Brisbane embraces Earth Day

Publisher: San Francisco Examiner
Reporter: Sabrina Crawford

BRISBANE -- Swaying on the hillside, the extended brushy arms of French broom plant blanket San Bruno Mountain. But though the exotic plant, with its petite yellow blossoms, is deceptively lovely in spring, local environmentalists say it's the No. 1 threat to the diverse natural habitat and, therefore, to the flutter of the endangered mission blue and silverspot butterflies that call the mountain's airy hilltop home.

"Invasive plants are second only to outright physical destruction when it comes to the loss of habitat," said Philip Batchelder, San Bruno Mountain watch program manager. "That is just starting to be grasped by policy makers, and greater public awareness and caring for the environment and other species is growing."

With that in mind, the city of Brisbane, which owns more than 20-acres of the hillside as protected public open space, is honoring Earth Day by sponsoring the first-ever San Bruno Mountain Habitat Restoration Day this Saturday.

On April 24, local environmental protection and education groups, residents and city officials are coordinating an eco-friendly afternoon of mountain air, environmental education and hands-on native plant restoration.

"The City of Brisbane has to date purchased over 20 acres of undeveloped land on San Bruno Mountain, using grant funds that restrict the use of the land to open space," said Brisbane Mayor Michael Barnes, in a flyer urging his fellow residents to dig in, volunteer and help restore harmony to their natural surroundings. "Now, the city needs to manage this land so that the community is protected from fire danger and indigenous species are protected from extinction."

To celebrate the 34th anniversary of Earth Day, the city is joining together with local groups like the San Bruno Mountain Watch, the Friends of San Bruno Mountain and the Native Plant Society, to rally residents to help tackle aggressive invaders like French broom and fennel, to keep those acres in pristine condition.

The last fragment of what was once the Franciscan Region ecosystem, San Bruno Mountain is one of the largest urban open spaces in the United States with 3,300 acres undeveloped, according to San Bruno Mountain Watch.

Local environmentalists say they hope Saturday's event will better inform the community about the mountain's native habitat and spark ongoing interest in community-minded restoration.

Call 415-508-2118 for more information.
Copyright 2004 San Francisco Examiner

Conservation efforts fall short: Federal push for habitat plans increases locally

Publisher: Contra Costa Times
Reporter: Mike Taugher

Across California, a state full of imperiled wildlife and ceaseless growth, old adversaries are quietly writing sweeping new plans to clear the way for development while preserving thousands of acres for nature.



From the Bay Area to Lake Tahoe, six such blueprints are simultaneously under development, including a pair in east Contra Costa and Solano counties. If approved, these six plans alone would help shape the future of 4,300 square miles in Northern California's high-growth regions.



Much of California could eventually come under similar agreements negotiated by homebuilders, landowners, environmentalists, biologists and officials from local, state and federal governments.

The trend cuts against the grain in a state where residents have always had a strong preference for local control, and where local officials rebuff most efforts to impose regional plans.

"This is a back-door regional planning process," said Stephanie Pincetl, the author of a book on California land use, a professor and the director of UCLA's Urban Center for People and the Environment. "And it has occurred in an absolutely astonishing manner. The Endangered Species Act was never intended to be used for land-use planning on the urban fringe."

Habitat conservation plans are coming to California in a big way, and with broad support. But the large-scale, long-term efforts remain untested.

The plans amount to 30- to 50-year contracts among environmental regulators and cities, counties or other public agencies that spell out where land will be preserved to help protect wildlife.

In areas with endangered species, development now often involves costly and uncertain negotiations that frustrate developers and produce ineffective patchworks of wildlife reserves.

Habitat plans offer an alternative. They do not change land-use designations set by cities and counties. Instead, they rely on willing sellers and willing developers. Participation is entirely voluntary.

Developers who choose this course are charged a fee for any project within the plan area, and that money pays for land that is permanently protected. Funding can come from taxes and grants as well.

For developers, the plans offer a way to know in advance how much environmental mitigation will cost and what rules they must follow in order to build.

In turn, wildlife agencies receive a commitment that key and contiguous properties will be preserved.

Habitat conservation plans began modestly in the 1980s as a legal tool to allow development on private land where there are endangered species.

Today, more than 400 such plans exist across the nation. But most address just a few species or cover small land areas. Many deal with activities other than development, such as logging.

Over the last decade, the federal fish and wildlife service has increasingly pushed habitat conservation plans as a way for builders and local agencies to comply with endangered species laws. Large-scale plans first appeared in Southern California in the mid-1990s. They later gained steam in Northern California.

Each habitat plan of this new generation encompasses hundreds of thousands of acres and addresses the needs of dozens of species, while requiring decades-long commitments of builders and communities.

As with many environmental trends, California is leading the way.

"California has a lot of (threatened or endangered) species that live where people want to live," said federal wildlife biologist Michelle Morgan. "We have other hot spots that are developing habitat plans, such as Florida and Texas, but California has cornered the market on regional, multi-species plans."

Uncertainty remains

The results so far of the few large-scale habitat plans already in effect are not encouraging. And critics question whether the new regional habitat plans will deliver on their promise to restore threatened wildlife to thriving levels.

In San Diego, home to one of the state's first and most publicized habitat plans, the Center for Biological Diversity sued over what it considers a lack of protection for wildlife and inadequate funding.

"Most of these plans barely prevent extinction of the species, but don't provide a conservation benefit," said center spokesman David Hogan.

A federal judge four years ago tossed out the plan in the Natomas Basin, north of downtown Sacramento, over concerns that it wasn't adequately funded and did not aggressively save habitat for the Swainson's hawk, the giant garter snake and other species.

Proponents revised the plan. But last month, the same environmental groups that sued in 1999 -- the National Wildlife Federation, the Sierra Club, the Planning and Conservation League and a local group concerned about the hawks -- took the Interior Department back to court.

In Washington, D.C., a federal judge has ruled that regulators must reconsider key provisions of habitat plans. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service expects its program to survive intact, but the ruling has thrown the plans' critical "no surprises" policy into uncertainty.

In San Joaquin County, which adopted its program three years ago, plan managers have collected more than $7 million in fees from enthusiastic developers. But they have preserved less than 1,000 acres.

Wary farmers in San Joaquin, it turns out, have shown little interest in selling land or easements for permanent wildlife habitat.

If the county fails to protect enough land, wildlife agencies could retract the permits that allow development to proceed.

"Farmers just want to farm the ground as long as it's economically feasible and when it's not, we want the opportunity to do something else with our land," said Tracy-area farmer Phil Martin. "I don't see my family participating in this plan."

A failed experiment?

The nation's first habitat plan was approved on the San Francisco Peninsula in 1983, and critics point to San Bruno Mountain as an example of what can happen when these plans fall short.

During the past two decades, 90 percent of the development allowed under the plan has occurred, and 800 acres have been preserved for extremely rare butterflies. That is what the plan was supposed to do.

But while the butterflies got the acreage, the quality of their habitat has degraded. Non-native weeds have choked out the plants that the butterflies need because the $25 a year charged to homeowners in the plan area isn't enough to restore or properly manage the habitat.

The activist group San Bruno Mountain Watch recently convinced a judge to order a reassessment of the plan, which San Mateo county officials expect will result in a dramatic upgrade later this year.

Mountain Watch chief Philip Batchelder expresses doubt about the outcome.

He called the county's biological monitoring program pathetic and said money has been misspent on a private consultant.

"The environment and rare species are not winning this battle," he said. "No one can argue that habitat conservation plans are written to protect butterflies. They are written to allow development."

Benefits touted

Despite these difficulties, advocates say regional, multi-species habitat planning makes sense for both developers and wildlife.

For builders, the plans eliminate long and costly conflicts that arise when developers propose to build in sensitive wildlife habitat.

Granite Construction, for example, obtained a permit to expand its gravel pit near Tracy in San Joaquin County in less than six months. Prior to the plan adoption, the company had tried unsuccessfully for more than a decade to secure the permit.

"We were just about out of business here," said Granite manager Hop Essick. "The impacts never changed, but the rules and the people involved kept changing."

A Lathrop developer with plans for an 11,000-home development called River Islands found that the San Joaquin County plan saved both time and money.

"We do not have to negotiate directly with the agencies about how to mitigate for the species covered in the plan," said River Islands manager Susan Del'Osso. "It was all spelled out. We just pay a fee."

Planners and biologists, meanwhile, say these plans improve habitat quality because they target contiguous property instead of saving land project by project, which often results in reserves too random, small and disconnected to benefit wildlife.

And abandoning habitat planning will do nothing for wildlife, supporters say.

"If you don't do these planning efforts, development doesn't stop just because there's endangered species habitat. Developers still work out deals with the agencies," said John Hopkins, director of the Institute for Ecological Health in Davis.

Contra Costa's plan

Of the new generation of plans in Northern California, few have advanced as far as that of East Contra Costa. The $300 million blueprint could become final next year.

The plan, which has been under development for six years, provides developers and county and city planners a 30-year road map for land conservation in a swath of up to 34,000 acres in the center of the county.

The plan alerts everyone ahead of time about what regulators require to comply with the Endangered Species Act and helps avert conflicts that could derail construction plans later.

Developers will know in advance what environmental restrictions they will face and the fees they must pay. And they will also find it easier and quicker to get permits.

At the same time that development proceeds, larger chunks of land near existing parks and open spaces -- up to 54 square miles -- will be set aside for wildlife habitat.

"The plan is basically going to define where development occurs in the east county and where conservation occurs over the next 50 years," said Carl Wilcox, habitat conservation manager for the state Fish and Game Department.

Not everyone in Contra Costa County thinks that's such a grand idea.

Antioch, the largest city in the eastern half of the county with substantial growth plans on the books, has refused to join.

City officials say the plan violates local control and further solidifies the county's urban limit line, a boundary that Antioch vehemently opposes as an unconscionable violation of local control.

Developers within Antioch city limits instead will have to use conventional negotiations with regulators to obtain construction permits rather than pay a fee.

Proponents believe the plan can succeed without Antioch. But one official at the East Bay Regional Park District noted the consequences in leaving a hole that large.

"The largest developments in the east county are in Antioch, and they're not part of it," said park environmental program manager Brad Olson. "The largest impacts that will generate the largest fees are not part of it."

Outlook

So far, "in theory" is the most common phrase heard in discussions about the new wave of regional habitat conservation plans.

In theory, most believe they will produce higher-quality habitats, streamline the permit process and permanently preserve thousands of acres of open space for agriculture, wildlife and recreation.

In theory, the plans promote smart growth -- the move to redirect new homes, offices and shops into existing cities, near transit and away from the urban fringe.

But few people appear ready to predict outright success. Many admit that they simply don't have a better idea.

"The jury is still out on these types of plans," said Smart Growth America policy director Beth Osborne. "If in 10 years, we find out that these plans resulted in a major bounce-back for species, then no one will question it.

"But if it results in a major loss, then it will be a loss for the smart-growth movement too. Growth policies that minimize the impact on land consumption and habitat are core to smart growth."

Mike Taugher covers the environment. Reach him at 925-943-8257 or mtaugher@cctimes.com. Lisa Vorderbrueggen covers transportation and land-use. Reach her at 925-945-4773 or lvorderb@cctimes.com.

Eating and bleating their way to success: Goat herd clears land and prevents fire on San Bruno Mountain

Publisher: San Mateo County Times
Reporter: Lizzie O'Leary

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO -- In a wind -- and at an angle -- that might have discouraged most landscapers, Jared Lewis and his staff of 500 relaxed on the flank of San Bruno Mountain on a recent morning. The crew had cleared an acre of weeds and scrub brush from the Juncus-Tank Ravine area, and was poised to clip another swath o fland -- with their teeth.

Lewis's "employees," a heard of Beor and Spanish goats, are part of a three year experiment in plant-species restoration and fire mitigation under the supervision of Thomas Reid Associates, which administers the mountain's Habitat Conservation Pan. They are scrubbing a 5-acre plot of the mountain clean of invasive plants, and at the same time removing fuel for wildfires such as the one that scorched the mountain on July 8.

Lewis and his human partners at Living Systems Land Management follow by reseeding the area with native plant species. As an added bonus, Lewis noted with a smile, the goats provide a natural fertilizer. Unlike human clearing efforts, there is no risk of an out-of-control burn, and the nimble goats can access the mountain's steep slopes much better than mowers.

The goats' double purpose of species restoration and fire prevention is unusual, said Patrick Kobernus of Thomas Reid. "We want to combine and do both," he said, adding that invasive European grasses are choking many of the native plants that serve as a habitat for the mountain's rare butterflies. The goats also are intended to prepare the area -- owned by Myers Development company -- to be donated to the County's parks department one the natural species return.

While animals area a common fire-mangagement device in the Bay Area, Lewis's goats are a first on modern San Bruno Mountain. But according to Sam Herzberg, a senior planner for the County's parks department, the mountain has a history of hoofed travelers. Herzberg said old aerial photos of the mountain show a network of cow paths, probably originating from Brisbane's dairy ranches. In addition, the area was likely once home to herds of roaming antelope or elk.

Herzber and others hope Lewis's goats act like a natural roaming herd -- clearing small patches of land and creating firebreaks in one area, then moving on to the next without overgrazing or eliminating important native plants. Overgrazing has been a concern of environmentalists, particularly in the EastBay, where local groups contend that grazing cattle have degraded the environment.

So far, the response to the goats on San Bruno Mountain has been positive. "Most of the people have been pretty excited about it," said Kobernus.

Doug Alshouse of Friends of San Bruno Mountain noted that in the the wake of the recent fire, residents were particularly receptive to alternative methods of land clearing, but cautioned that the goats are still in a testing phase. "They are one piece of the puzzle of what we would call good stewardship," he said, adding that Friends is currently testing a variety management and restoration tactics, as is Thomas Reid. "We'll know more next year."

Federal funds to help save endangered butterfly habitat: Indian shell mound site also falls under26 acres to be purchased with $860,000 grant

Publisher: San Mateo County Times
Reporter: Justin Jouvenal

The federal government has ponied up $860,000 to help purchase 26 acres on San Bruno Mountain to protect both major habitat for endangered butterflies and an archaeological site for local Indian tribes.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put up the money for the Ohlone Shell Mound site, which is the northern Peninsula's largest remaining tract of habitat for three endangered butterflies: the callipe silverspot, the mission blue and the San Bruno elfin.

The shell mound is also a major cultural site. It is one of the largest and oldest shell mounds in the Bay Area and was created by the Costanoan/Ohlone Indians beginning around 3,200 B.C.

"(This grant) is a victory for all those who work to protect our natural resources," said Congressman Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, in a written statement.

Lantos said he urged Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to fund the grant last April.

The 26-acre parcel currently is owned by Meyers Development Co., which plans to sell the site to the County Department of Parks and Recreation for $1.28 million. Meyers already has begun clearing out invasive plants that threaten the butterflies' host plants.

The grant was awarded after the county Parks and Recreation Department received $325,000 from Caltrans toward a redraft of the 20-year-old San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan. The plan was created to protect the mission blue and San Bruno elfin butterflies while also allowing development on the mountain.

Parks and Recreation Department Senior Planner Sam Herzberg said the federal grant money will go a long way toward helping plan the future of San Bruno Mountain.

"It's going to help us be more strategic about how we maintain the habitat," said Herzberg.

While the parks department received good news about the federal grant this week, Herzberg said state funds are in jeopardy because of the California budget stalemate in Sacramento.

The money expected to come from Caltrans could be eliminated, depending on which budget draft receives the final approval. But Trust for Public Land spokesman Tim Wirth said Friday other funds would be sought to replace any lost state money because the state funding makes the purchase proposal eligible for the federal grant, the money would need to be replaced for the County to keep the federal funds.

- wire services contributed to this report

Local environmental group mulls open space district

Publisher: Independent Newspapers
Reporter: William Chiang

BRISBANE - The seemingly perpetual fight among environmentalists, property owners and developers over open space is about to get uglier, more complex and more expensive. In addition, the battle lines could expand well beyond Brisbane on the east side of San Bruno Mountain and spread to include South San Francisco, Colma and even Daly City.

The time has come for "creative, proactive solutions," said Philip Batchelder, project coordinator with San Bruno Mountain Watch, which for three decades has struggled against burgeoning urban encroachment onto the mountain.

"We all have to work together," he said. "And to that end we're looking at the possibility of forming an open space district, an independent governmental entity with an elected board of directors. Its primary role would be preserving as much as possible of the remaining privately held open space on the mountain."

And because the mountain borders on multiple cities, he said, such a ballot measure would likely involve neighboring communities.

The idea of an open space district on San Bruno Mountain, he explained, is based on recent City Council passage of adjustments to Brisbane's zoning regulations governing development in Brisbane Acres.

Councilmembers approved earlier this year a program granting property owners the right to transfer development rights to another landowner. The receiving property can receive up to three such transfers, establishing a development density of four homes per every 20,000 square feet.

Brisbane Acres' previous limit was one house per 20,000 square feet.The original land would remain as open space. Any financial considerations would be a private transaction between property owners.

Carole Nelson, Brisbane's director of community development, said currently no one has applied to take advantage of the new program. Approximately 20 parcels of the 138 acre Brisbane Acres are developed, she said, with some 50 residential units in 32 buildings.

"What the city was trying to do was to encourage people who own property with very strong open space and environmental values to transfer density to another property that was less (environmentally) sensitive," she said. "For most properties (higher up on the mountain) there are no roads, no sewer, no water and no electricity. Infrastructure is very expensive to bring in."

In addition, she said, there are the "environmental constraints, the endangered species, the slopes are very steep, with canyons and water courses."

Batchelder said his group holds nothing against density transfer, which he described as a "well-regarded planning technique," ecologically sound in terms of grouping development to protect open space. He also commended City Hall's preservation efforts, such as its purchase of some 19 parcels in Brisbane Acres for preservation.

"But we don't want to start with the premise of housing development in Brisbane Acres." he said. "We're looking at open-space preservation first."

To be successful in creating an open space district for all of San Bruno Mountain, Batchelder will likely have to persuade voters to pass some sort of property tax to provide the district with operating funds as well as money to pay for land. Approval would require a two thirds majority by voters within the proposed district's boundaries.

As a comparison, the Mid peninsula Regional Open Space District, first formed in November 1972 on a 65 percent ballot landslide in Santa Clara County, became the only such district in San Mateo County in 1976 when south county residents voted to join. It now covers northwest Santa Clara County, southern San Mateo County and a small piece of Santa Cruz County.

Residential and commercial property owners in San Carlos down to Los Gatos pay 1.7 cents per $100 of assessed value, said spokesperson Kristi Webb. The district collected nearly $17.2 million for fiscal 2001-02. and boasts more than 48,300 protected acres.

Batchelder conceded it would be a next-to-impossible project to achieve something similar for northern San Mateo County.

"Some believe this is total pie in the sky." he admitted. "But ultimately we would want to have a lot of mixed jurisdiction. The crux is that in the greater context, it's incumbent upon those interested in protecting open space to come up with long term solutions."

Contact William W. Chiang at 652-6739 or wchiang@smindepen- cfent.com

Never-ending battle for control of San Bruno Mountain: Lawsuit agreement seen as a compromise and a threat

Publisher: The Independent
Reporter: Michael Flaherty

BRISBANE - Despite reaching a legal settlement with federal attorneys in January, environmentalists fear that the landmark plan designed to preserve San Bruno Mountain is as endangered as the species it was intended to protect.

The ongoing frustration among environmentalists, coupled with efforts by state and local officials to amend the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan, reveals that the two sides remain opposed after nearly 20 years of negotiations.

San Mateo County Senior Planner Sam Herzberg, one of the habitat administrators, says that while changes are needed, the plan is working.

"At one point, all of San Bruno Mountain was proposed for development. The HCP has curtailed a lot of development," said Herzberg.

But Philip Batchelder of the environmental organization San Bruno Mountain Watch says the plan is "grossly under-funded" and failing. And to make matters worse, he alleges that the plan's administrators are hoping to add another butterfly to its endangered species list.

Adding the callippe silverspot butterfly to the conservation plan would allow developers to kill the endangered species as long as they provide habitat for it to survive elsewhere on the mountain.

In the fall, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved a grant that would allow the county and its environmental consultants $100,000 to amend the plan. Changes to the plan would include not only adding the silverspot but would create something more "comprehen- sive," according to Herzberg.

Batchelder, however, believes that the amendment would be a death sentence for the silverspot.

"This species is barely hanging on. It can't afford to be compromised. We're fundamentally opposed to adding another species to what we consider to be a failing plan," he said.

Environmentalists such as Batchelder fear that the amendment would open the door for Brookfield Developers to add more homes to the mountain's northeast ridge. The developer is currently prohibited from expanding because parcels along this ridge are habitat for the federally endangered silverspot. The only way for the housing project to expand would be adding the butterfly to the Habitat Conservation Plan.

"The plan sounds nice," said David Schooley, a member of San Bruno Mountain Watch. "But what it means is that a developer can kill that habitat as long as they are planning to recreate that habitat. Exactly what does that mean?"

Herzberg argues that environ- mentalists want the .Habitat Conservation Plan to be black and white. But this was never the intent of the agreement.

"The Habitat is nothing if not gray. It's a compromise," he said. The compromise was the first of its kind internationally, according to Herzberg. Since the conservation plan was crafted in 1986, more than 300 similar plans have followed,

"Has the plan done everything that environmentalists want? You know what, most of the mountain is open space Herzberg said.

The mission blue butterfly was the original endangered species listed on the conservation plan, which allowed developers to build on its habitat. But when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposed adding the silverspot to the plan, San Bruno Mountain Watch sued. The organization filed its lawsuit on July 11, 2000, charging the federal agency with deliberately jeopardizing an endangered species

After a lengthy legal battle, U.S. Fish and Wildlife settled earlier this year. The agency agreed to pay San Bruno Mountain Watch $130,000, which the organization says will go towards paying legal fees.

In addition to the payment, Fish and Wildlife agreed to conduct formal biological studies pertaining to endangered plant and animal species on the mountain. The agency also agreed to investigate the effec- tiveness of the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan and the adequacy of its funding.

While the settlement was a victory for San Bruno Mountain Watch, the organization continues to cast doubt on Fish and Wildlife following through with its promise. Meanwhile, the mountain's stewards will wait and see if the amendment goes through.

"We've settled, but we're not feeling too settled," said Batchelder. "We were willing to settle with the service, but we still have to see if they can put together a good plan."

Town Hall Meeting on The Acres and The Quarry

Publisher: San Bruno Mountain Watch
Reporter: No Byline

click on the pictures for larger versions of the notes from the meeting

Save the Brisbane Acres!

Publisher: San Francisco Bay Area Indymedia
Reporter: Mountain Watch

San Bruno Mountain Watch and the Brisbane Acres

San Bruno Mountain Watch is committed to preserving and enhancing as much of the Brisbane Acres as possible. We believe that every parcel has significant resource value, whether as rare species habitat, common species habitat, protective buffering between developed Brisbane and more biologically intact habitat, recreational resources for Brisbane residents and visitors, and as open space features integral to the threatened character of this rare type of town. We assert that the great majority of Brisbane's residents want to see the Acres, especially those above the center of town, remain undeveloped.

Mountain Watch recognizes that the Acres, as privately owned land, cannot simply be declared open space without just compensation to landowners. We endorse the City of Brisbane's purchase of lots from willing sellers and support those planning methods that result in substantive preservation.

However, we oppose the development of parcels deemed to have "no significant resources" because, together, these areas form an important, protective buffer zone that should be enhanced to promote habitat value and not utterly ruined as such through development because of the perceived marginal quality of habitat. These areas are certainly inhabited by numerous important species, even if they are not yet considered rare. Further, pushing development into this urban-open space interface will simply move the buffer zone up into the more intact areas, which will invariably degrade their value for wildlife.

While this is particularly true for the Acres above town, it is also true, in part, for the undeveloped parcels northeast of San Bruno Avenue in the Thomas Hill area. At very least, should development occur here, we hope that a trail corridor from the City Park up and past San Bruno Avenue to the Mountain itself will be established, with as much adjoining area and scenic value protected as possible. We foresee that the citizens of Brisbane will feel privileged to steward such a resource in years to come.

No matter what level of development occurs in the Acres, we insist that it be contiguous. Our overarching concern is to retain the biological integrity of this irreplaceable, spectacular place. Non-contiguous building, with the installation of roads and infrastructure to remote sites, will significantly fragment and degrade the Acres. The Habitat Conservation Plan presents a raw deal to threatened species there, mandating that only 40% of each parcel be preserved. This is clearly inadequate, and we hope the City of Brisbane, as signatory to the HCP, will recognize the shortcomings of the HCP in general and of it's 40% standard in particular and will aim higher simply because, as stewards of a unique ecosystem, it is the right thing to do.

San Bruno Mountain Watch is pleased to be part of the Brisbane community. Our work in protecting San Bruno Mountain is inseparable from our concern for the quality and vision of planning that occurs here. For people and for wildlife -- let's save every Acre.



The Brisbane Acres...

- are valuable open space: habitats for wildlife, from common to very, very rare; places for recreation, education, trails, and extraordinairy scenic vistas.

- are central, as open space, to the character of Brisbane, which has grown quite enough.

- could get irreparably degraded if non-contiguous, isloated developments proceed.

- are not protected by the San Bruno Mountain Habitat Conservation Plan and its inadequate standards.

- are a treasure for which we are responsible, fortunate stewards.

The vision is of PRESERVATION! Let's plan for the future and save every Acre. Thank You



San Bruno Mountain Watch
PO Box 53, Brisbane, CA 94005

Visitor's Center at 44 Visitacion Avenue
/

The Mountain's New Human Inhabitants

Publisher: San Bruno Mountain Watch
Reporter: Besh Besh

The Story of Dwight

Told by Besh

Dwight was a music teacher over in South San Francisco and he taught for about 10 years. He was down in LA and he applied to teaching jobs and this was the job that he took. When he was a teacher he had a little Volkswagon he drove around. He had never been married before. He just saw this mountain and checked it out. He really liked it and would stay here on weekends and holidays.

In summers he would rent out his house and go to Bisbee, Arizona. He lived in a cave up above Bisbee which was a mining town. Then he realized he didn't have to go back to teaching. He could just keep renting out the house and move up on San Bruno Mountain.

Besh and Thelma, at their hut in Owl Canyon.

While he was teaching in South San Francisco he bought a little house up above Visitacion Valley in San Francisco. A little piece of property. He bought the house for 10 thousand and now it's worth a hundred thousand. After 10 years the house was pretty much paid off. He rented it out the whole time he was livin here. So his payments were $100 and he rented the house for $400 so he said "Why should I go back to teaching?" He liked it better on the mountain.

He had all his friends help him move up on the mountain. His first camp way up on the top of Buckeye Canyon. There's a ledge up there that he lived on. He had his friends bring all his stuff up there and his first couple week he was like really lonely. So it took him a long time to get over that, but then, once he got use to livin up here, he liked to be here. When he'd have to go to town, he'd wait to the last day just like I do. And he said it would take him about a day to recover; to get back to feelin peaceful.

He was not a philosopher and he wouldn't talk why he was doin things. He liked to meditate. He would do everything nice and careful and just slowly go through things. He always say it would take all day just to take care of business: collect the firewood, get water, cook his oatmeal for breakfast, go out, and take a poop. It was like a little schedule. And then dinner was cookin rice. I don't know how it took up his whole day.

He didn't burn wood, he burned gas. He had a little propane stove. And it was a long way down to water, so he come down the mountain and built this hut above the shellmound in Buckeye. He had a nice little round hut sittin in a flat spot covered with this heavy green cloth. And that was where he slept. There was no door and when it rained he'd get soaked. He slept real out in the open. In fact, when he lived here he slept out under the oak tree.

For his patio he built a platform with rocks and all the rocks were solid, there was not even a rattle to it. And that's where I slept. That thing was amazing, It was just perfect. He loved to make things out of rocks, he had a whole rock path. He was a scavenger he'd go down to Crocker Park and pick up car parts and drag all these pieces up there. The main thing for his kitchen roof was a car hood and when it rained it would drip here and there. He squatted there and had his fire. And if you ever go up there you see he did things perfect. He would do things like rubbin that rock for so long, it became beautiful flat surface to put his coffee cup on. He'd drink coffee and smoke a pipe.

Dwight would buy tobacco. I didn't smoke by the time I went up on the mountain. I loved it not smokin. I look stupid with a cigarette anyway. But he would have his pipe. And it was the stupidist thing to see him smokin a cigarette and drivin a car. My God, it looked dumb. But he'd smoke a tobacco pipe when he was up here. And the kids would bring him cigarettes sometimes.

Once he got rid of the habit he went through novena or some religious thing. He quit cause I was always goin on about how much better it is not to smoke. It was funny, I'd bring my bottle of rum up and tell him it's better not to smoke. He only got drunk twice in his life before he met me. When I brought my sister, who's also a music teacher, up on the mountain, she asked him, "How come your're drinkin with him?" Dwight says, "I figure it's better if two people are both drunk then one really drunk and one not at all."

Scenes from Dwight's encampment.

He was up here for I don't know how many years before I knew him. He had a lot of voices in his head. But the one social thing he kept up was going to the Good Samaritan Church, on 24th and Potrero. When I knew Dwight he wasn't goin to church so often. But he use to go regular for choir practice. He was singin in the choir. One of the people that went to Good Samaritan Church happened to be a friend of mine and she's brought me up on the mountain. She said there's a fellow livin up there and she had been up there to see him, so she brought me up here to meet Dwight.

And I'd come up here every week for a long time and in the beginning it wasn't scheduled. I'd find him by himself, singin. The day the Challenger blew up I remember I walked up and I said, "What are you doin singin? They just blew up the shuttle and the school teacher and here you are singin up here?" He had a radio for a while and then he gave it to me. He said it was botherin his birds.

The church has been torn down now. The 1989 earthquake made it unsafe. At the time they tore it down it was a sanctuary for central Americans. I went a number of times and there wasn't too many people in the congregation. They're buildin apartments there now. Dwight told me that one time he swept the sidewalk all the way from Good Samaritan Church to Saint John's Church, cause the voices in his head told him to sweep the sidewalk.

He had the voices in his head before I knew him. But the voices went away when he walked to Los Angeles. He did that twice while he was livin up here. It took him a month each time. And on one of those walks the voices went away.

He would walk down the coast on highway 1. He dragged a small cart behind him with all his possessions. The police thought he looked weird and he got stopped in every town. He got so sick of explaining he wouldn't talk, he'd just hand the cops a piece of paper, "I'm walking to LA."

I would have met Dwight eventually cause I was living down on the abandoned railroad tracks over by Crocker Park. I had two beautiful little huts. And Dwight use to walk down there and he had long hair and a beard. I woulda stopped him and said, "What are you doin?" Anyway, when met him I liked him a lot. And I loved the mountain. I'd come once a week and spend a night. We'd go for a hike somewhere on the mountain every time. Later on we discovered chess. And we'd come back and cook and in the morning I'd go back to my huts. I had my bicycle at the bottom of the canyon.

He and I were both born in February of 44 so I figure he graduated from college around 1966. I went into the coast guard for four years instead. I was on the east coast and I didn't go to college. Dwight grew up in Los Angeles and went to college there. He would write a lot when he was up here. He's a good writer and a poet too. He'd end up with these huge scrolls and give them to the lady who was renting his house to read.

The whole time he was livin up here he kept a piano in storage. And now he's got it up in Pacifica. The piano was his main instrument, but up here he had a guitar and a flute. You know he was good at playin all of em, but the piano was his favorite instrument. Now he plays the piano four hours every day. And that was a lot of why Dwight was interested in living in Pacifica. He always wanted to be good at the piano, so that's what he's doing.

He had this woman Marcy, in Brisbane, who was his book keeper. And he used her address. He paid her 50 dollars a month for book keeping. And it was 50 dollars a month for storin his piano and then 100 dollars he saved for making repairs on the house. About once a month he'd have to go over there and fix the house up; paint it, fix the roof, the plumbing and things like that. So he'd have to save up, you know that's only a thousand dollars a year for repair of the house.

So that left him with 50 dollars a month for rice and oatmeal and margarine. Then his budget went down to just 30 dollars a month. He lowered the rent cause he really likes his tenants. That's all he had for rice and oatmeal so when the cheapest brand of margarine was on sale for 39 cents he'd buy a whole backpack full. Boy, he took gobs of margarine in everything, margarine in the oatmeal, margarine in everything. And salt, my God his salt shaker has holes a half inch wide. Holy Mackeral...But he's a good cook, just salt your own plate. His vegetables were just what David and I would bring up. I never saw him buy a vegetable or piece of fruit. But he would sometimes cook watercress and miners lettuce from the mountain, more than I do. I don't use that stuff at all. But these blackberries that are out right now, my goodness, these are gorgeous. They look like they cross pollinated, they're so big this year.

Hillsides of Hummingbird Sage, April 1996.

Dwight's parents are severe Pentecostal. Oh they're really heavy. One of his sisters is still a missionary. He brought both his sisters up here. And Dwight knew the bible backwards and forwards. He and JC were into the bible. JC lived up here for a while, he's a black guy from Chicago who wore his hair in dredlocks and he was a vegetarian. He ate nothin but uncooked vegetables for 30 years. He died, a couple years ago he quit eating. He just gave up. He and Dwight really loved to fast. They both really tripped on fasting but Dwight was so skinny he couldn't fast that often. The indians use to fast too. It was intentional. You could tune into nature by fasting. It's spiritual. I've never fasted. I go frantic, I've never gone a day without eating. But I heard it's like takin LSD or somethin.

Dwight would meditate for an hour every day. It didn't give him nirvana or anything. He just liked to be meditating. He'd tell me the birds would come around him a lot more than they come around me. Sometimes he'd meditate and he'd hear em, the big birds. He didn't open his eyes though, cause he was real disciplined. He use to talk about a hummingbird flyin up to him and then a hawk flyin up to him.

He was so tuned into the mountain. When we'd go on a hike he'd show me. He'd say, "See how these plants are always tryin to block the paths. Even the dead trees are movin onto the paths." And all the special little spots he would show me how it was protected all around by thorns and bushes and poison oak, but there was always a way in. It's an art.

Once every year we would take a week long hike together. And on those times I'd occasionally lead. As soon as I'd be leading the hike we'd end up in a total snag. But Dwight, you just follow him and it'd work out. And now I've got that ability. You just keep finding the way, there's always a way.

Dwight didn't know anything about exotic plants. Not once did we ever talk about invading species. I certainly didn't know about it and I have found places where we he and I hiked where there's fennel and I've even found the pampas grass. I figure we planted it. Cause there was no conciousness of invading species with Dwight. I lived in fennel down there where my house was and I had no idea what it was. I was still in that hut in the earthquake of 1989. The Brisbane cops came along and tore that hut down. I wasn't there at the time.

One day David came on this hike with a kindergarten teacher, Barbara. And she chased after him and caught him. She could do it. She had the ability to catch a fella. But part of Dwight's attraction to bein with Barbara was that he was goin play the piano. That's what attracted him to living in a house in Pacifica.

He would do the housework, have his coffee, read the paper and then four hours on the piano every day. He said he was gettin pretty good like he'd always wanted to. The piano, it's another sort of meditative thing. That's what he's doin over there. He doesn't socialize. He doesn't go out and he hasn't become part of a social life in Pacifica. I heard he's been building bridges for a guy who's making all these trails on Montara Mountain. But I haven't seen him in a number of years. He put the cap on our house here and he hasn't been back in years.

Thelma, at home, cooking in the hut.

The Story of Besh and Thelma

Besh

During the 60's I was all over the east and west coast. I was a hippie in the 60's. And for years I would come up on the mountain just to chill out from the city. Cause I was flyin around the city on my bicycle livin off the land. I didn't have an income. I lived out of dumpsters.

I had to go out and hustle up some aluminum cans and cloths to sell and things to drink and keep goin. I was runnin around and livin free. It was livin off the land. When I'd take people out on bicycle it was like bein an indian. It was freedom, I had no papers, no name, no ID, no licenses, no nothin. It was livin off the excess. I built and lived in five little huts.

I lived in my huts, on the traintracks in Crocker Park for about five years and I'd go into the city to forage the dumpsters. When I first started livin out in San Francisco there wasn't many homeless people, just a few crazy ladies with shopping carts. And the dumpsters were full. It was a bonanza; sandwich shops, supermarkets, restaurants and all the produce stores. They threw out all kinds of good food and there wasn't any competition. I mean, I ate mangos and steaks, stuff I never bought. I ate like a king.

It's not there any more. Bein homeless is against the law now and they've locked up most of the dumpsters. But they use to be sittin right out. There's so many homeless people in San Francisco now and they were all gettin into the dumpsters, so they locked em up. Besides, it's so developed, there isn't all those weedy places to live in. I had a lot of different huts and I had a boat. My name was Bicycle. I was known all over San Francisco.

So I was runnin all around and the soup line at Martin Deporis was my favorite place. They're given out soup and there's the most smiles and I really liked that place. I was the social type. I would go around making people feel comfortable, especially women. So here comes Thelma and I go over to her and say, "Hi, my name's Bicycle." And she sat down, "I don't talk to strangers," she said. The next day she came in and I was talkin to people and I said, "Well everybodies gotta have a name," so I took this tape and I would write peoples names it and stick on em. Meanwhile I got my hand on Thelma's shoulder, to put her sticker on and so I'm gettin familiar.

She was comin in there with her little cart with books. She was studyin to be a medical assistant. So she was standin in the soup line and she kept herself adorable. Different from other women comin in there. And she wasn't easy at all.

I said, "Let me help you study for this medical receptionist job." So she came for lunch and we'd spend an hour studyin and then I asked, "Why don't you come out and take a ride on my boat? It's just down by the creek. I'll give ya lunch down there." I bought some hamburgers, cooked those, and took her on a boatride and started gettin friendly and this was pretty neat.

Then she's talkin about all this stuff so we didn't get married right away cause I thought she was too spaced out for me. You know, she had pains all over. For 20 years she was a housekeeper. She'd say she didn't want to get paid because she wanted to be part of the family. I remember we were up at Deloris Park and she was cryin and I wanted to put my arm around her. But I thought if I put my arm around her it would be like bein together and I didn't want it. I wanted somebody on a bicycle, flying around, a trapeze artist and she can't ride a bicycle. And besides she was pretty spacey so I said forget it.

So Barbara came and took Dwight away and I tried to get JC up here. I didn't want to be up here by myself and I said, Oh, this is a beautiful place and I gotta get married." I actually said kind of a prayer here. That was a Sunday and Thursday she came walkin in the soup line. I hadn't seen her in about a year and as soon as she walked in I said, "There she is." And I proposed.

Thelma and I have been married 6 years and then there was 5 years when I was lookin for Thelma. And there was the years I was with Chen Hong, that was a Chinese woman in San Francisco and I had two years with her. So it was around twelve years ago when I first started goin out with Thelma. It was 84. I'd been livin on hilltops and I went for a bikeride and found that hut that had hibachi, a front door and windows and it was real cute, it was all patchwork and it had a guesthouse. So I moved there. It was an adorable place.

Then I built a really nice hut that I took Thelma to. It had a red carpet and solar panels. It was really freezing up here one winter We got married on 7-11, 1990. We met around 10 or 12 years ago at the soup line at Martin Deporis and we lost contact for a while.

We were gonna live here in Owl Canyon.This was Dwight's place and it had been empty since Dwight had married Barbara a few years earlier. When I first knew Thelma, Dwight was livin here and my existence was offa bikes. But now I just really wanted to get married and there she was. I said, "Will you marry me?" All day long. Let's get married. The thing's meant to be. That was July 2nd, 1990. And we got married on July 11th. It was the answer to my prayer.

The day after I proposed to Thelma I brought her up here. I showed her, I said, "Look, this is where we live." You know, look at this beautiful place, compared to the city. This is my big selling point, you know, wow, look at what I got. So she said, Well, ok." And I said, "Why don't ya come and sit over here next to me." And she says, "Oh no, we gotta get papers, we gotta get married." So I said I would get enough money to get married on the 7th, five days from now. It won't be till Wednesday. I had food stamps. If you don't have any money you can apply for food stamps. You can 100 bucks a month worth of food stamps. So it costs 50 bucks to get registered and married. And you gotta go to city hall. I had a friend, an old chinese lady, who always gave me cash for my stamps. That was my income, a hundred dollars a month.

So every day I would go pick up Thelma at the Episcopal Sanctuary. She didn't believe this was gonna happen. She kept sayin, "You won't come and get me." And every day I'd be there a 8:00. I'd come back and forth from the city to Owl Canyon, to get this place ready. The morning I went and picked her up to get married, I called my sister and she had 200 dollars waitin for us, as soon as we got married, for a wedding gift. And we went to Safeway, so when we came up here we had that whole backpack full of food. We'd been livin in the soup line and all of a sudden we had Feta cheese. You know, we went to Safeway-with money. You know, nobody else would put up with us; a perfect match.


Besh and Thelma's hut, built by Dwight Taylor, at Mud Oak in Owl Canyon.

I was lookin to get married to a bicycle rider cause it was a good way to live. I had a good time. But now at my age I'm glad to be off a bike. I like goin walkin. It's fine with me. Thelma did me a favor. I thought I was never gonna get off the bicycle. But it's much better walkin. Bicycle riden, that was livin in the fast lane. I liked it though. It was magic.

You know Dwight didn't really explain things and all of sudden here's David comin up with a bunch of people. And who are these people he's taking for a hike? Some of em are so nuts. We whole bunch of people, that are strangers, asking you questions, "How long ya been here?" The best question was when that little kid asked, "Is this real?" A lot of the time I won't be here when I know David's comin with a hike. I like people to come who we already know Sylvia was a fun guest. She and her husband were startin to come regularly before they moved.

What I found out livin out here, is all about invasive plants. I didn't know anything about plants and sittin up here, I see a couple of new invading plants every year. I realize they're taken over the world. When David went down to Chili the french broom was all over Chili. I didn't know anything about these invading plants. They don't hardly ever talk about it; occasionally on the radio. They're taken over the whole world. These strong invasive species are just taken over.

Thelma

I'm so greatful. It was nice to get married. I didn't really want to be a medical assistant. Maybe a hair stylist or something like that. I was sleeping at the Sanctuary. It was a new life for me because I was use to working and living in Hillsborough, which is nice. In Hillsborough, even a person that works for a family gets a room that's well conditioned. After I was working there for a while I ended up with pains everywhere, in my back. So I had to leave and I was stayin at the Sanctuary at 8th and Market. And you could only stay at the Sanctuary for a month or two. Upstairs is for men and downstairs is for women. Men and women are not allowed on the same floor at night.

I came to San Francisco 25 or 26 years ago. My dad gave me 40 dollars and I came here by myself and that was it. I wanted to come here because young people in Honduras have dreams of a home and family. And perhaps if we are not so secure in our profession we want more of a home life. I went to school in Honduras to become a english teacher but there was so many teachers and not many jobs. But in my mind I still wanted to get married. And I'm an open person, I make no trouble what-so-ever.

There's two sides to marriage. There's getting married and getting divorced. So there's a fight about being married, keepin the name, keepin the family, keepin the relationship, keepin yourself pretty and neat, keepin the house, keepin this, keepin that. And then about gettin divorced. I ain't never gonna get divorced.

I pretty much like living here on the mountain. It's healthy. We still get nervous when people come. We're use to just being with each other most of the time. When we see David we get some vegetables. Sometimes we buy swiss chard and zucchini's at Lucky's in South City. We recently bought a radio for Besh. What I think about the mountain is that anybody would be delighted to live here. The trees are beautiful. The birds are beautiful. When we started here, we had a little general assistance, like thirty dollars. Then Besh got me on SSI and now we get around 700 dollars a month, which is more than we need

David Schooley leading one of his hundreds of hiking groups. This group is from Visitacion Valley Middle School.

Dwight and Barbara

Besh

The first Christmas we had together, Dwight came back. He was up here for a week. Barbara loves to shop and Dwight said at the third shopping center he just couldn't take it anymore. Barbara bought twelve presents for everybody.

So he ran away that first Christmas and I was all for it. I said, "Dwight, why don't you just stay here?" Cause before he married Barbara I had always said I would find us a woman. We'd live on the mountain and there would be two fellas and one lady. That's the way you do it on the mountain. It would've worked good with Thelma and me. Cause when he was up here he would notice things that I never noticed. For instance, goin to the outhouse, at that time was a difficult place to get to. And he noticed that she was havin a hard time just to get through there. When he was here I thought, "Boy that guy's a good husband." And then Barbara came after Dwight and talked him into coming back.

We had Solstices and things like that before David did. And Dwight, whoever you were, he'd be the perfect match to it. For instance, when I was drinkin, he would drink. And so what Barbara wants for a husband, he'll just become. And he doesn't have to go out into the big world. He's got his rental income. The house is worth a hundred thousand dollars. Anybody that bought a house in the 70's lucked out. The houses are worth ten times the value. But he hasn't raised the rent. It's still the same tenants and they get a bargain.

Dwight is just like a housewife. Barbara comes home and has to wind down. He said he liked it much better when she had her three-month summer vacations. They'd go traveling. She said when they got married she was gonna retire but she hasn't retired. She likes teaching. I think Barbara's around 58, she's a little older than Dwight. He's 52. Barbara's kinda funny. I'd say, "Dwight, she'd kinda from a different reality." And he'd say, "Ya, that's probably good, isn't it." In other words, he was sayin that it's better to be crazy than to be sane in this world.

Besh visiting with David Schooley and Joan Davis (owner of San Bruno Mountain Watch's former garage office.

Besh & Thelma's life

Thelma stayed up here alone when I was gone for a month. I got arrested for protestin the (Gulf?)war. I got a great lawyer but they said, "Ok ya gotta do 30 days," cause I resisted arrest. I thought everybody should have resisted arrest. David got Thelma a place where she was gonna stay while I went to jail in South San Francisco to do my 30 days.

The day I was supposed to leave for jail, David came over and we all walked up on top of the mountain. Last day of freedom and I'm gonna go do 30 days in jail. So then the next morning we were sittin in the court and we'd only been married 9 months. I showed her where the San Bruno jail was, so she could visit. That's where I was gonna have to go sittin in the jail for 30 days and she started cryin when we were in the court room. And I'm sittin there and ya know, I said, "The hell with it lets get out of here."

I took off and told David, "We're on the run." We went up to Portland and were gonna go to the east coast. We were runnin around and David took us over to Berkeley to stay with the lady with the bent over head. We were makin up all kinds of stories.

I was paranoid. I thought they were after me. I was afraid to death. They eventually did pick me up about a year later. Then I had to do the 30 days. And that's when Thelma was up here on her own. They picked me up drunk in town and then the cops said, "Oh you got a warrant here for your 30 days."

David came up to visit Thelma during the 30 days. I got her on SSI but I still wonder whether it wouldn't be better just to hustle up some money. Not any more I guess. David got us a job one time workin in a friend of his garage making breadboards, in a furniture shop. It was a good job. We'd just walk over there, work all day and get enough money for the week. But it was runnin this heavy table saw. Thelma laid em out, it was a real neat job he got us.

We just did the job occasionally because we didn't need to do it that often. Because what happened was that Thelma had applied for SSI. She has chronic pains. She thought it was infected ovaries and she would go to the hospital, but when she came up here that went away. Really, SSI was retirement, for 20 years of housekeepin. SSI is a legitimate thing cause when I take her downtown and we get around a lot of people-she just turns negative. We'll be in shoppin and I'll say, "You want any of this?" And she says, "Naa, I don't want any." She gets affected by crowds.

When Thelma was workin as a housekeeper, she would go to Tanforan on her days off and I can't stand to be in there. I try for about a half an hour. We go there to the movies, that's ok. But Thelma didn't go to the movies when she was single.

This place is the best we can do. It's paradise. It's just the two of us hangin around. It's not like we're becomin spiritual or monks or nothin.

All this Northeast Ridge development is gonna cause a lot of light pollution at night. I'm worried they'll notice the smoke comin out of our chimney. If there's all those people living there I would think they'd be sayin, "Oh there's smoke over on the hill."

Thelma should never get in trouble, she's well behaved, but she does get in trouble from me. I could say a thousand times, "There's smoke and you can make a fire but you gotta do it right. You can't go put an old wet thing in the middle or let the fire burn down to where there's somethin sittin on the coals. They'll be smoke goin out."

"Thelma, there's an airplane." It's funny she doesn't pay any attention. I says, "Thelma, let's not make trails, you know when we come from the top of the mountain." Never paid any attention to that. The airplanes flyin over and she's got sheets hangin everywhere. Every week there's an airplane that patrols. When Dwight was here they didn't do that.

It's how San Mateo County patrols their mountains. They fly over and if they see somethin they'll go round and round and round. It's a real distinctive plane; you can hear the engines. One time last year they found us sittin out on top of the mountain, in the winter, when it was cold, with my binoculars, just lookin. That plane went around us, it musta been five, six, seven times. And we're just sittin on the top of the mountain. They go around to all the mountains in San Mateo County and San Bruno Mountain is at the end of their route. So we do a laundry and I'll tell Thelma, "Don't put that stuff there." She'll wash things quite often. And white things, you know, pink, hangin up there and what about that airplane. Even this morning she's standin out there dryin her hair, she took a bath and I'm hearin the little airplane. And I says, Thel, you just don't pay any attention to those airplanes, do ya?"

David

Dwight use to wash his cloths a lot. I remember takin the kids for a hike on top of the mountain and all the kids would look down the canyon and ask, "What's that?" And Dwight would have all his cloths strewn all over the place. I checked out how easy it is to see smoke. I had my brother keep a fire goin with smoke comin up and I went all the way down to the road and it's kinda hard to see. You have to really look and I think if you're further across way on the Northeast Ridge it's hardly noticible at all.

Besh

In the morning there's no wind. A fire at the breakfast meal is not good. But as long as you pay attention you can do fine. The way this hut is laid out is perfect. There's no windows. The trees block the light and the chimney's behind the trees. It's magical, but if you don't pay attention...but nobody's ever bothered us. Here I've been goin nuts the whole time. And Thelma's not payin any attention.

In fact she said, "Well just don't say anything and it won't happen." I was constantly makin problems for us and nothin has happened to us. But all it takes is a complaint. And we've already found that out cause that's what happened to Dwight.

Two rangers did come up here once. As soon as I saw em I said, "I knew you were comin because David told me." They said, "How did David know?" I said, "David knows everything." David had come up the day before and said, "The rangers are comin tomorrow." So when I saw the rangers I said, Come up, don't worry about it. David told us you're comin, don't worry about it."

They liked it here and we all had nice conversations. I told them we're leaving because when they started bulldozing the Northeast Ridge it was drivin me nuts. They're done bulldozing now and the housebuilding is not near as noisy. So just before the rangers left the fella asked, "Well, when are you planning to leave?" That's the only thing he said. I said we were goin by Friday.

We were gone for a year and a half. We went up to Sacramento and from San Francisco to Santa Rosa to the Russian River. We kept lookin for a place to go. We went up to Fort Bragg and all around the mountains. We went all kinds a different places and there was no place like this. Only one paradise. So after a year and a half we came tiptoeing back and we slept up in Buckeye Canyon, Dwight's original place. It was kinda hard with just the blankets.

I thought lets go down and just see what the place is like. And we come over here and here David was sweeping. I couldn't believe it. And when I would call him he would say, "Come on back, they want you back." The rangers were sayin this. They were sayin, "Don't worry about it."

They tore Dwight's first place down but they didn't take this one down. They tore out all of Dwight's beautiful rock work. He had rock paths and they didn't have to knock that down. I could see em takin away his kitchen. His carhood. He was such a packrat they had to haul out so much stuff. The other thing is that we haul all our trash out. Sometimes I'll bury compost, if I get too much fruit, melon rinds and things like that. But I haul out all the hard trash. Dwight didn't haul out trash. You go up there and find bottles, cans. He didn't carry a backpack that often. He carried stuff in his hands.

David

I was cleanin the place up for them. I knew they were comin. It was all neat and happy.

Besh

When Dwight was first startin up here. When he first got into Buckeye Canyon and started burning wood instead of gas. Every time he'd hear the fire department he'd think, "Oh no, they're comin to get me." He was like paranoid of people comin and gettin him. Every little sound he'd run out. People made him nervous. And that's the way I was. I was really ridiculously worried for about 30 days.

She stayed up here and the fox came and visited. They come runnin right up to her. There's a cute little cotton tail bunny rabbit that's hoppin around here now. It goes right up to her. The birds go right up to her. They're not afraid of her at all. Cause she won't even swat a mosquito. The first month we were here I didn't know Thelma had general assistance. She even had money saved up. You know, we were goin out collectin cans and goin to the soup line and bringin food back and things like that.

So there's just nothin left to do. You know I ask her, "Well, what should we do? Do you want to get married again? Do you want to get a boat? What can we do? Can we make a boat? Is there somethin we can do?" Cause then she qualified for the regular 700 dollar a month check. You know, we don't need need that much, so the money builds up.

We've already been on a trip to Honduras. And I can't see anything I want to do cause I've become disgusted with mankind. I can't find anywhere where they're not. I liked Honduras. I liked the Aljua River. But Thelma doesn't want to go to Honduras. They're puttin concrete there. It breaks your heart. It's really bad to see the development.

I listen to the radio. Honduras is a big 33 cents an hour workplace. There's so many sad stories there. They're so poor they're just wreckin the place with all these businesses that are leavin the United States. The businesses move to Honduras and they don't pay em anything. God, they're fenced in compounds and there's trucks and it breaks your heart cause you could still see the original river. The river is still there. It doesn't have dikes on it. Big river, bigger than the Sacramento River and it's in it's original flow. I mean, I cried down there.

You know I tell Thelma, "There's just makin a total wreck of Honduras." That's what happened to me during the five years I been here. I had hoped that the magic of that soup line would change things; there was a lot of magic happenin. The love and just giving of soup at Martin Deporres and from that a lot of neat things were happenin.

The lady that was runnin the soup line said a UFO that was gonna land. She kept tellin us a UFO's gonna land and change everything. And I've been waitin for a UFO. It was gonna make everything right. We got married right out of that soup line. We were famous in there. Thelma doesn't want to go there so go there once every six months. It's changed too. All these people taken speed; it really messed them up.

Here they are given soup away and these monsters come in there. Some guys got shot and killed out front after we left. Shot right in the forehead. The whole city got really bad. So I just sit here and listen to the radio and think, man now look what they've done. I don't have hope for the future. I just kinda hangin out and watch what happens.

Mostly we just stay here. It's nice to be here so that's why were here. Every time we go out of here it's down hill. I can hear it on the radio. People are finally sayin, "My goodness, things are a wreck." There's a lot of people losin hope. You can hear it on the radio. I had hopes but now I think man is a disaster because of machinery. I don't think it's gonna get better.

Without hope my health is goin down fast. Whats gonna happen to Thelma? I'm getting old. But if you got hope and spirit, boy, you can stay young. It's in the mind. My teeth are bad and I can't even bend over and touch my toes. I'm not gonna last for near as long as she's gonna last. I got a hernia and I'm not gonna go to the doctor. Thelma asks me every day to go for a walk and sometimes I don't wanna go so she just goes off by herself. You see how everything is all hand done. Everything is all swept up and she does that by hand. She keeps herself goin. Usually I just sit around, listen to the radio, do crossword puzzles.

Op Ed, Never Printed

Publisher: San Francisco Chronicle
Reporter: Edward O. Wilson

Dear Editor,

The Bay Area is incalculably fortunate to have a unique oasis of biodiversity at San Bruno Mountain. However, as is the case with so many other global treasures, this great fortune is not being handled with adequate care. In my book, The Diversity of Life, I highlighted San Bruno Mountain as one of eighteen global biodiversity "hotspots" in need of immediate protection, along with the Usambaa mountain forests of Tanzania, the Columbian Choco, Madagascar, and others. San Bruno Mountain's ecosystems are severely jeopardized by development and its associated problems, principally the invasion of non-native species. More development, as is currently proposed, will further fragment what is home to hundreds of plant and animal species, including several that live nowhere else. Current Habitat Conservation Plan provisions are insufficient to preserve this rich biodiversity.

It is imperative that all the open space that remains on San Bruno Mountain be saved. We can leave our decendants a sorely degraded environment and an example of abuse and exploitation, or we can leave a rich legacy of respectful stewardship-it is our choice. I urge all Californians to take a stand in favor of conserving San Bruno Mountain.

Sincerely yours,

Edward O. Wilson
University Research Professor
Harvard University

International Intention of Respect

Publisher: San Bruno Mountain Watch
Reporter: No Byline

The Undersigned Particpants in the
International Symposium on "Natural" Sacred Sites: Cultural and Biological Diversity
Jointly organized by UNESCO, CNRS, MNHN
September 22-25, 1998
Paris, France

We, as the undersigned participants in the International Symposium on "Natural" Sacred Sites: Cultural and Biological Diversity co-sponsored by an international humanitarian body, pledge our respect and support for the protection of sacred sites worldwide.

In the spirit of respect for the autonomy of diverse cultures, we agree to respect and support worldwide the designation of particular sites or whole areas as sacred if determined to be so by, and chosen to be publicly announced by, the keepers of the sacred knowledge of traditional cultures (and, if they are deceased, other qualified supporters of environmentally, culturally, and historically significant sacred sites).

Further, we agree to respect and support the efforts of traditional sacred knowledge keepers and their supporters to protect their sacred sites worldwide.

Our International Intention of Respect is made with the awareness that too little attention has been given in the past, and much more must be given in the future, to the effective protection of sacred sites worldwide.

In order to continue the momentum building at this international symposium, we strongly recommend that UNESCO take further steps in the direction or respecting and protecting sacred sites worldwide, including bringing these concerns to the attention of national governments.

Signed by 178 people worldwide and with four members of San Bruno Mountain Watch
Betsy Danon
Charles Miller
Victoria Rojas
David Schooley

The Large Ohlone Shell Mound at San Bruno Mountain

Publisher: Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter GLS
Reporter: Fred Andres

Shell mounds found on San Bruno Mountain were made over enormous spans of time, even millennia, from the remains of countless shellfish feasts and dinners from convenient estuaries, rivers, and lakes. These mounds are sometimes called "middens," an unfortunate term, by academics, developers and the state government. "Midden" has derogatory connotations and the preferred term is shell mound. Few of these Ohlone Shell mounds, which once numbered as many as 600, have been spared the bulldozer. One such San Bruno Mountain Mound, spectacular in size and over 5000 years old, is in imminent danger of being developed. Part of what once was the area�s largest Ohlone village (called Sipliskin) the mound is over 2 acres in size, and reaches a depth of over 290 cm or 9-1/2 feet. It is located on the property of SunChase Development, on the near the border of Brisbane and South San Francisco.

In 1989, an archeological report (only now available) commissioned by the owners previous to SunChase dated the shell mound and found that "dozens or perhaps hundreds" of human burials exist there. Rosemary Cambra, chair of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe, adds "What is significant to my people is to respect these holy sites." Cambra believes the mound is 10,000 years old and contains the remains of 10,000 people.

Sterling Pacific Management Services, the manager of the SunChase property, refused a1996 an offer of $2,000,000 by the Environmental Mitigation Exchange Company for 30 acres of land, including the Sipliskin mound. An official with Sterling also refused in 1996 to turn over the land to the state or a nonprofit for protection as well as educational and cultural use. He said he would consult with archaeologists, but not with members of the Ohlone tribe.

SunChase's plans for development of the land on which the Sipliskin mound lies will be voted on soon by the council members of the City of South San Francisco. The plan is to put a business park with a hotel of at least 300 rooms and several roads, essentially cutting the Sipliskin shell mound from San Bruno Mountain. The mound itself is to be planted with native plants and trees, much like the mudflats in the recently approved Blackpoint luxury subdivision in Novato. David Schooley, founder of the nonprofit educational organization San Bruno Mountain Watch, whose goal is to preserve San Bruno Mountain, at the least wants the Sipliskin Mound to become attached to San Bruno Mountain State and County Park.

Interested persons can give their comments to SunChase by contacting Jim Sweeney, SunChase, 6001 North 24th Street #A, Phoenix, AZ, 85016 and Ronald E. Strausberger, Manager of Loans, Sterling Pacific Management Inc, at the same street address. Letters to the Mayor and Council Members of the City of South San Francisco go to P.O. Box 711, South San Francisco, CA 94083.

An excellent source of information on San Bruno Mountain, State Reserve and County Park and the entire HCP debacle (the nation's first HCP was instituted on San Bruno Mountain) is: David Schooley, San Bruno Mountain Watch, 415-467-6631. Hikes and nonnative plant removal work on San Bruno are done on Saturdays and Sundays. For a copy of the abbreviated 1989 archaeological report, please call Fred Andres at 821-9759. Lastly, a superb and fascinating book on the Ohlone peoples: The Ohlone Way, by Malcolm Margolin.

No Backdoor Deal: Conservationists win settlement on Endangered Species Act

Publisher: San Francisco Bay Guardian
Reporter: Savannah Blackwell

ENVIRONMENTALISTS recently marked a small victory in their fight to stop the Clinton administration's back-dooring the Endangered Species Act by compromising with commercial interests.

More than seven groups settled their lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior March 18 over its "no surprises" policy -- a concession to landowners who wanted to develop private property inhabited by endangered species. The fight to save the habitats of endangered species has local roots; David Schooley of San Bruno Mountain Watch, one of the plaintiffs, has worked for nearly 30 years to preserve habitats on San Bruno Mountain.

The environmentalists oppose habitat conservation plans, or HCPs, which allow developers to kill endangered species and destroy their habitats so long as they attempt to either re-create or preserve similar habitats elsewhere (see "The Sack of San Bruno," 12/11/96). HCPs have been part of the Environmental Protection Act since 1982; the nation's first HCP was crafted to allow development of San Bruno Mountain. The "no surprises" policy guarantees landowners freedom from government demands for additional protection measures once an HCP is signed. The suit sprang from this policy, which encourages landowners to sign onto HCPs.

Oddly enough, the Clinton administration has outdone its conservative predecessors in its efforts to suck up to developers through HCPs. The Bush and Reagan administrations created only 14 HCPs, while more than 200 HCPs have been completed and 300 are in the works under Clinton's leadership. More than 30 HCPs have been approved and 50 more are pending in California alone.

Though HCPs were intended to be an exception, they are fast becoming the rule, and they're now covering larger land areas. At the same time, acreage set aside for protection of species is shrinking dramatically. Much of southern California is now covered by state versions of habitat conservation plans. For example, a San Diego HCP includes more than 500,000 acres and covers 85 species. Under the plan, 98 percent of habitat used by endangered species can be developed, according to Leeona Klippstein, a co-plaintiff in the "no surprises" suit.

The historic settlement calls for a 60-day review period, during which the Department of the Interior will take comments from the public on the policy. The department recently started accepting letters; the official comment period runs from May 19 to July 19. According to the settlement's terms, federal officials obligated to consider rescinding the "no surprises" policy.

"It's the best thing we can do right now," Schooley told the Bay Guardian. "We're hoping for a big response from conservationists all over America."

The "no surprises" policy was enacted without public comment in 1994 by Bruce Babbitt, secretary of the Department of the Interior. In effect, "no surprises" says some cooperation from landowners is better than none; once a property owner secures the right to develop land critical to an endangered species under an HCP, no additional requirements or demands may be made of the owner, even if it is later established that the species needs additional measures for protection, such as more land for breeding. Recent HCPs promise landowners this guarantee for as long as 100 years.

Zygmunt Plater, the environmental lawyer who was the first ever to litigate under the Endangered Species Act, calls the "no surprises" policy "ludicrous." According to Kim Walley, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who handled the lawsuit, the policy violates the intention of the Endangered Species Act by severely limiting what measures the government can take to protect endangered species.

"This is a way of quieting down the landowners and 'wise-use'rs [property rights supporters] by giving them what they want in a more discreet way. It's totally outrageous," Tara Mueller, a staff lawyer at the Environmental Law Foundation, told the Bay Guardian.

Federal authorities say HCPs and the "no surprises" policy are more realpolitik than craven submission. "We think this is as much as you can ask for from private landowners without the public ponying up and being party to it," Peter Hamm, spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, told the Bay Guardian. "We think it's a fair trade-off."

Many conservationists and scientists disagree. The Endangered Species Act was designed to help species facing extinction increase in number.

"We [taxpayers] get milked twice, because we lose part of our natural heritage and we've got to pay for it," Brian Vincent, conservation director of the Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, told the Bay Guardian.

In a joint letter last July to congressmembers working on new versions of the Endangered Species Act, more than 160 scientists wrote that "no surprises" was a scientifically unsound approach to conservation.

" 'No surprises' flies in the face of scientifically based ecological knowledge, and in fact, rejects knowledge," wrote Gary Meffe, senior ecologist at the Savannah River Ecology Lab and professor at the University of Georgia.

When White House officials asked for comments from leading conservation and biology scientists earlier this spring, nine scientists wrote, " 'No surprises' ... runs counter to the natural world, which is full of surprises."

The litigants are hoping the suit will open the door to challenges to the use of HCPs. Meyer & Glitzenstein, the Washington, D.C., firm that handled the "no surprises" suit, is now suing the federal government over an HCP in Alabama.

The San Bruno HCP has proved to be a dismal failure. In the 15 years since its creation no new habitat has been established. The butterflies have not taken to their resettled environment, and the number of butterflies is dwindling. Non-native plants that threaten flora on which native species depend are taking over large sections of protected habitat (see "The Sack of San Bruno," 12/11/96).

Even so, the Clinton latched onto HCPs as convenient tools to appease private-property interests and added "no surprises" as a further concession. According to Hamm, "Maximizing the flexibility of the ESA" is necessary to prevent losing the Endangered Species Act in its entirety, or as he said, so "the dark side doesn't win in the final analysis."

But those who do not want to see the Endangered Species Act defanged say the Clinton administration should stand up to private-property interests rather than caving in to their demands.

If the administration continues the policy even after many scientists and concerned citizens say it is unsound, the public's comments will constitute grounds for further lawsuits, Walley told the Bay Guardian.

"This gives us ammunition," she said. "It gives us another angle to pressure them to get rid of it."

To participate in the public-comment period, before July 19 write Bruce Babbitt urging him to discontinue the "no surprises" policy.

Bruce Babbitt, Secretary
U.S. Department of the Interior
1849 C Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20240

To assist in the fight against HCPs, call San Bruno Mountain Watch at (415) 467-6631.

Butterflies vs. builders: The San Bruno compromise

Publisher: San Francisco Business Times
Reporter: Adam Feuerstein

The steep pitch of Owl Canyon on the north side of San Bruno Mountain is a dense carpet of knee-high wild grasses and native plants like lupine, mission bells, wallflowers and California sage. On a strand of grass, two Bay Checkerspot butterflies mate, while Mission Blue and Elfin butterflies, both endangered species found only on the mountain, flit through the air.

The 3,300 acres that comprise San Bruno Mountain are some of the most natural and untouched in the Bay Area. A grove of live oaks halfway up Owl Canyon is more than 500 years old, predating the Mexican explorers who founded missions in what is now San Francisco.

Yet standing on a ridge line, hikers can look back over their shoulders and see San Francisco skyscrapers peeking over the hills just a few miles to the north. To the east, cars zoom by on Highway 101, past the San Francisco International Airport and Candlestick Point.

And at the mountain's base, bulldozers have cleared large sections of earth to make way for new commercial and residential development, continuing a slow encroachment by developers that began in the mid-1980s.

Sunchase, a Phoenix-based developer, is currently building a 720-home subdivision in South San Francisco on the mountain's south side. When completed, TerraBay will include single family homes, townhouses, a hotel and a small commercial development.

On the mountain's Northeast Ridge in Brisbane, Brookfield Homes has built roads and poured the first foundations for what will be a 500-home development. Similar projects are completed or under construction in Daly City and the Cow Palace section of San Francisco.

Homeowners and endangered species like the Mission Blue butterfly share San Bruno Mountain because of a 1982 amendment to the federal Endangered Species Act. Under that amendment, a coalition of environmentalists, government officials and private landowners formed the country's first-ever Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP). Designed as a compromise between landowners and environmentalists, the San Bruno HCP allowed developers to destroy the habitat of endangered species if nearby lands were preserved as a kind of substitute habitat.

Developers are required to pay fees and set aside land to create the new preserves, which are monitored by outside consultants.

Fifteen years after the creation of the San Bruno HCP, the verdict is still out on its success. Some environmentalists call the San Bruno HCP a failure that has robbed endangered species of vital habitat and caused non-native plants to invade the mountain. They claim that HCPs, which now number 30 in California alone, are an environmental sellout that give developers a legal loophole through the Endangered Species Act.

Developers disagree. They say the HCP represents a successful accommodation between the economic needs of a fast-growing community and the preservation of endangered plants and animals.

David Schooley, a founding member of San Bruno Mountain Watch, calls the compromise that created the San Bruno HCP "great for politics, but unfortunately, compromise is not so great for the environment."

Schooley has been leading hikes up and down the mountain since the late 1960s, and is one of its most vocal supporters. He was at the negotiating table when the HCP was drafted, but says its implementation has been a "disaster."

While leading a hike up Owl Canyon, Schooley looks back at the Northeast Ridge as an example of why the basic premise of HCPs are flawed. In the early 1980s, developers like Brookfield Homes favored the gradual slopes of the ridge as the best place to build much-needed new housing for Brisbane, which, like most of the Bay Area, is suffering from a housing crunch. Unfortunately, the grasslands on the ridge were dotted with lupine, a squat, grassy plant that plays host to the endangered Mission Blue butterfly.

Under the HCP, the builders were able to "take" -- bureaucratic legalese for "destroy" -- this butterfly habitat after agreeing to set up and pay for a new habitat higher up the mountain's northwest side in an area known as the Saddle.

Today, the top of the Northeast Ridge has been flattened for houses. The only evidence of the butterfly are street signs like Mission Blue Drive that commemorate their existence.

Schooley says tens of thousands of dollars have been spent by San Mateo County and its environmental consultant, Thomas Reid Associates, to recreate the Mission Blue habitat with little or no success. The main hurdle is that the Saddle is riddled with non-native plants like gorse and eucalyptus that choke off more fragile lupine plants. Without lupine, Mission Blue butterflies have nowhere to breed, he said. In addition, the area is too windy and damp from ocean fog for the butterfly and other native plants.

"The motives of the county and Thomas Reid Associates are good, but it is impossible to recreate a habitat that took nature several hundred years to perfect," he said.

Victoria Harris, a consultant with Thomas Reid Associates and a co-author of the original 1982 San Bruno HCP agreement, lauds Schooley's enthusiasm, but rejects his conclusions.

Specifically, Harris says the HCP can take credit for preserving the best habitat to ensure the butterfly's survival. Of San Bruno Mountain's 3,300 acres, only 360 acres have been developed or will be permitted for development.

"Including the state and county park, approximately 2,700 acres on San Bruno Mountain -- much of it the best habitat -- will be preserved," says Harris.

The HCP is funded by $70,000 collected annually from developers and homeowners, who are required to pay annual assessments on their property. The money is used to protect and enhance the habitat, which includes removing non-native plants, replant-ing native species and monitoring butterfly activity.

Harris admits that efforts to eradicate non-native plants like gorse have been difficult, but said volunteer assistance from groups like Friends of San Bruno Mountain is turning the tide.

"The butterflies don't seem to mind the development as long as the plants they need are healthy," she said, adding that surveys of the butterfly populations show no significant decreases.

The debate over the San Bruno HCP is destined to drag on for years because development of the mountain's base continues. Cities like South San Francisco, already penned in by San Francisco Bay but in need of more housing to accommodate job growth, have approved new construction, according to Marty Van Duyn, head of South San Francisco's economic development office.

"We have a lot of job growth here that is putting pressure on us to come up with ways to provide additional housing," he said, referring to Sunchase's plan for the development of TerraBay on San Bruno Mountain's south side.

Three hundred units of housing are already under construction in phase one. Phases two and three will be built next, adding additional housing as well as a hotel and a small office complex. The hotel plans have particularly riled environmentalists like Schooley because it will be constructed on top of one of the oldest Native American shell mounds in the Bay Area.

"While the city welcomes this development, it also recognizes the importance of the mountain's habitat and the need to adhere to the HCP," said Van Duyn, adding that only two-thirds of the TerraBay site will be developed, and no other project will be allowed to encroach on the mountain's southern slope.

Developers and environmentalists from other parts of California and the nation are also eying San Bruno Mountain with interest. The Clinton Administration has pushed the formation of HCPs, resulting in more than 500 separate proposals since 1992. In California, more than 30 HCPs have been approved, including an agreement between the federal government and the Irvine Co. to develop 325 square miles in Orange County. Another HCP in San Diego is also being set up.

"I don't like to discourage the restoration work that's being done on San Bruno Mountain because every little bit helps," said Schooley. "But the whole HCP process sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the United States. It's allowing developers to destroy endangered species and their habitats without proving they are actually recreating this habitat elsewhere."

Tragic Mountain: The Sack of San Bruno

Publisher: San Francisco Bay Guardian
Reporter: Savannah Blackwell

San Bruno Mountain development was a national model for decimating the Endangered Species Act.

What's next?

WHEN YOU CLIMB up Buckeye Canyon on San Bruno Mountain, the air is heavy with the sweet smell of California sage. Other native plants, such as lupine and manzanita, dot the wild grasses. A gentle breeze stirs the boughs of live oaks.

This is ancient turf. A couple miles southeast, at the base of a slope, lies an earthen mound where members of a Native American tribe called the Sipliskin tossed oyster shells, remnants of suppers past. The historic mound is one of very few in the Bay Area that does not lie beneath asphalt and buildings.

But perhaps not for long. Developers are rapidly transforming what's left of the mountain's unprotected natural landscape. Land once occupied by rare and endangered butterflies has been bulldozed. South San Francisco's current land use plan allows for a hotel parking lot to cover the shell mound.

Since the mid-1980s several large housing developments have sprung up on San Bruno Mountain. Construction of more than 300 condominiums near Daly City began in 1985, and now more than 600 additional houses and condominiums are going up at the mountain's base. Above South San Francisco, in an area formally known as Paradise Valley, 750 homes will eventually rise.

Where Mission blue and Callippe silverspot butterflies once flew, new streets bearing the species' names will be laid out for 500 condos, town homes, and detached houses now under construction near Brisbane on the Northeast Ridge.

None of this would have been permissable had developers not succeeded in amending the 1973 Endangered Species Act. In 1982 San Bruno became the national model for a dangerous compromise between the needs of the environment and the lure of profit. The mountain was the first place in the country where developers were allowed to kill endangered species and destroy their habitats -- as long as they attempted to either re-create or preserve similar habitats elsewhere. A group called San Bruno Mountain Watch fought bitterly to stop the plan. But since then the group has been painfully watching runaway development decimate the region.

The policy that allowed for San Bruno Mountain's development is known as a habitat conservation plan (HCP) and was the nation's first, signed in 1982. It effectively weakened the Endangered Species Act; since then such arrangements have proliferated around the country. During the Clinton administration the number of authorized and proposed HCPs jumped from 14 to nearly 500. And a 1994 regulation has made HCPs even more developer-friendly (see "Surprise, Surprise,").

There are more than 30 already approved, and 50 more proposed, in California alone.

In 1982 Congress added a provision to the act that allowed state and local agencies, as well as individuals and corporations, to "take" (or kill a certain number of) a listed species through the use of an "incidental take permit" so long as an HCP was prepared.

But the lesson of San Bruno Mountain is clear: HCPs have been dismal failures.

"Most of what has been done under San Bruno's HCP has been a disaster," says David Schooley, chair of San Bruno Mountain Watch, which has led tours up the mountain for nearly three decades.

Since development on San Bruno began, the number of butterflies has not increased significantly -- and increasing the population of endangered species was one of the key goals of the act. Because of that and the failures of other HCPs, environmentalists and scientists around the nation are sounding the alarm that the use of HCPs is accelerating the loss of endangered species.

"Nothing should compensate for killing [endangered species]. Nothing," Marcy Benstock, director of the New York-based Clean Air Campaign and a leading foe of HCPs, told the Bay Guardian. "These plans will cause irrevocable damage, which will catch up with human beings sooner or later. It's lunacy to go along with these schemes."

Since 1982 the use of HCPs has increased most dramatically throughout the western states and other rapidly developing states such as Florida and Texas. As more and more are put into practice, HCPs are also covering larger land areas. Most of the remaining natural land in southern California is slated for development under the Natural Community Conservation program, the state version of the HCP, according to Tara Mueller, counsel to the Natural Heritage Institute. "What this is, is the sanctioning of incredible amounts of habitat loss," Mueller said.

Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College who filed the first lawsuit under the Endangered Species Act, called the HCP "a Trojan horse for undercutting the [Endangered Species Act] as a whole.... You can kiss the recovery of species goodbye."

Jasper Carlton, director of the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, told the Bay Guardian that recent HCPs in other parts of the country call for 80 percent of the habitat of certain endangered species to be developed. In addition to San Bruno Mountain, sites of other major HCP projects in California include:

* Orange County, where an HCP agreement has recently been signed between the federal government and the Irvine Company. The agreement allows for commercial and residential development on 325 square miles (less 36,378 acres set aside for preservation) between Los Angeles and San Diego. Six endangered species live there, including a songbird called the California gnatcatcher, the peregrine falcon, the willow flycatcher, the arroyo toad, and the Pacific pocket mouse.

* San Diego, where an HCP that covers much of the southern part of the county is in the works. The plan involves more than 1,000 landowners and 84 animal species, including the gnatcatcher. Under both the Orange County and San Diego plans, developers are assured that if they contribute some land for preservation they can construct houses and shopping malls elsewhere unhindered by local, state, or federal authorities. Both plans provide assurances that the latest, soundest scientific methods will be used to manage the habitats.

* Headwaters Forest in northern California, where a proposed agreement between the federal government and Maxxam-Pacific Lumber will allow the company to log 197,500 acres of redwood forest. Environmentalists who fought to preserve Headwaters Forest are concerned that the HCP will not go far enough to protect the endangered marbled murrelet that lives there.

"We have huge concerns about [the Headwaters plan]," Paul Mason, coordinator of the Environmental Protection Information Center's endangered species project, told the Bay Guardian. "The public doesn't get to be much of a participant in an HCP. By the time the draft is released to the public it's set in wet concrete, meaning it won't change very much."

The San Bruno compromise

San Bruno Mountain offers a rare glimpse at the true nature of San Francisco. It is the grounds of three kinds of rare and endangered butterflies as well as foxes, raccoons, skunks, birds, and rare and endangered plants.

James Roof, a noted Daly City native-plant expert who died in 1983, described the mountain as the last piece of native Franciscan habitat, which is characterized by dense miniature scrubs and grasslands. This habitat once covered the Marin peninsula, the Presidio, Mount Davidson, Sunset Heights, Twin Peaks, and Diamond Heights. Some kinds of plants and flowers, such as hummingbird sage, can only be found on San Bruno Mountain.

"We're losing our connection to the ancient rhythms and flow of time," Schooley said. "That's why we must protect this sacred place, this area that is still native."

Ironically, the use of the mountain's base as a garbage dump for more than 50 years discouraged developers from exploiting the area. But by the mid-1960s the dump had been covered over by rocks and earth, and only a lumber company stands there today.

Shortly after the dump was covered, developers began eyeing San Bruno. Early on Schooley and others fended off one proposal to hack off the top of the mountain, fill the bay with the earth, and build homes and shopping centers on the bay fill. But interest in developing the mountain remained high. In the early 1970s San Bruno Mountain Watch and other environmental groups succeeded in getting most of the mountain set aside as parkland.

In the mid 1970s a group of UC Berkeley students found the Mission blue butterfly, an endangered species, on the mountain, and developers were forced to address the Endangered Species Act. But they refused to bow to the needs of preserving the species, and federal, state, county, and city officials ultimately crafted a 30-year HCP with San Bruno Mountain landowners. Two lawsuits filed against the HCP by San Bruno Mountain Watch and other citizens' groups failed to stop developers from encroaching on the native habitat.

The consolation? Those who raze the mountain's flora and kill its fauna promise to try to re-create something it took nature thousands of years to build.

From the edge of Buckeye Canyon a visitor can look across to the Northeast Ridge, where the Mission blue butterfly once lived. The land is barren now, scraped by bulldozers in preparation for new homes. More than a mile away another ridge is marked by patches of dark green vegetation, where San Mateo County's environmental consultant, with funds from developers, has attempted to re-create the butterflies' habitat.

But the butterflies have not moved into their replacement home, Schooley said. The new habitat is too wet and doesn't get enough sun for the Mission blues, and the plants they need for laying their eggs are being choked out by nonnative vegetation. Moreover, the butterflies should have had a corridor linking the old habitat with the new one, Schooley said.

Some critics find the idea of relocating endangered animals in confined, sometimes re-created habitats absurd. An ecosystem involves the complex interaction of plant and animal life with the natural environment; you can't just pluck a system out of one place and stick it in another.

"We don't know enough about natural science to [create habitats]," Carlton said. "It's a pretend game. They say to the species, 'You have to stay in this one confined area.' That's not a naturally functioning wildlife creature. This little butterfly can't see two miles away. It doesn't know where it's supposed to go."

Mueller added, "To recreate a complex ecosystem is pretty well-nigh impossible." Both Mueller and Carlton point out that the plans rarely include participation from scientists independent of the involved government agencies or developers.

"In theory the HCP sounds great," Mueller said. "But the problem is that I can't cite you one example where an HCP is achieving an integrated habitat. These are basically political deals with landowners, not biologically based, ecological planning."

Playing god, badly

Schooley and other environmentalists say the habitat conservation plan implemented at San Bruno Mountain in 1982 is an experiment that failed. "San Bruno's HCP has not proven to be a strong enough protection," said Leeona Klippstein, president of the Spirit of the Sage Council, which fought the HCP in Orange County. "The butterflies have not recovered after 14 years."

According to the officials who supported it, the San Bruno Mountain HCP was a necessary compromise. John Ward is a former San Mateo County supervisor who signed on to the plan in 1982, so it's not surprising that he now represents a developer building a 750-home community called Terrabay on the mountain's southern slope above South San Francisco. He told the Bay Guardian that allowing landowners to develop prime habitat was the only way to save any part of the mountain.

"The HCP was drafted as a means of making the federal Endangered Species Act work to allow for a balance between the reasonable use of property and protection of the environment," Ward said. "It was a unique creature at the time and has been a model ever since."

The need for housing was part of the developers' motive, Ward said, and without some kind of compromise the federal act might have been weakened more than it was. "A lot of people in Washington were not enamored with the [act] and were trying to weaken it because they saw it as an impediment to any development," he told the Bay Guardian.

Environmentalists say that threat was a red herring. It would have been far more difficult to repeal the entire Endangered Species Act than it has been to slowly amend it to death. The compromise was a political deal to accommodate landowners' desire to profit from habitats of endangered species.

"That was not a needed compromise," Gaffney said. "It was politically driven.... The whole [mountain] should have been preserved."

Both Ward and Victoria Harris, a senior associate with Thomas Reid Associates, San Mateo County's environmental consultant, say San Bruno's HCP is a good deal overall. Without the $100,000 generated yearly from developers -- who pass the charge onto homeowners -- under the plan, it would be impossible to tackle the nonnative plants that are invading endangered species' habitats, they say.

"At least now there's long-term money for monitoring the butterflies' habitat, counting the butterflies, and getting rid of exotics," Harris said. Before the HCP, "San Mateo county officials had their budget reduced and had totally abandoned the mountain except for opening gates and emptying garbage cans."

But the new homes' landscaped yards have contributed to the growth of unwanted plants. Jake Sigg, president of the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant Society, said that there are more nonnative plants on the mountain today than when the HCP was signed.

In areas where Reid has attempted to plant new vegetation, such as lupine, which Mission blue butterflies eat and lay their eggs on, exotic (or nonnative) plants such as gorse, broom, fennel, and pampas grass keep coming back, and they're choking out the plants the endangered butterflies prefer.

"There's been no real created habitat center that has really worked," Schooley said. "The problem is, it's not a matter of just a butterfly and one plant, it's a fragile, intricate web of birds and other wildlife."

At least one of the San Bruno Mountain developers has admitted that Schooley is right. At an August meeting at Terrabay, where representatives from San Bruno Mountain Watch, the county, and the developer, SunChase G.A. California I Inc. gathered to discuss how to replant an area behind the proposed development, David Kaplow, a botanist working for SunChase, confirmed that no authentic habitat has been re-created anywhere on the mountain.

"San Bruno's HCP says we're hoping to restore habitat," Harris told the Bay Guardian. "But we don't know if we can."

Paul Reegan, a fire-monitoring specialist with the National Park Service, worked for Thomas Reid Associates for three years during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Reegan said at the time he found the firm's scientific practices suspect. New habitat for butterflies was created in the wrong places because developers wanted to construct homes in the areas most like the butterflies' grounds, he said.

"Mission blue like drier and more protected areas than the saddle area [the part chosen for preservation], which is too windy," Reegan said. "But the lands most like the habitat they prefer is the area where they wanted to build."

Effective use of funds was another problem, he said. "Money was being thrown at [conservation] rather than being used in ways that were cost-effective," Reegan said. "Take the gorse problem, for example. They sprayed it with herbicide, hacked at it, kind of drove 'dozers over it, but it keeps coming back."

"I think they could be doing a much better job," Reegan said, adding that the need for independent, scientific review of the effects of development on San Bruno's endangered species is critical.

Controlling nature

Coordinating nature's work is not always easy. Environmental officials have run into numerous problems restoring and relocating habitat. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials have cited lack of proper spending as a problem on San Bruno Mountain. About $400,000 remains untouched in county coffers. That money should be going toward restoring habitat, said Mike Horton, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's HCP coordinator at San Bruno Mountain.

"The funds are just sitting there," Horton told the Bay Guardian. "There are some areas on the HCP that have not been restored the way they were supposed to be."

In addition, a gravel quarry near Buckeye Canyon is causing problems by creating dust that is covering plants. That kills the plants by preventing them from photosynthesizing, said Horton, who added that the Fish and Wildlife Service cannot monitor San Bruno's HCP as much as the agency would like because of cuts in staff.

Harris defended Reid and San Mateo County's conservation efforts, claiming that the county is beginning to spend money on restoring a eucalyptus grove (eucalyptus is a nonnative tree). She acknowledged that the intrusion of nonnative plants is a problem on the mountain but said Reid had made "significant strides" in controlling the unwanted vegetation.

"There's been some increase [of Mission blue] in the conserved habitat," said David Wright, an entomologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service. "But on the other hand, development that's been allowed by the HCP is proceeding, so you lose the butterflies living there."

San Bruno Mountain Watch is fighting the additional development of endangered species' habitat on the mountain. On the mountain's highest peak, called Radio Ridge, elfin butterflies are threatened by an amendment to the HCP calling for an expansion of the telecommunications center situated there. After losing a suit against the proposal for more satellite dishes in San Mateo County Superior Court, the group has taken its case to the California Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

"The compromise of a living thing equals its death," Schooley said. "That's the whole problem with HCPs. 'Habitat Conservation Plan' -- 'Habitat' sounds like it's concerned with habitat, but really it's about destruction of habitat....

"But it's so clear on San Bruno Mountain that there has been no creation of habitat. It's not just one single animal, or one bug, or one bird; it's a fragile creation over a long period of time. That's what the [Endangered Species] Act is really about."

Clear-Cutting a Path for Butterflies: Eucalyptus groves on San Bruno Mountain being felled

Publisher: San Francisco Chronicle
Reporter: John Wildermuth

With a roar of chain saws, loggers this week began chopping down thousands of eucalyptus trees on San Bruno Mountain - local nature lovers urged them on.

In a reversal of the usual battle lines, environmentalists are welcoming the loggers, who plan to clear-cut as much as 150 acres of the mountain to open habitat for two species of endangered butterflies.

"We don't call it logging," said Roman Gankin, an environmental planner for San Mateo County . "It's habitat restoration activity and it's long overdue."

Eucalyptus trees, which were brought to California from Australia more than a century ago, are public enemy No. 1 for many local environmentalists. The fast growing trees can spread rapidly over grasslands, pushing out many native plants and grasses and keeping anything else from growing.

"I'm never sorry to hear about eucalyptus trees being cut down," said Lennie Roberts of the Committee for Green Foothills. "They were planted in a lot of areas for various reasons in the 1800s, but now we're a lot more careful about what plants we bring in."

On San Bruno Mountain, large groves of eucalyptus, some planted more than 75 years ago, are encroaching on the lupine and viola plants that provide homes for the mission blue and San Bruno elfin butterflies, both endangered species.

"The federal permit issued for the exotic species calls for control of pest plants, like eucalyptus," said Victoria Harris of Thomas Reid Associates, a Palo Alto environmental consulting firm that manages the butterfly habitat for the county. "The trees also act as a barrier that keeps the butterflies from dispersing to other areas."

For Jeff Holland, the logger running the operation on San Bruno Mountain, this is one of his more unusual jobs. A veteran of logging in the Sierra around his home in Long Barn, Tuolome County, he is used to seeing the restrictions on timbering operations.

"You can't hardly cut down a tree in the forest anymore without getting arrested," he said as he watched loggers and bulldozers strip a once-wooded area just off the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway at the entrance to San Bruno Mountain Park, a state and county park within sight of San Francisco Bay.

Holland's seven-member crew started work Tuesday and will be cutting trees on the mountain for about three months. The trees, mostly about 120 feet tall and two feet around, are hauled from the groves by skidders and grapple bulldozers and then stacked along the roadway by a huge log loader.

Twenty truckloads of logs a day will be taken from San Bruno Mountain to the port of Sacramento, where they will be shipped to Japan and used for wood chips and pulp, Holland said. Planned Sierra Resources is logging the mountain free, in exchange for the logs.

When the logging is finished, it will be a very different San Bruno Mountain, Harris said. The tall, green trees that now line much of the parkway that runs from Daly City to Brisbane will be gone, replaced by open grassland. About the only remnants of the sprawling eucalyptus groves will be a few trees screening the parking lots at the park's trailheads.

Bye-bye Biodiversity?

Publisher: Berkeley Ecology Center
Reporter: Mark Huntington

"SAVE SAN FRANCISCO Habitat," the sign proclaims to commuters barreling down Bayshore Boulevard on their way to work. What kind of oxymoron is that? Does that mean the dandelions growing up through cracks in the concrete? Stretched out across the highway, a big banner reads "Kill Locally--Die Globally. No New City on San Bruno Mountain."

Such was the scene a few months ago at the corner of Bayshore and Guadalupe Canyon Parkway, just south of the San Francisco Line. Southwest Diversified's proposed development there would double the population of Brisbane while scoring a resounding victory against the 30-year struggle to save this last intact fragment of local native habitat.

As the Endangered Species Act (ESA) comes up for reauthorization in Washington, D.C., one its most celebrated failures is unfolding here.

San Bruno Mountain is one of California's most diverse examples of coastal grass and scrub habitat. A unique collection of plants, some of which are found nowhere else, provides habitat for several endangered species. The plight of these species is an indicator of the destruction of the entire fabric of life.

The ESA draws a clear line against the 228-acre development of prime habitat on the mountain's northeast ridge. Nevertheless, the bulldozers may be rolling soon, and with them, will go the last place of its kind on earth.

WAYS TO SKIN AN ACT

The list of the way developers and their allies ignore and circumvent the ESA is longer than the list of extinct San Francisco plants and animals. Governments invariably favor development over enforcement of environmental laws. For them, the tricky part has been to keep the people from suing to enforce compliance.

One way to do this is to get someone in Congress to attach a rider onto an appropriations bill, exempting a specific development project from all federal law. If this fails, the "God Squad" can step in. Appointed by the president, these guys can allow the last bald eagle to be ground up and served as Chicken McNuggets.

Such unpleasant extremes were not necessary to prevent private citizens from enforcing the law on San Bruno Mountain. In 1982, San Mateo County, the developers, and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife got together and created the nation's first Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP).

The HCP was based on a $300,000 habitat study commissioned by the developers. The Thomas Reid Associates Study concluded that destroying endangered butterfly habitat posed "no significant threat to [the butterfly's] survival." That same year, Congress reauthorized a weakened ESA, allowing the "taking" of endangered species under HCPs.

Local citizens sought to stop the encroachment, or at least to limit it to the places where native plant life was already degraded. But Southwest Diversified had its eye on the sunny slopes that form the center for the almost extinct Mission Blue and San Bruno Elfin butterflies.

The company got what it wanted and, in return, promised to mitigate the damage by creating new butterfly habitat elsewhere. The 35-year mitigation program is attempting to recreate habitat where none of the conditions exist that made that habitat possible in the first place.

With all its limitations and weaknesses, the ESA has still allowed private citizen to slow down or even to temporarily stop environmentally destructive projects. But by the time the act is tinkered with and reauthorized, we may have little or no environment protections left. What are we going to do?

First, go for a hike on the mountain--this is the most spectacular spring in memory. Then write and call your representatives and senators. Tell them we need them to be activists for a strong ESA and for a citizen's right to enforce it. Tell them to delete the "God Squad" provision, delete the "take" amendment (sec. 10a), outlaw riders, and fund biological studies and recovery plans with the money now being spent on bogus "Habitat Conservation Plans" and ridiculous mitigation schemes. For more information, or for guided hikes on San Bruno Mountain, call San Bruno Mountain Watch at (415) 467-6631.

The Last of the Franciscan Region: A Talk with James Roof, ca. 1975

Publisher: San Bruno Mountain Watch
Reporter: James Roof

(this transcript is a work in progress, the rest is coming)


James Roof (1911-1983) was born in Daly City and spent his entire adult life studying and preserving California native plants. His work took him to every corner of California but his writings and talks on his native, Franciscan, region represent most of what is known about this unique and neglected land. San Bruno Mountain was his favorite place and he spent over 35 years of his life fighting to save it from annihilation. His garden of native California plants at Tilden Park still exists and is just beginning to be recognized for the incredible resource that it is. This talk was given at his garden in 1979 to people working to stop the development of San Bruno Mountain.

THE FRANCISCAN REGION is the smallest region known in California. It's an unrecognized region because it's so small and because there's a city planted on it. I think Willis Jepson was the first man to recognize that there was a Franciscan region, and it's found in his manual-the old 1925 manual tells about a Franciscan region. He was pretty far ahead of himself in postulating that there was a Franciscan zone, and he included the coast all the way up to Mendocino County, and all the way south to Monterey. But when you examine his premise you discover that the Mendocino and Sonoma type country is not Franciscan, and that rather than the Franciscan extending up to Mendocino County, the Mendocino/Sonoma country province extends southward to Mount Tamalpais. Tamalpais is only a southern outlier, a southern island of the Mendocino/ Sonoma-type country, which is Redwood in part, Douglas Fir country in part, and is not Franciscan. The trees up in Mendocino County and Sonoma County go right down to the ocean. You find Redwoods right down near the ocean, you find Bishop Pine on all the headlands up there. That's not Franciscan country. The Franciscan country starts just south of Muir Woods in Marin County, and includes the Marin Peninsula. When you go down the other way, you find an equal situation applying. You have the Monterey type flora, which has nothing to do with the Franciscan. You have the Santa Cruz Mountains extending north from Monterey Bay to Montara Mountain in San Mateo County. Now, Montara is not Franciscan. Montara is part of the Santa Cruz Mountains. And the people who worked on the survey of San Bruno Mountain and did the flora over there, and John Hunter Thomas down at Stanford, when he wrote the flora of the Santa Cruz Mountains, he says that the Santa Cruz Mountains extend to the Golden Gate and that San Francisco is the northern terminus of the Santa Cruz Mountains. That's not true. San Bruno Mountain is a sort of a transverse, small range that almost crosses the San Francisco Peninsula just down below the city. Montara Mountain has very little relationship to San Bruno Mountain. And you find a 9-or-10-mile gap between San Bruno Mountain and Montara Mountain, and that gap is flat land. It's not a continuous series of hills from Montara to San Bruno Mountain. This is a very wide separation for mountain ranges. I believe I pointed out last time that huge mountain ranges in California are separated only by the width of a highway. The Sierra Nevada and the Greenhorn Mountains are separated only by the road, the highway from Isabella over Walker Pass, the Walker Pass highway. The White and Inyo Mountains are two tremendous mountain ranges and they're only separated by the white line that's painted down the road in Westgard Pass. And these people are trying to tell us that these mountain groups that are 10 miles apart are the same thing. They most certainly are not the same thing. When you get a comparable situation in the Salinas Valley, you separate three mountain ranges just by the Salinas Val ley. You separate the southern tip of the Santa Cruz Mountains, you separate the northern tip of the Santa Lucia Mountains, and then inland you have the Gabalan Range. And these mountain masses are definitely named and separated by geographical phenomena, and here you have this wide gap separating the Franciscan region from the Santa Cruz Mountains, which are represented at their northern end by Montara Mountain. North of Montara Mountain the Franciscan zone begins. As I said, it's a very small zone because it's not been seen or recognized. It hasn't been seen or recognized first of all because there's a city planted on it. The city of San Francisco is planted right in the heart of the Franciscan zone, and the geographers and botanists, taxonomists, zoologists have flirted around the edges of the Franciscan, not knowing what they were working with. The type of Franciscan is very interesting. It divides into two types, the Marin type, which is type II Franciscan: it's good Franciscan land and most of it is safe now because it's in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and as long as no one goes over there and plants pine trees all over the Marin headlands, which I don't think they'll do, we have a good preserve of Franciscan land stretching from Muir Woods south to the Golden Gate. It also stretches up in a small curve up towards Stinson Beach. It's on the seaward side. But as soon as it gets to Steep Ravine, no more, because the trees in Steep Ravine come right down to the ocean. Now this is called Franciscan type II, because if we were out to preserve Franciscan land, and we preserved the Marin peninsula and let everything go on the San Francisco side, we'd lose everything. Franciscan country is just fine in its so-called "barrenness", in its bare quality, no trees to speak of, except way back in sheltered places. But the type of Franciscan land is in type I, that's in San Francisco. Now the heart of the Franciscan country was right in the center of town, where you had the old 49'er cemeteries, where all the rare manzanitas were represented. Also Mount Davidson, where the Franciscan manzanita's been exterminated; also the Presidio of San Francisco, where some small remnants of Franciscan land remain. And the sand dunes out here on the Avenues-this is Franciscan country. Mount Davidson was just about the heart of it, and the whole Franciscan flora was found on the small mountain range in the middle of San Francisco. If the city of San Francisco had preserved Mount Davidson-to Sunset Heights-to Twin Peaks- to Diamond Heights just in its natural form, they would have had the heart of the Franciscan country-with some small spurs out at the Presidio and down at Hunter's Point, and so on. Now: the whole Franciscan type country has been destroyed, with the exception of San Bruno Mountain.

We can't look at the political line, the San Mateo county line, separating San Francisco county from San Mateo county. We have to look at the whole type Franciscan area. And, that type area, unspoiled, is only on San Bruno Mountain. That's all that's left. Now what sets type I apart from type II is the flora. There would probably be a better fauna in Marin County because deer can range down from the park back there, maybe a mountain lion could range down. This is not going to happen down here. This is almost all city-locked. But I would say that the Marin Franciscan has the fauna, and the type Franciscan has the flora.

Now, this zone here is unique in the whole world. The conditions that cause , it are pretty well known. You have the huge valley out here with the tremendous \ area and high summer temperatures, and out here you have the Pacific, which is, with its prevailing westerlies, always pushing air onto the land. Now in the wintertime the push comes from storms, but in the summertime, the push l comes from fog and fog wind. And this is caused by rising hot air out in the val- , leys. The hot air rises out there and this causes a pushing and sucking action ; through the Golden Gate. And the wind action is almost constant, because you have storms in the winter and you have this very cold fog wind pushing in all summer. So you have very little rest for this area, which causes the trees on the west side of both peninsulas, the Marin and the San Francisco-facing the i ocean-causes them to be treeless. The Franciscan zone gets quite a bit of water. They get all the winter rain that the whole area gets. But over on the west side of the Franciscan peninsulas they also get fog. And it's very easy to pervert the Franciscan land, because everyone who comes to San Francisco wants a tree in their yard, or they want to plant trees all over the "bare hills." These hills are not bare, they're rich in animal and plant life, bird life especially. But when trees are planted on the Franciscan land they pervert it very easily. They catch the fog drip in the summertime, and people are not aware of that. As soon as they plant pines or eucalyptus on this open Franciscan land, the trees start to catch fog drip and they increase the moisture available to them. The fog isn't trapped, it just goes on over the country and it has a cooling effect and a slight watering effect, but if you can trap fog, it's just as effective as rain. And if you would get say, 30 inches of rain a year on San Bruno Mountain, and somebody plants a pine up there and the pine traps the summer fog, it's getting 30 inches of winter rain, and it's getting 10 additional inches from trapped fog. So the to- tal would be 40 inches, which is giving it practically a local rainforest effect. It does create what they call fog forests up there in the saddle area. Those cy- presses up there have leather ferns growing up and down their trunks. And these are epiphytes, these are marks of a very wet region where ferns grow on tree trunks. So those effectively are perverted, that's perverted Franciscan country. The people who inhabit San Francisco are almost always from the East. They look at the Franciscan land and they scorn it. They say, "It's bare, it's bare, we've got to plant something on it." That's what Sutro did when he was the mayor of San Francisco, he perverted the whole center, the whole cen- tral Franciscan garden of Mount Davidson, Sunset Heights, Mount Sutro; and he just did leave Twin Peaks alone because it was a symbol of the city. Well, Twin Peaks is the least of the Franciscan mountains. It didn't have the flora- it had wildflowers-it didn't have the flora that Mount Davidson, Sunset Heights or Mount Sutro had. You can still find remnants of that flora over there, but all the manzanitas are gone. All of the things that made the heart of the Franciscan zone have been subdivided out. And that's what the Crockers, and the Foremost dairy, and the conglomerates are trying to do to San Bruno Moun- tain. They're trying to wipe it out just the same way. I say that this is a tired old pattern that's been done here and they tried to do it in Marin County at Marin Shallow. And they want to do the same thing here and it's stupid. It's ignorant and stupid, and it betrays an utter lack of knowledge of the country.

Now the portions of the mountain that may be preserved should never be planted with trees. As soon as you plant trees in Franciscan country, it's no longer Franciscan country. This is a great danger to it. If parts of San Bruno Mountain are made into a park, all the scoutmasters up and down the peninsula will be trying to plant pine trees up there. And you have to call in the Ecological Vigilantes, the EV's, on the night of the full moon, out they come. If you're going to preserve Franciscan land you have to take vigilante action. You can't head these guys off in the newspapers or anywhere else. The newspapers support it. Look at McLaren Park, for example. It's Franciscan country, and the Examiner and the police department have these planting days up there where the Examiner furnishes Coke and hot dogs, the park department furnishes the trees, and the police go up there and help the boy scouts plant. I think we got into that once before, over in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco, almost on the same day they were planting McLaren Park, the police were demanding that Buena Vista Park have the trees taken out of it, because so many nurses were getting raped when they walked home in the evening from St. Joseph's Hospital over to the Haight-Ashbury. So, you have on the one hand these nuts all planting trees, and on the other hand you have the police taking them all out, demanding that they be taken out so they can have an open field of fire on the thugs and rapists. So you have a pretty good selling point there on not planting the area. But San Francisco has always been a home of strangers. We have no gripe against people from NewYork or New Jersey or Iowa, but our point is that they just don't know what they're looking at. And it's not up to them^adThe ^^^--eFranciscan land, because they don't even knowThS^ wnen t ^ us em what this is'and ^lt should be P^erved. Now when the49erscametoSanFrancisco,theyset up theirpads down, way down town, up to Kearny Street and around the bayshore there. But one or two ofThe om- tuners were pretty good botanists, and they walked around the b^short and they tell about this fringe of trees. As soon as they'd get out of town and get up towards North Beach, out towards where the Presid'o is-hwa^here hen-whentheywalked south down towards Hunter's Point they spoke of A fringe of trees around the Bay area, around San Francisco baysho^e And the keTarAn?^ ike that. And they just formed a green margin around the bay. And the last of those lingered right here at Point San Bruno up til a few years ago five or s^x tC^^"^'^018"^0^^^"0-0^ there, filled in a portion of the bay, and ruined that little bit of bayshore But we photographed it before they ruined it.

cut we ^s^T' sor! of a logical eastern terminus for san Bruno ^ain and it s included in our lecture. Point San Bruno, representing an original piece of bayshore and San Bruno Mountain representing the last Franciscan open country in the world. Okay. does that answer the first question?

Q. Did you say something about the soil differentiation? Yeah I'm glad you asked that. The Marin Peninsula doesn't have the soil differentiation that the Franciscan type country has. See, there's a big band o se ^en me that runs from northwest to southeast in San Francisco.^heGol^ ^zj^^I'r'TT'116"^3"^^^10^^^^^^^ franciscana there. And it went right through Mount Davidson, you havefL- c.cana there. It went right through the old cemeteries and yo^ have sevZl ^eT^^-^11�^^0""10"^ c^'one ofZm"^^^^^ wlld onion' Amum dichlam^ ^ so on So one of the mam things in Franciscan country was this band of serpentine It still Preserved in the Presidio. If we can get that fragment set into a p ant preserve, which I think the army's willing to do, we'll save a piece ofF^S can serpentine. I think the rest of it's all gone, there's no more on DaXT there s no more in the cemeteries. These four cemeteries had both sand and e^-'

pentine in them. Now that was, as I said, the heart of Franciscan country. Now the Franciscan also has red chert. You see lots of outcroppings of chert in Golden Gate Park for example. Big raw cliffs of red chert. And there's a lot of raw red chert down along Shaughnessy Drive, south of Diamond Heights. Then you have the sand-dune flora out here on the ocean strip, and you have pretty good natural Franciscan dune country still. It's not as great as it was up in the Sunset district. But, Fort Funston, while it's completely overgrown with Hot- tentot Fig, it still has a pretty good dune flora. So, we can save these fragments here and there, we can get a pretty good representation of the Franciscan flora. Now, sandstone: San Bruno Mountain's mostly sandstone, and I think sand de- rivatives. Everything that washes down, like towards Colma or down towards Brisbane, is mostly sand-deep blue sand. And out at the west end of Colma Canyon where they cut the road up, there were a couple of pretty good sand dunes there. The flora of San Bruno Mountain says no, these are not sand dunes. I say well, they have a sand-dune flora on them. Well, they're not technically sand dunes. Well, I said, when the wind comes along and picks up sand and piles it into a heap, it's a sand dune. It might not have been white, like these dunes over here. I think it was more tawny. These dunes out here were pure white. The dune at the mouth of Colma Canyon was quite yellow, quite tawny, but it had a good sand-dune flora on it. Particularly Lupinus chamissonis, Chamisso's Lupine, and Lupinus nanus, and Platystemon. A little Platyste- mon's out there on that sand. So, have I forgotten a soil type in there? Serpen- tine, cherts, sand and sandstone. I think that's all of them. Now, if I've forgotten one, we can come back to it. But the serpentine band was the most important one, then it's backed up by chert. Q. There is some serpentine on San Bruno Mountain, isn't there? There is some serpentine, but it's very scarce and it doesn't contain an endemic flora. It's way over here by Pig Ranch. You find it in the San Bruno flora. A little bit of serpentine over here. They hunted serpentine on San Bruno for a long time and they couldn't find it. They finally found a little patch over here but it's so small and so weathered and so covered over I think with other sand, that it doesn't have any endemic plants on it, so it's negligible. I think if that were lost to subdivision down in here somewhere, I don't think we'd be out, I don't think it's a danger point. Soils; okay, what's next? Q. Some of the characteristics of the Franciscan flora. No trees facing the ocean. I left one thing out the other day and I'm kinda glad to get it in here because that was a part of my notes that the San Bruno flora peo-

i �' pie didn't have access to... I know what I wanted to say... When this botanist Behr, that's B-E-H-R-you find him in the flora of San Francisco more than you do in the San Bruno flora-When Behr went walking around, he also climbed the hills. He climbed Twin Peaks and he climbed Sunset Heights. And he pointed out that while Ceanothus thyrsiflorus, the coast Blue Blossom, was a kind of a coastal species (up north of San Francisco and down south, it hangs in on kind of low country, Lagunitas Canyon up in Marin County is full of it, and you find it up along Tomales Bay, and Point Reyes is covered with Ceano- thus thyrsiflorus)... But in San Francisco for some strange reason it crowned all the hilltops. Instead of this thyrsiflorus (well, it's down at Lake Merced too, it wasn't confined to the hilltop), but it's down around Lake Merced and it's up at the Presidio, the type locality is up just north of Lobos Creek in the Presi- dio-and it's still there. But he did point out that while it was generally found down near the ocean and in swales and ravines, near the sea, oddly enough in San Francisco all the hilltops were crowned with coast Blue Blossoms. And I wondered about that for a long time. But I got to Sunset Heights before they subdivided the very summit of the heights, there was still some Ceanothus thyrsiflorus up there. Really high you know. Sand had blown all the way up there from the dunes and there's Tanacetum camphoratum up there and Loni- cera ledebourii, the Coast Honeysuckle, way up on top of the Sunset Heights. They found these things also on Sutro Heights. You can still find remnants, Ceanothus and Garrya eliptica over there; on the north side of Mount Davidson you can still find Sambucus callicarpa, the Red Elderberry, and Ribes malva- ceum, the Franciscan form of the Chaparral Currant. But Behr, in remarking that, gave us a good clue when we got to San Bruno and went up on to the top of the ridge there east of the summit, we named that Blue Blossom Hill right away, because it's covered with Ceanothus thyrsiflorus. Now that, using Behr's data '� from San Francisco, shows us that San Bruno Mountain is clearly Franciscan country. It's got the same Blue Blossom hilltops that San Francisco once had. And these we preserve on San Bruno or we forget about them, you know? Q. In the Santa Cruz Mountains that does not occur? It doesn't fit, no. No, it's a Douglas Fir forest on the Santa Cruz Mountains. There are no mountains down there that are crowned with Blue Blossom, like San Bruno Mountain is crowned with Blue Blossom, but it doesn't have any | forests all around it. If you found a Blue Blossom patch in the Santa Cruz [ Mountains it would have a big forest all around it. I can't think of one summit down there that's crowned that way. I think it's typically Franciscan, and I don't think there's any way out of it. I don't think there's anything like that on the Marin peninsula. I mean I made floral studies over there while I was doing the ---

floral study on San Bruno. I wanted to see if we could sacrifice San Bruno Mountain and say, well we got it all over on the Marin peninsula. My studies show that we can't duplicate it over there. We can't duplicate this at all. Not that flora. It's floristically quite dull over there. Scenically grand, I love it, but flo- ristically not. So, that's Blue Blossom. Tanacetum is up at Sutro Baths. It may be included in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, but that's no reason to sacrifice the one plant on San Bruno Mountain. It's probably emerging now. Did somebody tell me it was gone? That it died? It dies back, it' 11 come out, ours are starting to come out now down in the garden. Q. What are some of the especially Franciscan type I characteristics on San Bruno Mountain, besides the Blue Blossom? I'd say the manzanitas, the huckleberries, all of those things that grow on open sandstone. California is full of these little endemic areas and San Bruno Moun- tain is quite rich in them. The summit itself is an area of endemism. It contains Arctostaphylos imbricata. Kamchatka Point has imbricata, uva-ursi miniature, Vaccinium arbuscula, which is extremely rare, and Maianthemumkamchati- cum. When you get over to Romanzoffia Ravine, you get Romanzoffia there. You get over to Power Line Ridge you've got uva-ursi and imbricata again, plus Coast Huckleberry. All these patches of Coast Huckleberry are sitting on very thin soils and they're the old, old pioneer plants that go back beyond time. And there are a great many areas of those on San Bruno. Now this is almost duplicat- ing the southwest slope of Mount Davidson or the southeast slope of Mount Da- vidson where Arctostaphylos franciscana occurred. You don't have francis- cana native on San Bruno Mountain, but you have Arctostaphylos pacifica there which is the equivalent. And you have the great Manzanita Dike, which is covered with Arctostaphylos imbricata. This is the whole floristic history of the mountain written right there in the plants. And these endemic areas, you know, got to be saved! Now, the subdividers will tell you that they don't have any intention of going up there and subdividing those endemic areas, for heaven sake! They are gonna stick right down there in the saddle area and we' re going to get the whole mountain. But when they subdivide down there it con- centrates people onto the endemic areas. They've got a population of 25,000 there, postulated, and you have the whole Bay Area surrounding the mountain. Daly City, Colma, South City, and Brisbane, and it's going to become a very popular place. And, when they say that they are not going to bother those areas up there, they don't know what they're talking about. The saddle area would bethe area that would give the most recreation to the most people. They could sit down in there and picnic and so on, and only those who are interested in the

mountain area would go up and look at the plants. But if you take the saddle 1 area away, then everybody is going to be concentrated on the endemic areas. And this is going to be very damaging and it's going to require things that we won't find acceptable-putting chain fences around these rare plants and try- \ ing to keep people from making cuttings and ripping them off. It's not gonna be easy no matter which way they play it, but it's gonna be an awful lot easier if they don't build in the saddle area, and concentrate most of the people down there. I wouldn't recommend lawns for the saddle area, but sometimes they can put a mower in there and mow the native grass down and guys can throw fris- bees or play baseball, or what have you. I'm not against that in the saddle area, because, you know, the rare plants aren't there. But the saddle area should take the heat off of the upper mountain. Now I don't care what these people say, they said the same thing for Mount Davidson. They said, "Look at Mount Davidson, it's not spoiled, for heaven sake, there's the whole top up there and it's been left in a natural condition, and blah, blah." Well it hasn't been, it's absolutely and j grossly mutilated. Mount Davidson has been crowded to the last lot they can carve off of the side of it, and the last lots have these huge stony banks in their backyards. Just recently kids have been up on top of the banks throwing rocks down on the houses. Now, whether that land is rocky or not, it someday is going to subside. A mountain like that has to come into a condition of natural repose, and, when it does, all those houses are gonna have what they call problems, and problems are caused by not letting the Earth alone. There is a small area of na- tive plants on Mount Davidson, but the west half of it has been grossly per- verted with Sutro's stupid Eucalyptus trees. He perverted the central mountain chain in the Franciscan zone and he also perverted Sutro Heights out by the CliffHouse. And I think that Sutro Heights probably contained some very, very , valuable native floristic evidence which we'll never know about. And it's the j destruction of these things that later on gives you the idea that you goofed. You say, "Gee-I shoulda gone there and looked at that." Somebody shoulda gone to Sutro Heights and looked at Sutro Heights before Sutro got a hold of it. It was probably one of the great endemic areas in the Franciscan zone, and we' 11 never ; know if anything grows there or not. He's planted it all with this tropical crap. | Then when they get through perverting the country, they hand their pad over to the city and say, "Here, this is your park," andtheysay, "Oh! He's given us this wonderful park!" I'd just tell them to keep it. It's just a jungle of perverted Franciscan land; and to me, it's extremely unappealing because I can't look at ' j it without thinking: "What was there? What did grow there?" We'll never know. Like I say, these apes come from all over and they don't know what | they're doing. They say, "We made the bluff blossom." I say the bluff was blos- I soming before you got here, Jack! Okay that's ... Next question ...

Kindergarten Students Get an Early Butterfly Education

Publisher: Pacifica Tribune
Reporter: Adam Steinhauer

By The time Barbara Kelloy's Portola School kindergarten class has reached the fourth grade, many of the endangered species native to San Bruno Mountain may no longer be there.

With that in mind, Kelley decided to buck the current frend in education of not teaching children about endangered species until the fourth grade, at thie earliest.

Kelley, a longtime Linda Mar resident, took advantage of the near by San Bruno Mountain as a perfect outdoor classroom to culminate a lesson in endangered species.

The mountain is home to the San Bruno Elfin, Mission Blue and San Francisco Silverspot butterflies, as well as the San Francisco Campion flower.

Kelley said she feels children in kindergarten are at an ideal age to learn about endangered species. "They're not ready to be jaded. They're ready to just soak it all in," she explained. "I think that I'm really instilling a love of nature in them."

Kelley is so convinced of this that she currently is putting together, for the use of other kindergarten teachers, a lesson plan and reading list for a unit about endangered species.

The class's field trips to San Bruno Mountain late last month were guided by David Schooley, head of Bay Area Mountain Watch. Bay Area Mountain Watch is an environmental group opposed to the Habitat Conservation Act, which would allow developers to build on the habitats of endangered species as long as part of the habitat is preserved. The group considers the HCA to be a serious threat to wildlife on San Bruno Mountian, according to its literature.

Schooley has been leading hikes on San Bruno Mountain for the last 20 years.

Kelley's class was divided into three groups of nine or 10 students for the trip, with each group going on a different day. The children were driven to a spot near the top of the mountain where they could see many of the valleys, canyons, and communities that surround the mountain. From there, Schooley guided them on a hike. allowing them to see some of the endangered species native to San Bruno Mountain.

But the part of the tour that seemed to impress the children the most, Kelley said, was their lunch break at the Indian shell mound. The mound is a pile of remains of the shellfish Indians collected from the bay to eat. It marks a fairly well preserved Indian habitat, and the children listened attentively to Schooley's account of the Indians' activities in different parts of the area.

Schooley also showed the children otheer archeological finds from tlie area that were used by the region's Indians. "The kids sat right there where the Indians were and ate their lunch," said Kelley.

The mound, one of only three left in the Bay Area, is scheduled to be paved over by a quarry company that owns the land, Kelley said.

Kelley said her students' attentiveness to Schooley's talk and the observat ion of details they showed in the pictures of San Bruno Mountain she had them draw afterwards indicated to her the field trips were successful.

An interesting consequence of the trip, Kelley reported, was the education of many of the children's parents. A number of them, according to Kelley, "had no idea" about the situation on Sa Bruno Mountain.

Hermit of San Bruno Mountain is Evicted

Publisher: San Francisco Chronicle
Reporter: Michael McCabe

After 10 years of diminishing solitude, the hermit of San Bruno Mountain has been evicted from his woodsy shelter because park officials don't consider him natural to the environment.

Dwight, as he is known by hikers and environmentalists in the area, was kicked out of his homemade shelter Thursday and told not to come back.

Eight park rangers and sheriff's officers from San Mateo County swooped down on the site and confiscated most of his belongings and destroyed the camp site, Dwight said yesterday.

"That's It, I'm getting out, no two ways about it." said Dwight, 44, who said his full name is Dwight Vernon Taylor.

"I don't know what my next move is, but I know this is theend. I'm staying here on the mountain for a short time until they return my belongings and I figure things out."

Dwight, a short, wiry Peninsula native with mischievous blue eyes, said he found a written warning on Wednesday from the San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Department posted on his A-frame shelter, Informing him that his campsite was. illegal. He was given 24 hours to vacate, the premises.

He had received a similar warning about a year ago, he said, but it was rescinded when hundreds of friends, and friends of friends, wrote letters to the county protesting: the eviction. He hoped the same thing would happen again.

This time someone from Brisbane apparently took umbrage at the hermit's existence on the north side of San Bruno Mountain and demanded action.

"I received a public complaint about a week ago that this hermit was building a cistern on the side of the mountain, leveling off the land," said David Cristy, director of parks and recreation for San Mateo County. "I decided it was time to have my rangers and the sheriff's department move in and return the area to its natural setting."

Dwight was ticketed for camping, building campfires, and "mutilating" the environment.

"When I saw all those rangers and sheriff's men cutting down treelimbs to clear the way to haul my stuff away, i got myself very peeved," Dwight said. "I sat down in silence for while and watched them, no trusting myself to speak."

Some environmentalists and friends of Dwight's are outraged by the eviction.

"There is nothing unnatural about dwight," said David Schooley, 43, founder of Bay Area Mountain Watch, a group interested in protecting the San Bruno Mountain area from development and other urban threats. "He is a natural resource to the mountain."

Schooley, who has visited Dwight off and on for eight years, said Dwight is very friendly and sociable, and often takes children on nature hikes along the mountainside. "Anyone who has spent any time at all on the mountain knows that Dwight has become a human adjunct to the mountain's healing powers," Schooley said. "It's horrible what's happened."

Dwight said he used to teach music in junior high school until he reached "burnout stage," and left for long hikes across the country. Soon, he said, he discovered he could not stand to live within the confines of a house, with its stale air and restrictions on night star views.

Gradually, he said, he found himself coming more and more to the San Bruno Mountain area, long before it became a park. He lives on $30 a month he gets in dividends from a money market fund. His diet is primarily brown rice he buys in town. Otherwise, he forages for "mountain greens," watercress, miners lettuce and mustard greens.

He says he has made himself immune to the ubiquitous poison oak by eating its leaves at regular intervals.

"I'm a hermit, becaue some people were just born to be hermits," Dwight said, sitting on the side of the moutain yesterday. "But I have always loved visitors. It's like I have loved people too much and that has gotten me in trouble. I've always craved solitude--it gives you an evenness of mood that is not available outside. Time just floats by, nonverbally.

"The destruction that came yesterday may have been a blessing. I was getting too many visitors two or three a week. Now maybe I'll be forced back into greater solitude again.