A Slough Success

The newly-created Bird Island in Yosemite Slough at Candlestick

We’ve got good news about a capital project that is dear to our hearts at CSPF. The California Department of Parks and Recreation has announced completion of Phase I of the Yosemite Slough Wetlands Restoration Project at Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, nearly one year ahead of schedule.

Key elements of the $14.3 million restoration included the removal of existing structures and debris on the north side of the Yosemite Slough canal as well as clean-up of contaminated soils, the creation of seven new acres of seasonal wetlands, and re-vegetation of the site with native plants to increase local biodiversity.

Slough view

Nearly a decade in the planning, the project has been a successful collaboration between public and private partners including the State Coastal Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Board, Bay Area Development Commission, the City of San Francisco, Bay Area Rapid Transit, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 – San Francisco Bay Water Quality Improvement Fund/San Francisco Estuary Partnership, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Barkley Fund and the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

Post-project aerial shot of Yosemite Slough at Candlestick

The next phase of restoration will begin late summer with construction of the north shoreline Bay Trail, expected to be completed by September. Subsequent phases will restore wetlands on the south side of Yosemite Slough and add capital improvements.

If you are interested in learning more about the project or making a donation towards the restoration of the Yosemite Slough wetlands at Candlestick Point SRA, please contact Sara Feldman at (213) 542-2450 or email at sara@calparks.org.

Vandals?! Volunteers to the rescue!

The aftermath. Hard to look at. Photo credit: Christina Vargas

We were very sad when, only days after 160 volunteers spent their Earth Day working in Candlestick Point State Recreation Area with us, we heard that vandals had broken into the park’s community garden and destroyed it.  They ruined gardening tools and thousands of native plants, including some that had been growing for years and were supposed to be planted in the nearby Yosemite Slough in order to help restore the sensitive wetlands.The damage also reversed most of the work done by our Earth Day volunteers.

After the shock wore off (Why?! It’s so horrible!) we realized these vandals shouldn’t win, and we started mobilizing to do something.

Our partners at PG&E, Literacy for Environmental Justice, Virgin America and Oracle all stepped up and agreed to schedule a new volunteer workday to undo the damage that had been done. The workday is taking place tomorrow (Saturday, June 2) and it’s going to be awesome! Volunteers from these organizations will replant native plants, fix community garden boxes and work to remove the old fence around the garden.

Why remove the fence? Because PG&E has generously donated $15,000 of additional funding to build a new, more secure perimeter fence around the garden to help keep something like this from happening again. Read more about that here.

If you’d like to join these awesome volunteers tomorrow morning, we’d love to have you. Please register on our website.

If you’d like to help but can’t come to Candlestick, you can do something right now by donating to the cause. Donations to help fix the garden can be made on our website.  Also be sure to “like” PG&E’s Facebook page, because for every like, they will donate $1 to this project.

Take that, vandals!