Sauntering in Muir’s Footsteps on Mount Wanda

“Are you ready to saunter?” Thad Shay, dressed in short sleeves and a park ranger’s uniform, turns and leads our group to the trailhead.

It’s a bright Saturday morning in April, and we begin our walk from a parking lot in the shadow of Highway 4, the John Muir Parkway. Our destination is Mount Wanda, a 326-acre preserve in Martinez, part of the John Muir National Historic Site. Muir liked to take his daughters Helen and Wanda walking among the oak woodlands and grasslands on this very trail.

Shay walks up the steps to the trail, turns around and stops near a toyon bush bright with berries shining in the morning sun. “You can eat these berries,” Shay says, “as did the Native Americans. They dried them, and used them in tea.” A few more paces and we’re looking at the leaves of a black oak, then coast live oak, bay laurel, and wavy-leaved soaproot. “You can actually use this plant like soap,” Shay continues. “You dig up the root, which looks like a hairy potato, and take it to the river to wash off. It foams up, you rinse it off, and it leaves your hair and skin shiny and clean.”

We’ve only walked 25 yards.

This is a saunter. Apparently, John Muir was fond of the word “saunter” rather than hike. Hiking, Muir said, implies speed. Sauntering allows for lingering.

As we meander up the trail, Shay stops to tell us stories about ticks, lizards, and oak galls. He makes a child’s scissors from the pointy buds of long-beaked stork’s bill. He kneels down off the trail and pulls back leaves of a delicate fern.

“See how the stems underneath are dark brown and black?” He points to a dark tangle of wispy stems. “Just like a maiden’s hair. The plant betrays its name: maiden hair fern.”

Wildflowers season in the East Bay brings delicate spots of purple, yellow, white, and red to hills and nooks. Don’t expect carpets of color like a desert bloom. And instead of three weeks, you have three months to plan your outing. But as May approaches, the window is closing.

“I lead walks from mid-March to mid-May,” says Shay, who’s been a ranger for 20 years. “And you’ll see a whole different set of flowers in March than you will in May. People that want to see shooting stars know to come in March. Those who like to see poppies and purple owl’s clover — my personal favorite — come in May.”

There are two Spring Wildflower Walks left in 2011: April 23 and May 9. They start at 9am at the Alhambra Ave. Park and Ride in Martinez.

Dam Removal Debate Hits Bay Area: Have Your Say!

A large steelhead trout makes its way to a gentle riffle in a sandy stream and deposits its milt over thousands of eggs. Cool water drifts by, draining to San Francisco Bay and then the ocean.

Or maybe a 100-year flood hits a newly restored watershed. Brown, roiling waters flush the stream-course, inundating homes, washing away photo albums, even taking human lives.

Are you ready to guess which fate would come to Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and East Palo Alto if the Searsville Dam is removed?

Well, you are invited to weigh in, should you wish to do so before August 30 at 5 p.m.

Here are some answers to the basics of a complex issue:

: Searsville Lake. Photo by Amos Hausman-Rogers.

What and where is the Searsville Dam? What’s going on now?

The Searsville Dam sits in the hills above Palo Alto, on land owned by Stanford University. The dam and the reservoir behind it have become the site of controversy involving the university, government agencies, environmental groups, and endangered and threatened species. More than 3,000 letters have poured into the office of Stanford’s president. And now, federal agencies are soliciting public comments on a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) which, according to critics, improperly fails to mention the Searsville Dam.

Who’s in favor of dam removal?

Matt Stoecker is a biologist out of Portola Valley who runs the grassroots organization Beyond Searsville Dam. For more than ten years, the organization has been calling on Stanford to acknowledge that the dam is harming native species in the San Francisquito Creek watershed–both above and below the dam. Stoecker is pushing for an environmental assessment–if not complete removal–of the dam. “It’s clearly not sustainable,” he says. “The species here evolved in a free-flowing stream system, with migration up and down the river. The dam blocks migratory access, harbors exotic species, and is filling with sediment.” Indeed, the reservoir is 90 percent full of silt.

: David Freyberg (left) and Philippe Cohen (right) at Searsville Lake. Photo by Amos Hausman-Rogers.

Is Stanford against removing the dam?

Philippe Cohen is the director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, a research facility that encompasses Searsville Dam and Searsville Lake. David Freyberg is a Stanford engineering professor who has been studying the sediment and water of Searsville Lake since 1997. Neither Cohen nor Freyberg say they oppose dam removal, but both have lots of critical questions about removing Searsville Dam, which they suggest may have a string of unintended consequences. “This is a question of values,” says Cohen, “and my values are, first, to do no harm. Second, you must have enough information. The issues at play are sufficiently complex. How do you know that removal wouldn’t cause more harm than good?”

If it’s so complex, why the deadline?

Stanford is creating a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for all of its properties, including Jasper Ridge Preserve and Searsville Dam, to be in effect for the next 50 years. Part of this process, legally mandated, is a public comment period. That period ends August 30.

The HCP is a legal agreement between Stanford and federal agencies–the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service–who are charged with protecting and regulating species protected by the Endangered Species Act. In this case, Stanford University must consider impacts of its activities on the Central California Coast steelhead trout, California tiger salamander, California red-legged frog, San Francisco garter snake, and western pond turtle.

Why didn’t Stanford include the future of the dam in their HCP?

Stoecker charges that Stanford hasn’t mentioned the dam in their HCP because it would force them to acknowledge the harm that the dam does to the federally listed steelhead trout. He demands that Stanford include the dam in the document. “They need to provide migratory access for different species, improve water quality, and allow adequate flow rate for habitat downstream,” he says.

“It’s not so simple,” says Stanford’s Philippe Cohen. “The HCP is designed for actionable items, ongoing maintenance, and specific projects. It’s not designed for an open-ended investigation like what to do with a dam.” David Freyberg says including such a giant task in the HCP would dwarf the already complex document. “It would preclude the HCP getting finished,” he says, “and would delay mitigation for other species.” That raises the prospect of harm to other listed species, says Cohen: “It would be a shame to spend all this time on removing the dam for the steelhead, and have one of the other species go extinct in the meantime.”

Say they remove the dam, what happens in a major flood?

Cohen and Freyberg are concerned what would happen in a flood. The San Francisquito Creek passes through affluent areas of Menlo Park and Palo Alto, but then meets the Bay in an alluvial fan in lower-income East Palo Alto. “Those are the folks that stand a greater risk for flooding,” Cohen says. “You need to consider what the risks are and who will be bearing those risks. Some people want to build the dam higher.”

To critics, that’s a short-sighted view. “Dams are coming out all across the country,” says Stoecker. “There’s a ton of funding–both public and private–for dam removal, and none for dam repair.” The funding, in addition to habitat restoration, has been used to improve flood protection downstream from dam removal sites. “The project on the Elwah River in Washington resulted in downstream protection from a 200-year flood,” says Stoecker.

But whether dam removal will work in this situation is still up for debate. “It was making decisions from a superficial place that got us into this situation,” says Freyberg, “and this shouldn’t be remedied with another superficial decision. There’s too much uncertainty. I would hope that as time moves on, not only do we make more decisions, we make better decisions.”

How do I comment and what happens with my comments?

You can comment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service. They will consider your comments in their assessment of Stanford’s HCP, which they’ll either approve or ask for revisions from Stanford.

All comments will be part of the administrative record and could be released to the public. You can request that your comments not be released, but the agencies make no guarantees.

Comments will be accepted until August 30, 2010, at 5 p.m.

The easiest way to send comments is by email to Stanford.HCP@noaa.gov (include the document identifier: Stanford HCP)

Read more about Standford’s perspective on managing the dam and reservoir.

And for more about the Beyond Searsville Dam, including a link to a comment template, visit beyondsearsvilledam.org.

The San Francisco Chronicle‘s Peter Fimrite did a fairly in-depth article on the controversy in June.

Or check out the full slate of documents from the Federal Register.

Large-Mouthed Shark Gets Attention in Monterey

Some unwitting humans are bobbing in the water off the coast of California. A gigantic shark, 30 feet long, rises from the depths of the dark ocean. The shark slowly approaches the people, and then … drifts by with mouth agape, enjoying its lunch of plankton.

Consider yourself introduced to the basking shark, the world’s second-largest shark.

We don’t know much about basking sharks except that they have been systematically hunted and inadvertently killed to a point near extinction, and they’re now getting some attention from local scientists, governments, and fishermen.

Sean van Sommeran of the Pelagic Shark Research Foundation in Santa Cruz will do the tagging for researchers at Stanford, including Steven G. Wilson of the Hopkins Marine Station. Wilson led the effort to secure a grant in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to tag and follow three basking sharks with state-of-the-art satellite tags off the coast of California.

Researchers have long been tagging sharks with low-tech, brightly colored ID tags. These “spaghetti tags” look like bits of neon seaweed stuck on the sharks’ backs.

The new satellite tags are similarly attached, but they have significant computer equipment encased in resin. These three tags, which cost up to $5,000 apiece, will be some of the first using this kind of technology applied to basking sharks on the West Coast.

I asked van Sommeran if something must be driven through the shark’s fin to secure the tag. “No,” says van Sommeran, “a basking shark fin is as thick as a door.” Better, it turns out, is inserting a barbed pin–a surgical harpoon–into the shark’s flesh near base of the dorsal fin. “You need to get it right at mid-ship, in the stable part of the animal, and out of its way,” explains Van Sommeran, who has been tagging sharks since 1988. “The dart fastens right in the hide. These animals make great platforms for this type of research. Like most sharks, they are resistant to infections, and the wound heals right up without problems.”

The satellite tags have internal computers that will take measurements of pressure, light, depth, and global position, archive the information, and after 350 days, eject from the shark and float to the surface. There, they will transmit the data via satellite to the researchers’ computers.

The North Pacific population of basking sharks has been in sharp decline. Van Sommeran first saw a basking shark when he was 15 years old. “Basking sharks were once so abundant they were considered a nuisance, a hazard to navigation,” he says. “I haven’t laid eyes on one since 2002.”

According to the IUCN Red List, the international authority on conservation status, the basking shark is “vulnerable” worldwide. Worse, the North Pacific stock is marked “endangered.”

Basking sharks have few marine predators, including the orca, but their primary threat comes from humans. Basking sharks get their name from their habit of feeding on zooplankton close to the ocean’s surface. They appear to bask as they sieve food through their gills, but this habit makes them easy targets for fishing.

: Pelagic Shark Research Foundation staffer Susan Arnold leans out from a small boat to tag a basking shark in 1993. Basking sharks will be tagged in a similar way. Photo courtesy Pelagic Shark Research Foundation.

The shark’s large, oily liver helps the fish float. It can account for one quarter of total body weight and is the exact reason the sharks have been so desirable to world markets. Shark-liver oil, or “squalene,” has been used as a nutritional supplement, lamp fuel, industrial lubricant, and folk remedy. Hakarl, an obscure Icelandic delicacy made from sticking a shark in the sand and letting it ferment, is often made from basking sharks. Here in Monterey Bay, the sharks were killed for their hides, meat, and fins.

Van Sommeran and his team are waiting for a reported sighting of a basking shark, and he says Monterey Bay is a hot spot for finding one. “A half-hour out of the dock, you have a mile of water under the boat. Besides,” he says, “there’s a network of fishing and whale-watching boats that will help spot one.” If they don’t turn up the hoped-for shark by this fall, his team will range as far as San Diego using aircraft for spotting.

But the researchers must be selective in their tagging. With only three tags, accuracy at the moment of tagging is key. And for such high-tech tags, the most important act is decidedly one of practice, and some luck: The researchers fasten the tags using a long pole as they lean out from a small skiff in open water. “You have to go out at first light,” says van Sommeran. “The wind picks up sometime between 11 and 2, the waves swell, and there are white caps. You don’t want to be doing this in a bouncy boat.”

Van Sommeran hopes this research will help basking sharks. “So far, our only data we have for them is when we’re killing them,” he says. And that happens only at the surface. He’s curious where the sharks spend most of their time, how fast, and how far they travel.

“This is a perfect opportunity to know them better,” van Sommeran said. “Perhaps some day we will be able to reflect back on the history and be glad we didn’t lose them.”

Learn more about the Hopkins Marine Lab at www-marine.stanford.edu, and more about Sean van Sommeran’s work at pelagic.org.

Lend a Hand for Your Local Trail

On Mother’s Day you call your mother. On Father’s Day you thank your dad for his guidance and support. On National Trails Day you…pick up a shovel?

That’s right, this Saturday June 5th, people all across America will be joining events for National Trails Day, giving back to the trails and natural areas they love. They will pick up shovels, picks, and pulaskis, maintain and repair trails, construct footbridges, or just get out in nature. All in appreciation of the footpaths that have given them enjoyment over the last year, and in many cases for their whole lives.

Here in the Bay Area we have dozens of events planned, from San Francisco to Oakley, Santa Cruz to Sonoma. Projects range from trail upkeep to group hikes. The service projects generally require no previous experience, are free, kid-friendly, and include a commemorative tee-shirt and barbecue lunch.

Also, national parks across the country will be waiving entrance fees on the weekend of June 5-6 to encourage people to get outside and use trails. Parks will be having special programs as well, so look out for listings of hikes, educational programs, bike rides, trail rehabilitation projects, festivals, paddle trips, and trail dedications.

To find an event in your area, see our list of Bay Area events below, or check the American Hiking Society website.