Claire Peaslee

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Digging Restoration

3/1/2012

2 Comments

 
Picture
This week on a levee bounding the north shore of San Francisco Bay... on one side, marshland recovering from abuses suffered over the course of 150 years... on the other -- below sea level -- plowed agricultural land and beyond that rolling green hills of Sonoma County.
In the foreground, 70 children from two quite different elementary schools... to the west, from San Anselmo, fourth-graders from Brandeis Hillel... to the east, from Richmond, sixth-graders from Perez School which they pronounde peer-ease.
All digging and planting and packing and shouting out in unison "plant inspection" and smiling at their own successes and hauling buckets and mulching and going to another flagged location in this restoration design. From California sage and monkeyflower bushes, to yarrow and even saltgrass at the base of the levee, these were Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed.
Nearby, dozens of long-billed curlews foraged on the low-tide mud, occasionally churring and piping excitedly. Harriers and kites over the grasslands, gangs of sparrows ripping around the mature shrub patches. Rain clouds building, welcome.
2 Comments
Sue
6/29/2013 02:51:20 pm

I walked the levee around the lowlands this May, it was overcast and cool but we had a great time. We passed a group of adults tending to plantings and saw a class of schoolkids and their teachers doing an outdoor classroom. Wondered if the soil would supprt any live oak, they are on the hills just to the west. Perhaps the jays could help with planting some foraged acorns?

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Claire link
6/30/2013 12:13:24 am

Not so much live oaks as the salt-tolerant shrubs and grasses at home in the transition zone between tidal flat and upland. This is re-created habitat where levees that once enabled agricultural just inland from the bay are being removed or modified. More space for the tides to flood and ebb: more bay-margin wildlife. Likewise, stream restoration involves willows, some oaks and alders, and a great many shurbs that will provide habitat for birds and other wildlife.

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