Protecting open space, stopping sprawl

Nature isn't just the spectacle of the Sierra Nevada. Our Bay Area shorelines and hills, and farmlands and empty spaces, have varied beauties and vibrant ecosystems, often with rare and endangered species.

For an urban center, the Bay Area has succeeded remarkably at preserving parks, watersheds, and other publicly owned lands. Agriculture has been able to continue even on the urban fringe. Yet even today important parts of our greenbelt are not secure. That's why the Bay Chapter focuses so many efforts on open space and stopping sprawl.

Some of this work has to be done parcel by parcel. In other cases we can rally the political support for a city or a county to enact more general protection for its open spaces.

For example, in Marin County, which over many years has had remarkable success at preserving its open spaces, several countywide efforts are currently under way for further protection of land and advancement of smart development.

• The draft revision of the Marin Countywide Plan has several new protections, and we hope to see several others added before it is completed.
• The Marin County Open Space District is preparing a plan to almost double its protected landholdings.
• A housing activist explains the need for higher-density residential housing and tells how the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative is bringing together the environmental and affordable-housing communities to work for "smart" development.

Livermore is another community that in recent years has successfully staved off sprawl development, largely through ballot-measure campaigns. In addition, the Sierra Club has begun working with the Livermore community to devise strategies for sustainable water use in the agricultural lands of North Livermore outside the Urban Growth Boundary.

In both Marin and Livermore there are important concerns about how environmental protection affects agriculture. The North Livermore article discusses how and why environmentalists need to cooperate with the farming community.

Residents of Moraga, who have for years fought off harmful developments spot by spot, are beginning a ballot-measure campaign to strengthen protection for all Moraga's remaining open spaces.

The Club is engaged in major campaigns to win permanent protection for shoreline lands in Albany and Richmond.

Pittsburg has had some successes in reviving its downtown, but residents are engaged in a challenging effort to get the city to protect its hillsides. This is particularly important because these lands are adjacent to the former lands of the Concord Naval Weapons Station, where the community has the opportunity to create a spectacular world-class park.

We are working to stave off development that could impinge on other parks - a large development at Patterson Ranch in Fremont next to Coyote Hills Regional Park and a quarry in the Sunol Valley within the Sunol/Ohlone Regional Wilderness. In El Cerrito we are working with community members to prevent development of the Willis property and instead to add it to the city's Hillside Natural Area.

San Francisco has no more vast expanses of open lands to be acquired, but the city already owns many parcels that preserve vestiges (or more) of its original habitat. We are working to get the city to adequately finance its Natural Areas Program that takes care of these places and to complete its Significant Natural Resource Management Plan on how to do so.

This Yodeler features two volunteers-of-the-month. Suzanne Jones is a physicist who has shifted her career into the protection of open space, and has shown special leadership in protecting the wild lands of Moraga. Don de Fremery, who in September receives the Club's Oliver Kehrlein Award for outstanding outing leadership, is a trail advocate and hike leader who brings people out to our Bay Area open spaces, leading outings for people at all levels of ability and showing them the needs for protection.

Read about your home town and places you know. Read too about successes in other places and some remarkable volunteers; perhaps they will give you the inspiration or methods to make your own contribution towards preserving open space.

Fire and the environment

In this issue we also feature a pair of articles on a topic of great current concern and with a close relation to open space - fire.

Sierra Club California legislative representative Paul Mason writes of the Club's efforts to fashion state legislation that protects against fire without harming the environment. Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute gives his view of the relationship between fire and the chaparral.