Nature in the City tends our common backyards

Nature in the City tends our common backyards , December 2006

By Erica Brown

Overlooking Cole Valley, with Tank Hill just above, former National Park Service ecologist Peter Brastow sits in his home office, planning events for Nature in the City––a group he founded last year “to conserve and restore the nature and biodiversity of San Francisco and connect people with nature where they live.”

The focus of Nature in the City is local, emphasizing citizen responsibility. Ecological sustainability, says Brastow, “isn’t achieved only by writing checks for the preservation of the Alaskan Tundra.” Indeed, Brastow and the hundreds of Nature in the City volunteers believe the front lines of the fight for the environment are here in our back yard The battlegrounds are open spaces across the city, including several near the Haight.

To concentrate on these areas closest to the Haight, Brastow, a former National Park Service ecological restoration specialist, recently created a subdivision of Nature in the City called the Haight-Ashbury Stewards, and is busy getting the group off the ground. He hopes to have five to 10 regular volunteers for weekly outings by early December. The group would plant locally grown native flora to restore habitats near Tank Hill, Golden Gate Park’s Oak Woodlands, Whiskey Hill, Buena Vista Oak Woodlands, Twin Peaks, Mt. Sutro––and also help tend the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Councils’ native plant nursery by Kezar Stadium.

“The Haight-Ashbury Stewards is brand new,” said Brastow. “While we’ve had a few volunteers come out one Saturday per month over the last few months, it’s been erratic, and Saturdays are erratic for me. Thus, I’m going to start, in coordination with Rec & Parks, Natural Areas Program, UCSF and the HANC native plant nursery, going out every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

“This [schedule] will allow me to create a real sustainable rhythm and engagement with the sites and the volunteers. While some folks may ask ‘Why Wednesdays?,’ the Presidio Park Stewards have had incredible success with their Wednesday volunteer program since 1994. Think of all the folks who work out of home, are students, are in transition––people want to get out of the house and feel like they’ve made a contribution.”

In November, Nature in the City participated in the Buena Vista Park tree planting, a Mount Sutro trail restoration, and many other natural rehabilitation projects outside of the Haight area.

Nature in the City also conducts ecological lectures and advocacy programs, and maintains a presence at Board of Supervisors meetings. The group works with a variety of organizations, as the natural areas it serves are not all governed by a single governmental agency. The Mount Sutro habitat, where the Stewards recently worked to restore a historic Depression Era trail, is under the control of UCSF. UCSF does not employ an ecological restoration specialist, instead supplying capital for projects in the Mount Sutro Open Space Preserve and relying on the efforts of volunteer organizations such as the Stewards. Buena Vista Park, meanwhile, falls under the jurisdiction of the Recreation and Parks Department; as such, during the monthly first Saturdays program at Buena Vista Park, the Haight-Ashbury Stewards will work on the recently passed Natural Areas Plan (NAP), which it lobbied for strongly.

The NAP, which was formally approved in August of 2006, not only aims to preserve and protect but also intends to restore natural areas in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Plan has met with a certain amount of resistance for a number of reasons, among those the intention to restore through the removal or reduction of non-native ‘weeds.’ The Plan cites non-native eucalyptus and cypress trees as well as ivy and blackberry growth as threatening to native oak trees.

Brastow’s organization took some heat for supporting the plan. However, Nature in the City transcends the often-nasty local political scene, as it invites neighbors to actively participate in, interact with and “own” the local ecology.