Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
into town basements, and preserve over 8,000 acres for old-fashioned pas-
times. “Because of our agricultural borders, we're more hunting- and fish-
ing-oriented here than the South Bay, which is surrounded by infrastruc-
ture, cities, and people who want to walk their dogs, jog with their iPods,
or kayak for sport on the bayshore. Our neighbors are farmers who want
to do farming things,” says Smith.
What really brings a smile to Smith and Wyckoff 's faces are the visible
signs of wildlife populations returning to healthier numbers. Once salt-
making activities quieted down, California Least Terns got busy nesting—
laying 96 eggs one year in a new breeding colony (formerly these endan-
gered birds only nested on the island of Alameda). And Harbor Seals
recently began poking their heads up in the widening sloughs, curious
about their new real estate.
Concrete hardens most urban shores right to the waterline, but San Fran-
cisco Bay's salt-making industry preserved a large area of shoreline in a
relatively soft, wet, open state. The opportunity to re-create wetlands on
15,000 acres of South Bay salt ponds—diked and managed for over a cen-
tury to crystallize salt but never completely severed from the touch of the
tides—is unique. No other urban area on the nation's coasts retains such
an expansive, seminatural landscape right on its doorstep. And though it
may never be the wilderness of salt pannes, cordgrass stands, pickleweed
islands, and mudflats it once was, it could get darn close. The plan to re-
store a mosaic of historic habitats within the network of 65 ponds ringing
the bay south of the San Mateo Bridge is one of the largest, most ambi-
tious, and most broadly supported restoration efforts undertaken in the
country to date.
“Our region is one of very few places in the world where you have mil-
lions of people living adjacent to a natural resource like the bay,” says Steve
Ritchie, former director of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project.
“People can see it changing before their eyes, being returned to some sem-
blance of the state that once was. They're seeing barren salt crusts slowly
covered with bay mud, birds and fish coming back in, plants starting to
grow, in a place where they can touch it and see it and feel it. When they
come to visit this restoration project, they can't believe how extensive an
area this is: they stand there with a look of wonder on their faces.”
The landscape to be restored is indeed large. If engineers simply bull-
dozed holes in all the levees, it would double the open-water area of
the bay south of the Dumbarton Bridge. After considering whether this
