Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
of human inhabitants to tinker with the region's ecosystem in an effort to
better serve their own needs. Soon after the Spanish arrived, the bay re-
gion became an important destination along the Pacific coast for ships.
Even as these early Europeans explored and settled, the bay environment
remained relatively undisturbed until one event: the 1848 discovery of
gold. At that moment, the world made a beeline for California.
So many people in such a rush to make their fortunes made their pres-
ence felt on the land and water. Between 1849 and 1920, thousands put
their backs into extracting gold, cutting timber, catching fish, and hunting
furry animals, as well as into building farms, businesses, and towns in
California. Soon they were constructing levees to protect these invest-
ments from floods, and to develop swamps into real estate. In a land of
space and plenty, early entrepreneurs worried little about the disruption to
natural ecosystems they left in their wake.
But the biggest changes made to the flow of water through northern
California and San Francisco Bay occurred between the 1920s and 1960s.
During this period, Californians constructed hundreds of dams, dug miles
of aqueducts, and raised levee upon levee—all in an attempt to control and
exploit the annual winter flood of water from the mountains to the sea.
Though Californians gained in a more stable water supply, flood pro-
tection, and agricultural and mineral riches, each activity also damaged
the ecosystem. These impacts in turn inspired early attempts to protect
natural resources and water quality. Thus commenced the tug of war be-
tween exploitation and preservation that endures today. Whatever the
outcome, one thing is clear: humans changed so much in this ecosystem,
so fast, that San Francisco Bay remains one of the most altered estuaries in
the world today.
Those who lived around the bay a thousand years ago had a very different
relationship with it than people do today. The lives of California's coastal
Native Americans were so linked to the bay and ocean that nineteenth-
century ethnologist Stephen Powers described them as “almost amphibi-
ous.” They used the bay region's fish, birds, and acorns for food, and its
marsh plants and trees to build homes and weave baskets. Historians say
that for perhaps as many as 10,000 years, about 10,000 Native Americans,
living in 30 to 40 communities, were the Bay Area's only human residents.
Though early perspectives suggest a “primordial paradise” where hu-
mans lived in harmony with the natural world in a region of plenty, more
recent research suggests that Native Americans around the bay didn't al-
