Posted under government & local birds
[Burrowing Owl in Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park, photo by Bob Lewis]
The Contra Costa Times has an article about the creation of burrowing owl habitat at the “Albany Plateau”, an area of landfill on the waterfront near Golden Gate Fields. The project is a mitigation for destruction of burrowing owl habitat to create athletic fields a half mile south, for use by Albany and Berkeley. The State said that since the cities were taking away burrowing owl habitat in one place, they had to provide it somewhere else. Even though habitat creation is always pretty iffy, a bunch of environmental groups went along with the plan: they all realized that the cities are indeed short of athletic fields, and that the poor habitat at the Albany Plateau (hard, rocky soil over a landfill) could be turned into valuable habitat for some species, even if the burrowing owls don’t move in. Sounds like a success story: Athletic fields get developed, habitat gets developed, everybody’s happy, right? Wrong. Read on to see who is unhappy.
“The concept of making these areas of landfill, a dump, into preservation habitat where people cannot go, where fencing keeps people out, is really an insidious part of what passes as environmentalism these days,” said Jill Posener, a Berkeley resident who walks her dogs at the plateau. “It’s really sad.”
Right, first we eliminate all of the original burrowing owl habitat — every little bit of it in the East Bay. The few remaining burrowing owls — a species of “special concern” in California — move to the marginal land available to them (including Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley, you can read a recent blog entry about the problems they’re having there). And now, according to people like Posener, it’s “really sad” that we don’t eradicate them in those places too.
And here’s another one, an actual quote from the article: “I don’t think that there was any real, scientific evidence that there was an impact on the bird, and accordingly there was no real need to mitigate anything,” Clay Larson, a member of Albany’s Waterfront Committee, said by e-mail.
Just to be clear: Larson is claiming that there is no “scientific evidence” that burying the owl’s burrows in topsoil and building a sports field on top has “an impact on the bird.” Perhaps he thinks they’re like moles, happy to live forever underground. The article also says “Larson said he is concerned that Berkeley approved the project in 2005, before the owl was seen in 2006.”
I know something about this issue, since it was under consideration at my first meetings as a City of Berkeley Parks and Recreation Commissioner a few years ago. For one thing, I know Larson is full of, um, carp: owls were seen at the site before 2005, and people came to our Parks & Rec Committee meetings offering to take us out and show them to us if we were in doubt.
I have a bit of sympathy for dog walkers who are used to using the Albany Plateau: there are very few off-leash dog areas in the East Bay — and the Albany Plateau was never officially one of them, by the way — and I’m sure it’s hard to lose one of them. But couldn’t the reporter have found someone reasonable to represent the dog people, not just a screw-the-owls jerk like Posener? And I don’t even know what to say about Clay, other than to say he is both deluded (if he thinks owls aren’t affected by having their burrows buried) and a liar (for falsely claiming that owls weren’t documented at the field site until 2006).
Oooh, some people make me so angry. But at least the project is proceeding.
Clay Larson on 14 May 2008 at 6:29 pm #
I got an email suggesting that I check out this blog and the post, “Ridiculous whining about Burrowing Owl habitat creation.” I assume that the post was written by the blog owner, a Mr. Phil Price. Let me introduce myself. I am Clay Larson, the fellow who is “full of, um, carp.” (I wasn’t sure whether “carp” here was a typo or an attempt to be clever; it’s dumb in either case).
Mr. Price seems to be mostly upset with my observation that the environmental studies done by Berkeley never really demonstrated that the Gilman St. sports fields project had much of an impact on the burrowing owl. In response, he makes the hysterical claim that occupied burrows were covered with topsoil during the construction of the fields. Never happened Phil. Understanding what did happen requires a little background.
Berkeley’s Initial Study for the sports fields acknowledged a previous, undocumented sighting of a burrowing owl in the area. The proposed mitigation was simply to conduct surveys (three years) to determine whether the bird was actively using the site. This strategy was formally approved by the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG). Berkeley conducted two nesting surveys (2004, 2005) at the sports field site and no owls were observed. At this point in time there was no scientific evidence that the bird was actively using the site. Despite this, in the Fall of 2005, Berkeley adopted the alternative mitigation (BIO-1A), which called for the establishment of the habitat at the Albany plateau.
Mr. Price’s observation that a “bunch of environmental groups went along with the plan” seriously understates the role of these groups. In fact, they authored the plan. As described in a July 13, 2005, City of Berkley staff report, the Albany-plateau mitigation project was first proposed by the “non governmental proponents” (primarily the Sierra Club) who worked to “implement the project independently from the CEQA process for the Gilman site.” A subsequent, July 20, 2005 staff report, which recommended the plateau alternative, noted that the “understandings of the non-governmental project proponents had advanced sufficiently to permit the proposed added mitigation.” So the record is pretty clear here and it shows that: 1) Berkeley approved the offsite mitigation before there was any formal survey data showing that were any owls at the site, and 2) the offsite mitigation plan was created by te environmental groups (again primarily the Sierra Club) independent of the CEQA process.
A 2006 Winter survey finally observed a single owl. One view here is that the 2006 survey justified the preemptive offsite mitigation. This is the view articulated by the sports field project manager, Roger Miller, in the West County Times article. I’m not sure that this is the case. A critical question is whether the project site was being actively used by the owl. According to the CDFG, migration stop-overs or brief refuge stops don’t constitute active use. That’s why a single sighting of an owl would not result in CDFG recommending mitigation. Again, Berkeley conducted two nesting surveys (2004, 2005) at the sports field site and no owls were observed. The 2006 winter survey found one owl, but here it’s important to note that there was almost no evidence that the bird was actively using the site. The survey report indicated that there were very few signs of burrowing owl occupation (scat, pellets, and feathers), and in fact none was observed during the initial den search. Finally, a subsequent Spring 2007 survey again revealed no owls. All this suggests that the site was not being actively used by any owls.
There are other factors to be considered. It’s is appropriate to consider the Gillman St. sports fields in the context the entire East Shore State Park project. The park includes burrowing owl habitat enhancements at the Meadow (Phases I and II), and the park general plan calls for artificial owl burrows at the Albany Bulb. Moreover, the new sports fields, at least the natural grass portions, provide some foraging habitat for the owl. Taken together, I don’t think that there was any need to mitigate for the Burrowing Owl because of the sports fields. If we couldn’t get CDFG to agree with this (in fact they were never asked), or if we simply wanted to do something nice for the owl, we should have permanently preserved land where viable populations of burrowing owls actually exist (e.g., Eastern Alameda County).
Mr. Price closes his post by noting his anger about all this. I don’t think that anger is appropriate here. The question of how to manage parklands involves a difficult dichotomy. Do we create opportunities for recreation or do we just fence the place off to protect habitat? Albany lost half its upland open space for recreational access. Many who use the area are justifiably disappointed about this loss. It would be easier to accept all this if the habitat actually did anything for the owl. In fact, the Albany plateau has no value as an owl habitat. Mr. Price obliquely acknowledges this fact with his comment about “the poor habitat at the Albany Plateau (hard, rocky soil over a landfill) could be turned into valuable habitat for some species, even if the burrowing owls don’t move in. Sounds like a success story.” Here, Mr. Price is also suggesting a new spin, namely that the real purpose of the Albany habitat was to provide general habitat value. This is nonsense! The Berkeley City Council approved the habitat as a “required” mitigation for one species, the Western Burrowing Owl. Albany (the lead agency for the habitat construction) approved the habitat for the same reasons. The success or failure of the habitat will be judged based on its ability to provide habitat for the owl. As required by law, Albany has hired a qualified biologist to monitor the habitat for five years. Many in Albany will be interested in following the biologist’s reports.
Clay Larson
Albany
P.S.
Mr. Price also had some harsh comments about another person quoted in the recent West County Times article, Jill Posener, calling her “screw-the-owls jerk.” I don’t know Ms. Posener, but I found she has an interesting website, “Jill’s Rant’s and Raves” (http://jillposener.blogs.com/jill_rants_and_raves). The site is very entertaining and informative. Readers of Mr. Price’s blog might find it to be a refreshing change of pace.
admin on 15 May 2008 at 11:35 am #
Clay,
Thanks for writing.
“Carp” was not a typo.
I never made the “hysterical claim” that occupied burrows were covered up to make the sports fields. Instead, I was ridiculing your statement, quoted in the Contra Costa Times article, that covering up burrows, and replacing burrowing owl habitat with athletic fields, might not have an impact on the owls. Come on, how could it not have an impact on the owls?
In 2004 and earlier, birders used to go out to the Gilman Street site and see burrowing owls quite regularly. In fact, Berkeley’s burrowing owls report notes that “The CEQA Initial Study found historical sightings of burrowing owl by qualified persons at the southwestern portion of the Gilman site as recently as March 21, 2004, which triggered burrowing owl protocol surveys for three years. The presence of owls was not found during two summer surveys, but a winter survey found a single foraging owl on numerous occasions in January 2006 in the southeast area of property.” I’m sure you know that burrowing owls were seen repeatedly at the property before 2006, which is why you emphasize the lack of “scientific” evidence and the failure to find the owl in “formal” surveys. Owls used the site regularly, though not heavily, for years prior to 2006; it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
I also don’t think you have the facts right about the motivations for mitigation. Berkeley’s report says: “Because burrowing owls are a California Species of Concern, development projects that impact the owls and their habitat are subject to the jurisdiction of the California State Department of Fish & Game, which use a set of guidelines called the Burrowing Owl Protocols for ascertaining appropriate mitigations. Under the protocols, the Gilman project may either set aside appropriate habitat area within the project boundaries or identify an appropriate off-site mitigation. The protocols require a mitigation area of at least 6.5 acres of appropriate habitat per presence of single owl or pair of owls (foraging or nesting) to be protected permanently as conservation land.”
See there, where it says “…the protocols require…” mitigation for the presence of even a single owl, whether foraging or nesting? It may be true that the environmental groups came up with a specific proposal, but it is not true that mitigation could be avoided.
I do not agree, as you say I do, that the Albany Plateau will have no value for burrowing owl habitat, I only say that creating habitat for a specific species is often chancy and that there’s no guarantee that the owls will move in. Considering that they are eking out a living for part of the year next to the riprap in Berkeley’s Cesar Chavez Park, a mile away, I’d say they have a chance at the Albany Plateau. But it’s no guarantee.
I also never said or suggested that “the real purpose of the Albany habitat was to provide general habitat value.” What I said is that the plateau should provide general habitat value and that environmental groups recognize this.
As for being angry, yeah, you’re damn right I’m angry. I’m angry at people putting so little value on the remaining shoreline plants and animals in the Bay Area that they object to trying to preserve the little bits that we have left. If you had things your way, Clay, habitat used by a variety of plants and animals, including threatened burrowing owls, would have been destroyed, without any mitigation anywhere.
I’m angry at people who belittle environmentalists just because they, the belittlers (if that’s a word) don’t care about our issues. They sure expect us to care about their issues.
And I’m especially angry at people who say things that aren’t true in order to advance their aims. (By the way, I object to this even when the people who aren’t telling the truth are on my side; see my posts about the Light Brown Apple Moth).
And, finally, I share some of Ms. Posener’s dismay (expressed on her website) at the loss of the art and general funkiness at the Albany Bulb. But her quote in the CC Times shows a …meanness of spirit is the only way I can put it. She’s disappointed in having an area where she’s used to walking her dogs taken off-limits to her, but why suggest that environmentalists have some nefarious motive? She put her quote out there, so I’m putting my criticism out there.
–Phil
Jill Posener on 15 May 2008 at 5:49 pm #
Hey Phil
“Mean spirited’ is a catchy phrase. We all know what it means as it is hurled at ‘conservatives’ all the time. It’s a nasty little phrase. It’s also a little overused. But perhaps ‘conserving’ is what I am about, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that this insult would come my way.
I think others have a far greater technical grip on the specifics of the ‘mitigation’ and the political games played over the Eastshore State Park than I do, but I have a pretty good grasp of what has happened here in our parks over the last ten years, as a daily user (with and without dogs) of the East Bay Park system. It’s easy to come up with an epithet like your description of me as a ’screw the owls jerk’. But the reality is that I have a far more nuanced approach to how our urban open spaces should try to provide as many options as possible for human beings to interact with their ‘natural’ surroundings. I just happen to think that a sort of unyielding misanthropy has overtaken some groups who claim to be the preservers and protectors of the ‘environment’ ‘wildlife’, ‘nature’ ‘habitat’. But seem to forget that we are a part of the ecology.
Fencing and closing off areas now seems to be the rule rather than the exception. One of the beauties of the Albany Plateau was that even without any fencing, or big brother signage, dog owners kept their pets out of the mudflats, and the ‘natural’ concrete and rebar hillside facilitated that protection. It has become a common attack on dog owners - to accuse us of not being sensitive to habitat, to wildlife, to birds. It’s hardly worth arguing. It has become the conventional wisdom.
Many of my most vivid memories of the Plateau are without my dogs, hours when I would photograph the area, watching the meadow sway, curious about the bumble bees who had begun to show up in great numbers there, watching the swallows and the red winged blackbirds, the hummingbirds and finches, butterflies, lizards and snakes. Watching the raptors and hawks float above the gopher holes. Nature - up close and personal. It’s what we all seem to say we want, yet those who ‘make’ and ‘administer’ parks don’t trust us to be stewards of our own urban open space.
I was part of a small group that included the late and dearly missed Jean Siri who would meet at the park to pull the encroaching yellow star thistle from the Plateau and pile it carefully where staff could come to remove it. There is no more thistle there - I’m glad to have been part of that little band.
I feel I’ve done more to conserve, to preserve, to protect and to document one of the most compelling places in the East Bay than all the park ‘managers’ put together. If that experience makes me question the motives of people whose agenda is not based in the provision of parks for people, but in the presumption that we are unable to be stewards of our own urban areas - then I believe I have the right and maybe even the obligation to do so.
admin on 15 May 2008 at 6:56 pm #
Jill,
Thanks for writing.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that you are politically conservative, and didn’t realize that “mean-spirited’ is a codeword for that. I’m sure you’re not politically conservative.
Your quote in the paper was “The concept of making these areas of landfill, a dump, into preservation habitat where people cannot go, where fencing keeps people out, is really an insidious part of what passes as environmentalism these days.” If the last clause after the comma clause had been, for example, “puts too high a value on birds and too low a value on people and dogs” I would have just shrugged it off as the statement of someone who doesn’t share my values; different strokes for different folks, we’ll see you on the lobbying floor. But instead, you stick in this comment on “what passes as environmentalism these days”, as though a real environmentalist wouldn’t prevent human and dog access to an area in order to save threatened owls.
It would be great if we could just vote to make human impacts negligible to wildlife: “everybody raise your hand if you agree that walking in an area and walking your dogs in an area will have no effect on wildlife. Everybody agreed? Great, problem solved.” But it doesn’t work that way. Environmentalists didn’t decide that some kinds of wildlife are incompatible with some kinds of human uses; that’s just the way nature works. If we want to conserve certain kinds of habitats and animals, we can’t let in everybody who wants to use them.
Humans have access to the vast majority of the area Berkeley and Albany — it’s all covered with houses and streets and lawns and sidewalks and stores and warehouses, and the native ecosystem of the area is mostly gone. In the upland areas this isn’t necessarily tragic, because the regional parks in the hills, and undeveloped areas east of the hills, still give lots of upland habitat…although the Alameda whipsnake is endangered, the Berkeley kangaroo mouse is believed to be extinct, and there are plenty of other upland endemic species in plenty of trouble. But on the waterfront, which has mostly been developed or enormously altered all the way around the bay, there are just these little fragments of remaining habitat, and a loss of diversities and ecological richness that I, and many others, do find tragic. We’d like to at least hold on to what we have left.
I think it’s interesting that you describe the Albany Bulb as an “urban area”; to me, it is one of the very few sites near the Bay that is not urban. If you think of the Bulb as just a particularly pleasant urban environment, like a really nice street, then I can see why you don’t like the idea of excluding people from it. But I don’t see it that way.
Let’s see, what else did you say… Yes, of course you do have a right to question the motives of people whose agenda is not based on the provision of “parks for people.” But you call excluding people from a small plot of land to attempt to preserve an endangered species “insidious”, and suggest that the people who are doing it aren’t doing it for legitimate reasons. Don’t expect us environmentalists to agree, or to let your insult pass without comment.
If my characterization of you as having a “screw-the-owls” attitude is unfair, tell me why and I’ll retract it. But nothing in your comment suggests that you have any sense whatsoever that it’s worth sacrificing even a small amount of human use in order to try to save the owls.
Moving on. You say “It has become a common attack on dog owners - to accuse us of not being sensitive to habitat, to wildlife, to birds. It’s hardly worth arguing. It has become the conventional wisdom.” True enough, but look at your own quote and your own comment. It sure looks like you’re not being sensitive to habitat, to wildlife, to birds. I 100% agree that this attitude does not apply to all dog owners, and probably does not always apply to you, but it does apply to enough dog owners, enough of the time, that most natural areas around the Bay are heavily impacted by dogs.
But as a matter of fact, your dog ownership is almost completely incidental — I would have been just as offended by your comment if you were just someone who loved to stroll on the plateau, without a dog. It’s your attitude that owls aren’t worth the loss of human use, and that anyone who thinks they are is acting “insidiously” and that this just “passes” for environmentalism, that pisses me off. Your dog has nothing to do with it.
–Phil
Mackenzie Sowers on 17 Jul 2008 at 3:02 pm #
I think all three of the above commenters want similar things. If common ground could be found, perhaps progress would be made.
There is a general wish for the world to be a nice place to live in, and Ideally, Humans and burrowing owls can coexist and harmonize. I actually truely believe they can, if there weren’t too many humans. It can be hard, in this day, to trust the general populous to be a part of the enviroment. I think that with so many people living seperated, with their computers and cement fortresses, and harsh cleaner, as well as video games, T.V., and general sensless comsumption, that many people simply do not know how to respect nature. People do let their dogs kill birds and shit places without cleaning up, and people also pour dirt in holes and harrass the ducks. Killing birds and shitting would be fine if it was a wild animal, but there are a disproportionate amount of domesticated dogs. It simply is a problem.
There are people like Jill (and you, and even myself) who do not cause a problem. I wish more people were like that. But most aren’t hence the fences.
I’m not advocating fences, either, because I feel that that just exacerbates the afore mentioned problem.
I feel you are missing the point I see Jill making, which is that it was a LANDFILL. Come on. I don’t mean to be sarcastic or whatever you call this, but isn’t that just insult to injury- “We’ve developed most of the land everywhere and over consume and then spew the waste everywhere, so we are going to turn a land fill into a conservation area.” ?
On the other hand, it is only a small area and there are other places to watch the grass wave in the wind. I wish there were other places for the birds to live too.
I’m not sure of my opinion here, just to be clear. You both make compelling points. On one hand, people should interact with the environment as it is, without fences, and on the other hand, most people suck. Its hard to post a sign saying “keep out, unless you don’t suck.” I suppose the thing to do would be to educate people. I’ll admit I don’t hardly know anything about birds, and the first I’ve learned of the burrowing owl came from some peripherally related research earlier today, unless you’d count a movie poster I saw once.
If environmentalism was something people cared even more about studying, out of love instead of guilt, then maybe people would know how to coexist with owls, and avoid their burrows, the same way some people know not to pick up a baby bird or an egg because they’ll leave their scent on it. But most people seem to not even know that.
But education is a lot harder than fences.
P.S. We are talking about the Plateau not the bulb. The bulb without people would be a very sad thing indeed. I am significantly more indifferent to the plateau, if only because I’ve never spent time there.
Joe on 06 Feb 2010 at 6:20 pm #
Personally I found all your comments right on. The 2 people you criticized did not actually address your points and I agree that the Clay guy actually proved your point with continued disingenuousness. I think the last commentor, though well-intentioned, was really off-base on their points about it being former landfill and about fencing.
Realize this prob won’t get posted b/c I’m not including my email, just wanted to say it’s all pretty clear to this reader.
admin on 08 Feb 2010 at 11:25 pm #
Thanks, Joe!