Update 4-24-2007
EL CERRITO EARTH DAY WORK PARTY ON CERRITO CK. SATURDAY
By bus, take AC Transit 43 marked El Cerrito BART to Pacific East Mall, 3288 Pierce St., and walk east along the creek at the edge of the parking lot, into the park.
THANKS
UPCOMING BOARD MEETING, FROG SURVEY, ART SHOW
Don't forget to send in frog-survey forms - you can still participate. Download information and forms at our website, www.fivecreeks.org. And don't miss the show of photos from our Art of Action on Berkeley Creeks project. It looks stunning on the walls of Live Oak Park Community Center.
ACTIVITIES OF OTHERS
GARDEN TOURS
ACTION ALERTS
* Save the Bay wants emails asking the Regional Water Quality Control Board to make sure that cities' and counties' next permit for urban runoff requires strong measures to reduce trash in the Bay. Go to www.savesfbay.org.
* The Center for Biological Diversity is seeking emails asking the California Fish and Game Commission to give endangered status to the Delta smelt, a small fish whose population has crashed as the Sacramento - San Joaquin Delta has plunged further into ecological crisis. Go to www.biologicaldiversity.org.
* And Urban Creeks Council is seeking support for a bill that would tax bottled water to provide money for watershed restoration; go to www.urbancreeks.org.
By the way, ask yourself whether you need that bottled water. Putting water into plastic and shipping it around makes a significant contribution to global warming.
ARTIST NEEDED, FISH COUNTERS NEEDED
SPAWN, which works to protect endangered coho salmon in Marin, needs volunteers from 8 am to about noon to check traps monitoring juvenile coho and steelhead. The traps have to be checked daily, so they can use all the extra hands they can get. Contact natalie@spawnusa.org or 415-488-0370 x112
Hope to see lots of you this coming Saturday, April 28, for our El Cerrito Earth Day work party. We'll continue removing the evergreen thornless blackberries that hid and choked the Cerrito Creek channel. We'll start at 9 am rather than the usual 10 am at Creekside Park, so you can attend the free barbecue at noon at El Cerrito Community Center. To reach the work party site, from Central Avenue, west of San Pablo Ave. and east of I-880, turn south on Santa Clara Street, which dead-ends in three blocks at the park.
Many thanks to many volunteers -- TO the staff of Wilderness Press, the entire student body of Walden School (plus many parents and teachers), and UC Berkeley student members of Circle K for recent work parties at Codornices and Strawberry Creek. We appreciate East Bay Regional Park District Earth Day volunteers for help with our long-term removal of ice plant at the mouth of Strawberry Creek. Thanks, too, to F5C volunteers Stephanie Antalocy, Shirley Jowell, Ruth Meniketti, and Kat Ridolfi for helping staff the Creeks table at Berkeley's Earth Day fair.
Friends of Five Creeks' board meets at 7 pm on the first Monday, May 7, at Albany Community Center, 1249 Marin. All are welcome.
TALK ON PREHISTORIC WILDLIFE MAY 7
Naturalist and geologist Steve Edwards, director of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden at Tilden Park, will speak on "Mammoths, camels, and lions once roamed here - prehistoric animals in the East Bay," 7:30 pm Monday, May 7, at Montclair Presbyterian Church, 5701 Thornhill Dr., Oakland, as part of the Close to Home series of talks and Walks. Driving directions and information on the series at www.close-to-home.org.
Coming right up are two free local garden tours showcasing ideas for gardens that harmonize with nature and reduce pollution. The Alameda County Bay Friendly Garden Tour, featuring dought-resistant gardens that require few or no polluting chemicals, is this Sunday, April 29. Register at http://recycle.stopwaste.org/GardenTour/bfgt-signup.asp. The Bringing Back the Natives Garden tour, expanded with plant sales and other new features, follows on the next weekend, May 5 and 6. Register at http://www.bringingbackthenatives.net/.
With Earth Week focusing our thoughts, it's worth remembering that protecting and restoring the environment takes political action as well as picks and shovels. Web-based or emailed "action alerts," asking you to take positions, provide an easy intro to the political side, and you can take your pick of efforts. Right now, for example:
Alameda Creek Alliance is looking for an artist who can draw and design a color t-shirt featuring native fish and wildlife along the East Bay's largest creek. Contact Jeff Miller at jmiller@biologicaldiversity.org.