Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
now play on decommissioned Treasure Island turf, and rock bands per-
form atop the old pile of garbage that is now the Shoreline at Mountain
View amphitheater. Most of these sites was very much of limits to the
public 20 years ago.
All of these public shoreline access points will one day be connected by
a 400-mile recreational trail that rings the bay. Activists launched the Bay
Trail project in 1989. By 2009, they had secured and marked almost 300
miles of trail with signs depicting a curving path along the shore in green,
yellow, and blue.
The Bay Trail also seeks to link land to water by providing access to
ferries, public boat launches, and a new “Water Trail.” Still in development,
this trail was described by journalist Paul McHugh in a July 2008
New York
Times
article as “a frame for travel, more than an actual pathway. When a
system is created, paddlers, rowers or sailors can connect the dots in any
manner or order they like. Or, in whatever way wind and tide demand.”
Over 400 water trails already ply coastal and inland waters elsewhere on
the continent.
A group called Bay Access came up with the Water Trail idea in 2001.
Four years later, the California legislature established the San Francisco
Bay Area Water Trail, finding that “with loss of public open space, the pub-
lic increasingly looks to the Bay, the region's largest open space, for recre-
ational opportunities.” By 2009, environmental impact reviews for the
proposed network of 112 bay access sites, or trailheads, were under way to
accommodate human-powered watercrat.
One potential impact is that small, nonmotorized vessels can some-
times enter shallower areas and get closer to wildlife than those with noisy
engines. Such stealth approaches often trigger a strong “startle” response.
The more they startle, the more precious energy wildlife may use to get
out of the way of inquisitive humans. When birds dive or flush (take flight)
in response to disturbance, for example, they may also abandon nests,
lose foraging time, expend limited energy reserves, and begin avoiding
otherwise suitable habitats. Surprised Harbor Seals may abandon for-
merly preferred haul-outs; and mothers and pups, or mating pairs, can get
separated.
Of course, it's how the human behaves, while out paddling, that's most
important in the disturbance equation, not the nature of the watercraft it-
self. For that matter, wildlife advocates are just as concerned about distur-
bance caused by all the foot, bike, and dog traffic now visiting the bay's
beautified shores. To explore such concerns, a number of government-
sponsored scientific studies have assessed the level of disturbance from
shoreline recreational use.
A 2007 study by Lynne Trulio of San Jose State University found no
negative effects of trail use on the number of birds, species richness, or
