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The Trail Companion
Winter 2001
A Brief History of Bay Area Parks and Open
Spaces
Part 2. From the 1960s through the Present
Day
...continued.
Official hostility
proved a shot in the arm to a movement already
skilled in crisis conservation, galvanizing legal and
political resistance that blunted the assault and to
an extent turned it back. Occasionally extremism met
with extremism, as in the semi-war between Earth
First and corporate raider-controlled timber
companies in the north coast redwoods. Whether their
actions did more to help or hurt their cause is
difficult to assess.
The new atmosphere
made additional progress on the national level
difficult, as the paucity of new parks in the 1980s
and after demonstrates. Acquisitions in this era and
after included Sweeney Ridge in San Mateo County
(1,100 acres), added to the Golden Gate National
Recreation Area in 1984, 2980 acres of the former
Cascade Ranch, added to Año Nuevo State
Reserve in 1986, the San Francisco Maritime National
Historic Park, separated from the Golden Gate
National Recreation Area in June, 1988, Eastshore
State Park, created by the state legislature in 1992,
and Edgewood County Park, established by the San
Mateo County Board of Supervisors in 1993. More
notable than these was the designation of the huge
Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 1992,
extending thrity miles out to sea and 276 miles along
the California coastline from Marin County in the
north to San Luis Obispo County in the south.
This period was one of
consolidation more than advance, of building on what
had been accomplished in smaller ways, such as
focusing on the quality and infrastructure of lands
previously preserved. Activism was supplemented and
sometimes supplanted by volunteerism. The founding of
the Trail Center in 1983 to provide and promote
quality trails in the parks of San Mateo, Santa
Clara, Santa Cruz, Alameda and San Francisco counties
typifies the growing importance of volunteer
work.
Bayland Restoration
In 1981 Save the Bay started publicizing the high
level of toxic contamination in bay water, sediment
and wildlife, highlighting the continuing need for
pollution control and fresh water inflow from the
delta. The inflow problem began to be addressed by
the defeat of the Peripheral Canal project at the
ballot box in 1982, and by the Racanelli state court
decision of 1986, in which the State Water Resources
Council was ordered to consider the need for bay and
delta estuary protection by regulating the amount of
water diverted from the delta and its feeder river
systems.
Wetland restoration
work also continued to bear fruit. In 1988
environmental groups began succeeding in efforts to
slow the issuing of permits that allowed filling of
the bay's seasonal wetlands, and in 1990 Save the Bay
coordinated a broad-based coalition in drafting a
comprehensive San Francisco Bay restoration agenda.
The following year saw the Fish and Wildlife
Service's purchase of the 1500-acre Cullinan ranch in
order to restore it to healthy salt marsh habitat,
culminating a nine-year battle led by Save the Bay
and others to preserve the property.
The remainder of the
1990s saw continued progress. In 1994 the 300-acre
Sonoma Baylands wetlands restoration project began,
restoring wetlands using clean mud dredged from the
Port of Oakland. That same year the Cargill Company
(successor to Leslie Salt) sold 10,000 acres of North
Bay salt ponds to the State, launching the largest
coastal wetlands restoration project on the West
Coast. In January 1997 the Peninsula Open Space Trust
bought 1,626 acres of Bair Island on the Peninsula
from Redwood Shores Properties and its parent
company, the Japanese firm Kumagai Gumi Co. Ltd.,
capping a decades-long campaign by many organizations
to preserve Bair Island as open space. Other
restoration projects continue to go forward.
But the 1990s also
brought major challenges, like the Bush
Administration's attempt in 1991 to redefine 50% of
the nation's wetlands out of existence. In response
The Campaign to Save California Wetlands was formed,
co-founded by Save the Bay. In 1995 Governor Pete
Wilson proposed eliminating the thirty year old San
Francisco Bay Conservation and Development
Commission, which required a grassroots campaign to
defeat. Most recently, San Francisco International
Airport has proposed an enormous new filling
operation to extend its runway into the bay, offering
to mitigate the impact by buying south bay Cargill
saltponds and restoring them as wetlands In 1999 Save
the Bay and other organizations launched a campaign
opposing the project.
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