Mid-Pen Chapter of Charity League teams up with Save The Bay

This post was submitted by Lindsay Farino of Menlo Park, CA, a member of the Mid-Peninsula Chapter of NCL, along with her daughter Julia Farino, a freshman at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, CA.

On Saturday, November 14, a large group of volunteers from The Mid-Peninsula Chapter of the National Charity League (NCL) worked together with the Save the Bay organization to learn about wetlands and plant close to 200 native plants in the Palo Alto Baylands. Mothers and daughters worked alongside one other to help restore the wetlands with blue-eyed grass and marsh-coyote brush saplings. Save the Bay staff member Jill Jacobson explained that the NCL volunteers’ planting in the wetland transition zones, "creates shelter and habitat for animals when water is high in the wetlands."

Save the Bay staffer Megan Kelso said, "Having local volunteer groups like the National Charity League come out to the wetlands creates a sense of stewardship for the participants." She emphasized to the group of mothers and daughters that Save the Bay was founded by women. It is important to remember the three East Bay women, Kay Kerr, Sylvia McLaughlin and Esther Gulick, who founded the Save the San Francisco Bay Association in 1961, to stop the destruction of the bay that they loved so much. Their first volunteer effort mobilized thousands of members to stop the City of Berkeley's plan to double in size by filling in the shallow Bay off-shore.

The NCL teenagers responded enthusiastically to the educational activities that took place prior to planting the wetlands. Emma Peyton, an 8th Grade NCL member from Redwood City said, “I like doing this because I am doing some good for the community.” Menlo Park 8th-grader Nora Lewis added, “Doing NCL (itself) gets me closer to my Mom. It gets us to bond together.” The National Charity League (NCL) teaches young women to be confident that they can make a difference in their own communities both as young women and throughout their adult lives.

The Mid-Peninsula Chapter of the National Charity League is made up of mothers and teenage daughters from Menlo Park, Atherton, Redwood City, Woodside, Portola Valley, Belmont and San Carlos. The purpose of NCL is to initiate and promote charitable endeavors in which mothers and daughters work together. Other philanthropies currently supported by the NCL Mid-Peninsula Chapter include the Friends of the Menlo Park Library, My New Red Shoes, Shelter Network’s Haven House and Redwood Family House, American Cancer Society (including the Menlo Park Discovery Shop), Family & Children Services, Art in Action and Rebuilding Together Peninsula. For more information, visit www.nclmidpen.org.

Community-based Restoration gettin' cred with community

By Amy Ricard, Communications and Policy Associate

We think our Community-based Restoration program is pretty awesome, but it's always nice to hear that the community thinks so too. Just in the last week, two separate videos hit the web touting the benefits of teaming up with Save The Bay to restore vital wetland habitat around our great natural treasure.

Last Thursday, a group of students from Fremont's Kennedy High School Green Tech Academy came out with us to plant marsh gumplant into the wetlands surrounding a recently-breached salt pond at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve along the Hayward Shoreline. The group was lucky enough to be joined by a CBS 5 reporter who taped a news segment for that evening's broadcast. Check out the web clip of the segment here.

And on Monday, a video was posted about employees from Pure Digital -- makers of "The Flip" digital camcorder -- and their experience planting native seedlings along the MLK Jr. shoreline in Oakland. Check it out.

Participating in Save The Bay's Community-based Restoration programs gives your employee, community or student group the opportunity to restore and explore the Bay. Over 100 businesses and community groups participate in our restoration projects each year and we are currently looking for more groups to schedule private weekday programs, which provide fun and engaging ways to bring your team together.

Interested in scheduling a program for your group? Contact Natalie LaVan, Restoration Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, at natalie@savesfbay.org or (510) 452.9261 x109. To learn more about our private programs, visit www.saveSFbay.org/community.

Mission accomplished: Over 20,000 native seedlings in the ground

by Laura Wainer, Restoration Projects Manager

With the planting season just about "sown" up, we are thrilled to report that we have exceeded our ambitious goal to plant 20,000 native seedlings into several wetland sites ringing the Bay! Nearly 3,500 volunteers donated their time at over 100 programs since November to help restore critical wetland habitat, which is vital to maintain the health of the Bay and also to support the 500 species of wildlife that live in and around it.

Volunteers at Oakland's Martin Luther King Jr. Shoreline worked extremely hard this winter, taking the top spot by planting over 8,000 seedlings. Folks who participated in programs at San Francisquito Creek in Palo Alto ran a close second with just under 8,000 native plants in the ground. And with fewer programs offered, volunteers at Bothin Marsh in Mill Valley, Eden Landing in Hayward and Bair Island in Redwood City held their own with totals ranging from 1,000 to over 2,800 seedlings. Collectively at these three sites over 5,600 plants were planted.

An exciting addition to this year's planting season were the Volunteer Appreciation Days held at Bothin Marsh, San Francisquito Creek and the MLK Jr. Shoreline. Together we honored our dedicated volunteers and celebrated with good food, music, fun giveaways and speakers. In fact, participants at Bothin Marsh were joined by a very special guest star—a gopher snake curious to see what all the ruckus was about outside its home.

At our site in Oakland, evidence of the success of our Community-based Restoration programs also posed a bit of a challenge. Over the last several years, Save The Bay staff and volunteers have done such an effective job of creating habitat for the endangered California clapper rail, that the increased population of clapper rails is actively using that habitat. While that is great news and a clear demonstration of the success of our restoration work, it also meant that we had to vacate the habitat and create a different restoration site to avoid disturbing the endangered birds. It took some creative thinking, but in the end, we made it work.

With the plants in the ground, we now begin weeding the wetlands to clear away invasive species that ultimately degrade habitat for fish and wildlife. Grab your gardening gloves and sign up for one of our many restoration programs.

Connections and Connectivity

by Bree Candiloro, Nursery Manager

Originally posted on September 12, 2008

Connections. Connectivity. We need it; humans, plants and animals alike. Connectivity is in high demand for animals like mountain lions that need 200 square miles of appropriate habitat and connection to other populations of mountain lions so that they will remain healthy. Connection in terms of human touch is necessary to keep babies alive. Plants in the marsh need the tidal waters to connect their seeds to new areas for growth.

The wild plants and animals are just as much our neighbors as the people who live in the house next door. So what is our connection to them? We assume wild lands are out there somewhere—in the National Parks we visit once a year—and we don't really need to protect more. But we do. We desperately do. Our every breath is dependent on the health and properly working systems of the Earth.

Let's focus in on California systems. Fire. The fires that devastated much of California earlier this summer made us very aware of the increasing number, frequency and intensity of these natural disasters. Non-native invasive plants can quickly come into an area after a burn and increase the danger of another fire burning more rapidly and more intensely than the landscape has been accustomed to enduring for the hundreds to thousands of years before. These fires are changing the face of the California landscape.

Not all of us, but many people in California have lost a connection to the natural world and don't understand the important role wild plants, wild animals and wild protected open spaces play in our everyday lives. I go from my house, to BART, to my downtown Oakland office on the ninth floor. I work on the computer, go home, and never think about the water rushing through the tap or from where it originates. I never think about the farm from where the wheat used to make the bread in my sandwich was grown. And I also assume that I will forever be able to draw clean water from my tap and purchase bread wherever and whenever I need it. But the health of the system that provides the clean water and provides the soil for the farm is so intricately connected with my life in so many ways. Keeping these systems healthy means keeping myself healthy too.