By Emily Wilson
On the coast, it is easy to appreciate the natural beauty of
the surroundings - the beaches, hills, bluffs, and the open space. It
is also easy to take that beauty for granted.
But luckily, here on the coast there are myriad organizations that focus
time, energy, money and talent on preserving the environment.
One of these organizations, Committee for Green Foothills, was started
40 years ago by a group of people, including celebrated writer and Stanford
professor Wallace Stegner, who were worried about the burgeoning sprawl
in Silicon Valley.
"They were visionaries, really," said Zoe Kersteen-Tucker,
executive director for the organization. "
They didn't want to lose the foothills to developers. They decided they
want to be for something rather than against something, so they got busy
going to city council meetings and lobbying to tighten zoning and filing
lawsuits against inappropriate developments."
Ten years after the organization was started, Lennie Roberts, the legislative
advocate for the group, expanded it to protecting the coast as well as
the Santa Clara County foothills.
Earth Day is a wonderful way to draw attention to the environmental movement,
Kersteen-Tucker said. Earth Day, which was started to educate people about
the environment and to mobilize them to work to protect it, will be celebrated
this year on Monday, April 22.
Many activities have been scheduled on the coast to mark the day, from
cleaning up the beach to removing non-native species to a five-day Earth
Day Bay Walk.
Kersteen-Tucker said taking environmental action to a grassroots level,
as is done on Earth Day, is the essence of what the Committee for Green
Foothills does.
"The most exciting thing we do is spawn dedicated, passionate citizens'
groups. We multiply our power by generating citizens' groups that continue
on like Stanford Open Space Association and Citizens for the Tunnel."
The group is well-respected, Kersteen-Tucker said.
"We do our research so when an advocate gets up to speak, we're
not shooting from the hip."
Kersteen-Tucker said she is proud to be a part of the group. "When
I drive down 101 or 280 and look to rural lands, I feel grateful for that
and for the early founders of this group who saw the importance to stand
up for this local environment."
Protecting and preserving those lands and open spaces in the City of
Half Moon Bay is what Half Moon Bay Open Space Trust (HOST) was set up
to do, said HOST President Ellen Koland.
Koland said some of the organization's biggest accomplishments since
it was started in 1997 include the acquisition of open space that runs
adjacent to Francis State Beach and securing $1.5 million in the state
budget to purchase the Ocean Shore Railroad right of way.
"We're in the process of acquiring some space from Bruce Turner,"
said Koland. "There are some complications, but we expect to acquire
a four-acre wetland."
Audrey Rust, president of the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) knows
all about acquiring land.
For the past 15 years Rust has been the president of this organization,
which was established in 1977. Rust, who worked in management and fund-raising
before she headed the land trust, said she saw working at POST as an opportunity
to establish a mission and implement it and to work with a board of directors
that she respected.
Out of the many accomplishments her organization has had in the past
25 years that Rust thinks illustrates this mission is the preservation
of the Cowell Ranch in 1987.
"We placed a conservation easement on it and resold the ranch to
the Giusti family and created a trail that goes out to the blufftops and
you can walk down to the beach.
"It was a very important project said a lot about what we wanted
POST to do," Rust said. "We kept the scenic corridor and viewshed
as people drive down Highway 1, set a city limit on the southern end of
Half Moon Bay so it's much more difficult to create more suburban development,
and we created low-intensity recreational use trails.
"And we wanted to protect traditional agriculture so it could be
sold for farmland value to a local farmer."
Another project Rust said she is proud of is the 7,500 acres of land
surrounding the Pigeon Point Lighthouse acquired by POST last year.
And one she wants everyone to know about is the Rancho Corral de Tierra
property.
"It's 4,200 acres of Montara Mountain. There are plants there that
grow nowhere else in the world. It's a very important piece of property
in every way and we're trying to add it to the Golden Gate National Recreation
Area (GGNRA)."
John Wade worked at POST for almost 20 years before becoming the executive
director of the Pescadero Conservation Alliance, which was founded in
1999.
"We're still very new and still in the formative stages," Wade
said. "The inspiration (for the group) was a recognized need for
land restoration and stewardship with public and private and nonprofit
landowners, along with the need for local environmental education so people
understand the local environment more."
The big projects that the alliance is working on now include gully erosion
and invasive plant eradication. A lot of progress has been made on the
Mountain Camp in Gazos Creek, Wade said.
"There has been an increasing level of cooperation with pampas grass
eradication with some people doing it on their own. And we have raised
the level of awareness about St. John's wort, getting it on people's radar
screens."
Susan Danielson is the Northern Program Director for Save Our Shores,
an organization that does policy research and citizen action to protect
the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. One of its biggest accomplishments,
she thinks, was the year it was established in 1978 and prevented offshore
oil development.
"It was a significant precedent," she said.
Locally, she thinks one of the most important accomplishments was opening
up a local office five years ago.
"A regional office in the northern area of the sanctuary gives us
the opportunity to stay connected with important environmental issues
and to meet the community's needs," she said.
Danielson sees Earth Day as raising awareness of the choices we make
and the responsibility we have to the environment.
"What we do on land affects our oceans and this gives us the opportunity
to make the connection," she said.
Danielson said her organization is recognized as the leader of beach
cleanups on the coast. In a partnership with Pescadero High School, the
group has cleaned the same site every month for the past five years. This
means they are able to gather statistical information on the sources of
marine debris.
"The chronic offender is plastic. It's a significant threat to wildlife
in general. Everything from birds to sea turtles. To a sea turtle, a plastic
bag floating around in the ocean resembles a jellyfish which is their
delicacy of choice."
Another big offender, said Danielson, is cigarette butts since the filters
are made of plastic and don't decompose.
"Anything that's on the highway on one good, windy, stormy day goes
in the ocean," Danielson said, adding that a lot of people get satisfaction
from beach cleanups since they are able to see the results of their work.
"We get a high demand," she said. "Last year we did two
or more a month. Folks can make the connection that the way you behave
on land affects coastal waters."
That's a connection Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club's Coastal
Program and a public interest environmental lawyer, made long ago.
Earth Day is a chance to emphasize the importance of the environment
for the wildlife and habitat and peace of mind it brings. But he added
that it also provides a tangible economic benefit.
"The coast is the economic engine of California tourism," he
said.
Massara, who worked for the environmental group Surfriders before becoming
director of the Sierra Club's coastal program 10 years ago, said that
he travels up and down the coast working on about 100 issues annually
having to do with coastal access, development and pollution.
"The pace is relentless," he said. "There is a Wavecrest
in every town."
In spite of the frenetic pace of his job, Massara is not complaining.
"I have a great career for a surfer," he chuckled.
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