Tuesday, January 6, 2009

10,000 native seedlings down, 10,000 to go!

by Amy Alton, Communications Associate

Just two months into our winter planting season, we are nearly halfway to reaching our goal of planting 20,000 native seedlings at several sites along the shoreline to restore wetland habitat for the Bay and its wildlife. With many more programs scheduled from now until the end of March, we are in great position to meet our ambitious goal!



Planting native seedlings into the wetlands ensures that Bay animals like the endangered California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest mouse have safe and thriving habitat to call home. Wetlands also help curb global warming by capturing carbon from greenhouse gases in the air. In fact, estuarine wetlands, such as those surrounding the Bay, sequester ten times more carbon per area than any other wetland ecosystem. And wetlands also filter runoff pollution to improve water quality, provide flood control when water levels are high and prevent erosion.



We rely heavily upon the Bay Area community to help during this crucial winter planting season and offer many ways for schools, business and community groups, families, and individuals to get involved.

Sign up at www.saveSFbay.org/bayevents if you're interested in getting down to the shoreline to participate in any of our planting programs around the Bay. And if you don't like getting your hands dirty, but you'd still like to support our winter planting season, consider adopting a plant through our Facebook Cause.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A team of colleagues from Juniper Networks joined you all at San Francisquito Creek in late December, and even though it was a wet and chilly day, we had a great time planting seedlings. It was great to see how much my colleagues and friends loved participating, and just about everyone is clamoring for another volunteer stint in the spring. Thanks, Save the Bay! What a great group of volunteer coordinators and project managers you had on site. It was an educational and fun day.

--Carolyn