Update 11-27-2007
Sat., Dec. 1, Work Party and Picnic
Mon., Dec. 3, Talk on Saving N. Richmond Wetlands
Sat., Dec. 8, Guadalupe River Tour
New Source of Information on Local Native Plants
Mud-Snail Alert
If you fish, hike, work in, or otherwise have contact with local creeks, please get to know this pest and follow procedures for decontaminating your equipment. You can download a flyer on how to decontaminate your equipment at http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs.html. If you suspect you have found mud snails locally, please contact Jamison Crosby, Contra Costa Clean Water Program, 925-313-2364, jcros@pw.cccounty.us or Arleen Feng, Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program, 510 670 5575, watersheds@acpwa.org.
Watershed Events at UC Berkeley
Grad students in river restoration speak, along with a keynote on what we can learn from urban-creek restoration in the Pacific Northwest, at the Fifth Annual Berkeley River Restoration Symposium, 9 am - 1 pm Sat., Dec. 8, 112 Wurster Hall. Talks include Cerrito Creek at Blake Garden, Kensington; alternatives to Whole Foods planned parking garage edging Codornices Creek; and lessons learned from restoration at heavily polluted Yosemite Creek, San Francisco. Schedule and abstracts at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA/227_07.html.
Volunteering with Others
If our all-day Dec. 8 Guadalupe River tour is too much of a commitment, consider joining Friends of the Richmond Greenway on their Saturday stroll, beginning 9:30 am at 2nd St., just north of Ohio, walking east along the Greenway and also helping to create Berryland - a project designed to convert this part of the old Santa Fe Right of Way to local food production. Bring work gloves; donations of any berry except Himalayan blackberries are welcome. For information contact park@urbantilth.org (510) 691-5051.
Hope to see you soon!
Our last 2007 work party will continue our wonderful progress in establishing natives on paths in the upper Codornices Creek watershed - another part long-term plans for a self-guided "urban trail" along the creek. We'll meet at 10 am Saturday, Dec. 1, at the bottom of lower Glendale Path, Campus at Glendale, Berkeley. We'll walk up the three-part path, admiring last month's progress, planting and weeding as we go. Just after noon we'll head back down and gather for a light picnic at Glendale-LaLoma Park, across the street from our meeting place. Please join us! Information at this email or 510 848 9358.
For our last 2007 meeting, Rich Walking of Natural Heritage Institute will speak and show a video on preserving the North Richmond wetlands and low-income communities access to open space. 7 pm in the Edith Stone Room, Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin (at Masonic, just west of the BART crossing). Free and all welcome!
And for our last 2007 event, Saturday, Dec. 8, we will carpool to the Guadalupe River Parkway -- 3 miles of trail along restored Guadalupe River right through downtown San Jose, with gardens that use recycled water, museums, light rail, public art, some colossal flood-control structures and some beautiful natural reaches. Started as a standard flood-control project, this work was halted for several years and redesigned - though perhaps not enough - to protect trout and salmon runs. Friends of Guadalupe River Park and Gardens will lead us on a two-hour tour 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. We'll have lunch and then continue on our own. The cost is $10 per person (plus lunch and help with gas for the carpool driver). Please reply to this email or call 510 848 9358; let me know whether you can drive or want a ride, and where you live.
Winter is a great time to plant drought-tolerant native plants, helping both habitat and your local watershed. CalFlora, the wonderful on-line database of California native plants, has added a way to get a list of plants native to your city, ZIP, county, USGS quadrangle, or watershed (as defined by CalWater). You also can just click a spot on a map. Explore the database at www.calflora.org, or go directly to the new "What Grows Here" capability at http://www.calflora.org/wgh.html.
The highly invasive New Zealand mud snail, which has spread explosively through the Pacific Northwest, has been found in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties. These tiny snails can live on sand, rocks, and mud and survive in fresh and brackish water at many temperatures and in damp conditions out of water for weeks. They destroy habitat, sometimes entirely coating surfaces, with hundreds of thousands of snails per square yard. No effective method of eradication has been found - our best hope is to prevent or slow the spread.
Great kite-photo show: From 5:30 - 7 pm Tuesday, Dec. 4, Rm. 112 Wurster Hall, Charles C. Benton, UC Berkeley architecture professor, will show his magnificent kite photographs and give a light-hearted talk that also touches on history of aerial photography, in "A Camera Aloft: California's Wetlands and Streams from a Bird's Perspective." Come at 5:15 to meet the speaker. Information at (510) 642-2666 http://lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA/ccow.html
If our Dec. 1 work party doesn't work for you, here are two possibilities for 10 am - 12:30 pm Sunday, Dec. 2: (1) Help Aquatic Park EGRET tend native habitat plantings habitat plantings at the south end of Aquatic Park. Meet at EGRET's Cabin on the eastern side of Middle Pond, just south of the Main Lagoon. AC Transit 9 or 19. For driving directions email Mark Liolios, markl@lmi.net. (2) Help Westbrae Commons restore coastal prairie along the Ohlone Greenway, near beautiful art and community
gardens, Ohlone Greenway just north of Peralta & Hopkins and south of Gilman St., AC Transit 9 or a short walk north from North Berkeley BART.
Susan S.