and on our website later today. Look for pictures on Flickr later, too.
12:33pm: An excellent question about young people. How do we involve them in this issue and their future of parks? Craig Anderson says that every site is different and in any way possible involve teenagers in that place.
12:29pm: Craig wrapped up. We are going to do a few minutes of Q&A and then lunch.
12:17pm: Craig: "We need to think big. We need to reenvision parks so that it can be everything it can be."
12:15pm: Craig is going to talk about the lessons that he and LandPaths have learned about the state parks crisis.
12:13pm: Ruskin has wrapped up. Dave Gould said that it's not surprising that Save the Redwoods is involved in the state parks situation. They were involved at the very beginning of the state parks system. Dave then introduced the Executive Director of LandPaths.
12:10pm: Ruskin "We need to think collectively think about long term sustainable solutions. What does the state park system need to look like in the future?"
12:07pm: Ruskin: "We need innovation. We need to try new things."
12:06pm: Bob has wrapped up. Dave Gould has introduced Ruskin Hartley.
11:54am: Lunch is supposed to start at 12pm, but we still have Ruskin Hartley of Save the Redwoods League and Craig Anderson from LandPaths. We'll probably go till 12:30pm.
11:50am: Bob Berman: "It's been mentioned already today, but it deserves repeating that even if a park isn't being closed, the service reductions and budget cuts are affecting all state parks."
11:46am: Lauren has wrapped up. Dave Gould thanked her and has introduced Bob Berman. Bob is on the Executive Committee of the Bay Area Open Space Council, partner in Nichols-Berman consulting firm, and a founder of the Solano Land Trust. He's talking today as part of his involvement in the Benicia State Parks Association.
11:45am: Lauren: "We have 17 great groups around the table really caring about these parks. The Sonoma Land Trust provided start up funding for the Parks Alliance. The County Parks has provided office space. The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District provides meeting space. These three in particular have really stepped up to support this cause."
11:42am: Lauren: "We feel really encouraged about what is happening in Sonoma County. If we it can be done, it can be done in Sonoma County."
11:30am: Danita has wrapped up her presentation. Loud applause for this local leader!
11:28am: Danita has moved on to China Camp now. She wants to confirm that the State Parks is not kicking out Frank Quan, the lone resident of China Camp State Park. Click here to read an article about it on Huffington Post. And here's a video about him and the park:
11:25am: Danita is describing the partnership that State Parks and National Park Service have created using the parking lot at Muir Woods. Muir Woods is in the same watershed as Samuel P Taylor and has a very high visitor rate. Every tourist who comes to the Bay Area goes to Muir Woods. There will be an additional $2 parking fee that will go to State Parks.
11:22am: Danita, who is also on the Executive Committee of the Bay Area Open Space Council:
11:19am: Danita: "There are 4 parks in Marin on the closure list, but all state parks are affected. There are service reductions across the board."
11:13am: Danita Rodriguez: "How do you actually close a park? We have to keep them open but we have to close them."
11:10am: Dave Gould is introducing Danita Rodriguez from Marin District of State Parks. He said, if he could put together a A list of people he'd like to work with, Danita is on that list.
11:09am: Traci is closing by saying: "Endorse the campaign! SaveStateParks.org"
11:05am: Traci: "We have a lot of work to do to raise awareness of state parks. And not just those 70 parks slated to close, but all of our 270 state parks."
10:58am: Traci: "We at the State Parks Foundation are not in the business of running parks. But we want to do what we can to support those groups who can support these parks. My back of the envelope math is that there are 20 parks that have a good chance of staying open. Another 20 have a fighting chance. We have another 30-40 parks that don't have a good safety net right now and who will probably close."
10:55am: Traci Verardo: "What is the incentive for groups to really stretch to keep a park open? One answer is that all revenue raised in a park stays in the park."
10:47am: Traci Verardo from State Parks Foundation:
10:43am: Sorry! For those of you watching live, we were having internet issues. We're here!
10:40am: "The Governor is giving the state the government they are willing to pay for, even if it's not the government they want," said Traci Verardo. "Nothing is sacred."
10:38am: "This legislature and Governor have not felt the public outcry that Goveror Schwarzenegger did in 2008 and 2009 when parks weren't supported," said Traci Verardo.
10:34am: Traci Verardo from State Parks Foundation is speaking now. I will get her presentation up here on the blog later this morning. "Over 90% of state parks budget came from the General Fund in the 1970s. Now it's more like 38% comes from the General Fund."
10:31am: Before we started the panel, we watched this video just released yesterday:
10:29am: Andrea Mackenzie welcomed everyone and introduced Dave Gould, our moderater of today's panel. Dave said that he has always loved working with the Bay Area Open Space Council and is thrilled to be here.
10:28am: Good morning! Today we are holding our last Gathering of the year at the Brower Center in downtown Berkeley. Currently there aren't any helicopters buzzing overhead, but that's always subject to change this close to the Cal campus. This is Annie Burke and I'll be blogging this morning with quotes, photos, and links.
Today we're talking about the State Parks crisis. In case you didn't know, right now California State Parks, the largest state park system in the country, face unprecedented budget cuts and closures. Governor Jerry Brown signed budget cuts in May 2011 that included a reduction of General Fund support for state parks by $11 million for Fiscal Year 2011-12 and a total reduction of $22 million by the beginning of Fiscal Year 2012-2013. Seventy parks are slated to close by July 2012, some of which have already done so. China Camp, Olompali, Jack London, Samuel P. Taylor, Sugarloaf Ridge, Annadel, Austin Creek, Petaluma Adobe, Bale Grist Mill, Bothe-Napa Valley, Castle Rock, and Henry Coe are all here in the Bay Area.
This hasn’t happened before. New partnerships are being formed. New ways of working together have been created and are being implemented. And new strategies are needed to deal with the new realities of publicly funded conservation.
What does it all mean? What is being done? And how do we need to think in new ways? Our panel is going to answer these questions. Our panel includes:
Your weekly helping of Bay Area conservation news and inspiration...
(Reading this on email? Click here to see a video of Juan Martinez,
talking about the New Nature Movement)
Bay Area's foodshed - from backyard to farmland. This week at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, Bay Area food producers and activists will discuss how our local foodshed works. (SF Chronicle)
Local Food Is No Small Potatoes: Farmers Rake In Almost $5 Billion. It's easy to think of local food as a diversion for people with plenty of time and money — something that could never be a major source of food in a globalized world. But the number $4.8 billion might change that perception. (NPR)
LandPaths chief wants to connect public to open spaces. The land stewardship and outdoors education agency he runs, LandPaths, is busier than ever as it pursues opportunities to take possession of two large pieces of rural Sonoma County land that would expand its holdings to 1,000 acres. (Press Democrat)
5 Things You Need to Know About Wildlife Corridors. We live in a very inter-connected world. This is something that conservationists have learned when studying the species that they are trying to protect; It's not good enough to create protected habitats that are isolated, like islands surrounded by roads, fences, farmlands, cities, etc. (Treehugger)
New Wilderness Protections Called For By Obama Administration. The Obama administration is calling for 18 new wilderness and conservation area declarations in nine Western states, according to a report released Thursday by the secretary of the Interior that he hopes will result in new legislation from Congress establishing the new land protections. (Huffington Post)
Brentwood looks to preserve more agricultural land. Brentwood is moving toward adding at least two additional farms to the 742 acres of agricultural land that it has permanently preserved in the agricultural core area near city limits. (Mercury News)
Climate change effect on Delta detailed in new study. California's water problems and the ecological pressure on the West Coast's largest estuary will intensify in a warming world, according to a first-of-its-kind scientific study. (Mercury News)
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This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.
Two event reminders for you:
1) Tonight! Local sustainable food and what it means at the Brower Center theater in Berkeley at 7:30pm. Click here for more info.
2) Tomorrow! State Parks and Partnerships at the Brower Center Tamalpais Room in Berkeley at 10am. We're almost at capacity. Click here to register. Check back here and on Twitter at #stateparksgathering for a play-by-play.
As of 11/16 we are at capacity! We'll be blogging and tweeting during the Gathering so stay tuned here for presentations, links, and more. #stateparkscrisis
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10 more spots are available for Thursday's Gathering about State Parks and Partnerships. Register soon before we're at capacity!
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China Camp, Olompali, Jack London, Samuel P. Taylor, Sugarloaf Ridge, Annadel, Austin Creek, Petaluma Adobe, Bale Grist Mill, Bothe-Napa Valley, Castle Rock, and Henry Coe.
Do you go to, work with, or care about these places? They are 12 of the 70 state parks slated to close between now and July 2012.
Bullfrog Pond in the Austin Creek State Recreation Area
This hasn’t happened before. New partnerships are being formed. New ways of working together have been created and are being implemented. And new strategies are needed to deal with the new realities of publicly funded conservation.
Join us this Thursday, November 17 from 10am to 1pm at the Brower Center in Berkeley to discuss the situation and the partnerships that are forming because of it. Our panel of experts consists of:
Dave Gould, Sonoma Parks Alliance and Former State Parks Superintendent, moderator
Craig Anderson, LandPaths
Bob Berman, Benicia State Parks Association
Lauren Dixon, Sonoma Parks Alliance
Ruskin Hartley, Save the Redwoods League
Howard Levitt, National Park Service
Danita Rodriguez, State Parks, Marin District
Traci Verardo, State Parks Foundation
Lunch will be served and there will be plenty of time for networking and seeing friends.
You do *not* need to print out your registration confirmation. We know who you are.
We would love it if you brought your own coffee cup and water bottle. Less landfill would be nice.
There's a beautiful exhibit on biodiversity in the lobby of the Brower Center. Click here to learn more about it. And take 10 minutes before or after the Gathering to check it out.
We'll be blogging and tweeting during the Gathering, using the hashtag #stateparkscrisis. Tweet along and tell your colleagues they can watch from the office.
Your weekly helping of Bay Area conservation news and inspiration...
From the "Horse Back" series by local artist Mimi Plumb on exhibit at the the Local 123 Gallery in Berkeley.
Shady Dell deal preserves majestic redwood forest. The grove of "candelabra" redwoods, known as the Enchanted Forest, is one of the primary reasons San Francisco's Save the Redwoods League purchased the spectacular 957-acre piece of coastline known as Shady Dell, where the gnarled old trees live. (SF Gate)
Park plan accepted. Members of the Valley of the Moon Natural History Association notified their proposal to manage Jack London State Historic Park has been accepted for negotiations, clearing the first hurdle on the road to keep the park open for public access. (Sonoma)
Painting Along the Trail to Sweeney Ridge. The trees, hills, valleys, water and sky that are all in full view along the Sweeney Ridge trail provided inspiration for my latest painting. (San Bruno Patch)
Gen Y and Gen X get it right on the environment; old folks don’t. Generation Y is more likely than older generations to support clean energy and environmental protection and to believe climate change is happening and is caused by human activity, according to new Pew polling and analysis. (Grist)
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This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.
We're talking about the Harvest Gathering on November 17 from 10am-1pm at the Brower Center in Berkeley. The panel is large and diverse, the State Parks crisis is the topic, partnerships will be discussed and explored, and lunch will be served. Join us! Click here to register.
Planning for Climate Change: Cool Responses to Prepare for Generation Hot
By Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation.
Environmental correspondent for The Nation Mark Hertsgaard recently coined the term “Generation Hot,” which he describes as:
“…the 2 billion people worldwide who were born after June 23, 1988, the day NASA scientist James Hansen's testimony to the U.S. Senate put the world on notice that man-made global warming had begun and threatened to make Earth uninhabitable.” (From How climate change will hit home, Oct. 30, 2011, Sacramento Bee.)
Generation Hot in California will likely see problems familiar to Californians (heat, flood, fire) changing their timing and intensity, and also see novel challenges like new disease vectors and new kinds of violent weather events. On our correspondent’s mind especially is the problem of the levee system protecting Sacramento: 100-year-old dirt mounds, and the only thing between high water and the 454,000 people living at the bottom of Sacramento’s watershed. This leaves the city “less protected than New Orleans had been before Hurricane Katrina” (Stein Buer, the former executive director of the Sacramento Area Flood Control Agency, as quoted by Hertsgaard).
So what are we as Californians doing to prepare ourselves for the new future facing Generation Hot?
Right now, the only official state policy document outlining California’s priorities and intended approach to climate change is the 2009 California Climate Adaptation Strategy. It presents a summary of the science of climate change as it is accepted by the state government, and a set of strategies for adapting to impacts, broken down by sector (water, public health, transportation, etc.).
Following the launch of this state strategy, the on-line tool for visualizing the impacts Cal-Adapt was launched, a set of vulnerability studies were begun (due to be published Spring 2012), and a plan to create a California Adaptation Policy Guide was set in motion (due out also in 2012). I contributed to the vulnerability studies, and am currently serving on the Adaptation Policy Guide Advisory Committee, so my take on the state’s adaptation effort is biased. I see first-hand the level of commitment among our state agency workers and university researchers, and I think our state continues to do an impressive job tackling climate change head-on, especially in the face of flagging public support and slashed budgets.
But What is Being Done to Actually Adapt to Coming Impacts?
Most of what is being done to prepare for climate change in California (and elsewhere in the country) is establishing baseline data and preparing theoretical courses of action. Some concrete actions which will help us adapt are in motion, but the governmental budgetary chill is holding back progress. For example, Hertsgaard points to Gov. Schwarzenegger’s 2007 flood control plan that authorized repairs for about 30% of California levees, including those protecting Sacramento, but the current Republican-led House of Representatives in D.C. is blocking funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (opposing it as “earmarks”), delaying the work.
Some work can be done even in a bad economy, though. Measures which have significant benefits even in the absence of climate change are called “no-regrets” measures, and they are relatively popular with governments. (Read the UK Climate Impacts Programme explanation of “no-regrets” measures in its 2008 manual for governments “Identifying Adaptation Options,” page 15. Also, for more on their popularity with U.S. government planners, see the 2009 report “Good Morning, America! The Explosive U.S. Awakening to the Need for Adaptation” by Susanne Moser.)
Better water and energy efficiency are primary “no-regrets” measures in California, and the state’s initiatives on those counts can be tallied in the column for concrete preparation actions. For example, in February 2010 the Department of Water Resources and a host of other agencies launched a “20x2020” plan “a statewide road map to maximize the state’s urban water efficiency and conservation opportunities between 2009 and 2020,” in particular trying to reduce urban water demand by 20% per capita by 2020 (read the 20x2020 final plan here). (Using less water in California’s agribusiness would do even more good, since that sector uses 80% of the state’s water resources.)
But what is being done to improve preparedness at a local level in California?
Fresno and San Luis Obispo counties have created their own climate change adaptation plans, with support from the Geos Institute (read Fresno’s plan here; read San Luis Obispo’s plan here). These are starting points which were created with the assistance of scientists and with buy-in from both government agencies and elected officials, so they have the promise of political viability.
Another approach to local preparedness that I’m excited about is the Model Forest Policy Program’s “Climate Solutions University” training program. This program was launched last year, awarding grants to six natural resource-dependent communities to begin a process of building a team of stakeholders to develop a model climate change adaptation policy. The program follows the community through a year-long training curriculum (meeting once a month through long-distance learning) and through the second year, supporting the client community in implementing that policy within its local government. I interviewed the coordinator for the 2010 model policy for Bellingham, Washington, and was impressed with her account of the process. It is not designed to address every impact to the nth degree, but it puts a community in touch with scientists to provide scientific grounding to planning, and then provides a framework for creating a steering committee to develop a plan that can address the worst of the impacts. It seemed like an excellent starting point, with both a sustainable and community-based approach (as opposed to the model of flying in a team of outside experts for a three-day conference that establishes wham-bam both the science background and the priorities for planning, as done by some other consulting organizations). This year’s client communities include the far-northern rural California community of Hayfork, in Trinity County, which is 85% public land. I look forward to following that community’s progress as it grows from the grassroots a plan for the future of “Generation Hot” in the remote evergreen forests of California.
One of our strategies is to serve as the central hub for the Bay Area land conservation community. To that end, we invite others to share their stories here on our blog and amplify them to people around the region who care about this place we call home.
About the author: Sara S. Moore, MPP/ MA, Research Consultant on Climate Change Adaptation. Sara most recently worked at the Zavaleta Lab, UC Santa Cruz, on a component study of the California State Climate Vulnerability Assessment. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a Master of Public Policy and an MA in International and Area Studies with a focus on government climate adaptation policy. Previously, she worked for Pacific Environment as a Russia Program Associate, helping communities protect their local environment in Siberia and the Russian Far East.
Your weekly helping of Bay Area conservation news and inspiration...
Photos from the Rainy Season Gathering this past January. Our next Gathering will be the Harvest and it's on November 17th at the Brower Center. Click here for more info.
AUDIO: Santa Clara Open Space Authority on ALICE radio. Santa Clara Open Space Authority general Manager Andrea MacKenzie and Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator Dana Litwin talk about the hiking, biking and horseback riding trails available, the educational opportunities, and volunteer opportunities with their organization.
Why Are Bicyclists Being Targeted by Congress?How in the world can biking and walking be controversial? They're good exercise, fun to do and -- as an alternative to driving everywhere -- help us save money and the environment. (Huffington Post)
Bay Area Community Conservationist Audrey Rust Receives National Conservation Award. At the Land Trust Alliance Rally last month it was announced that she is the winner of the Land Trust Alliance’s prestigious Kingsbury Browne Conservation Leadership Award. Rust was selected for the award for her vision and dedication that have resulted in extraordinary results for land conservation and for the land trust community. (Land Trust Alliance)
My Gray Whale. My gut is telling me to keep my mouth shut. My favorite place, this magical little enclave, tucked beneath a WWII turret, and enclosed by a wall of scrubby undulating cliffs, will very soon shut its gates. So I will let you in on the secret in hopes that you can help save it. (Huffington Post)
This is the weekly Happenings, a weekly round-up of news - with some art and fun thrown in - related to the members, partners, supporters, and friends of the Open Space Council.
We'll be talking about The Big Picture and Tactical Next Steps for State Parks at our next Gathering on November 17 from 10am-1pm at the Brower Center in Berkeley. New partnerships are being formed. New ways of working together have been created and are being implemented. And new strategies are needed to deal with the new realities of publicly funded conservation. What does it all mean? What is being done? And how do we need to think in new ways? Join us for a conversation. Click here to register.
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