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Half Moon Bay Review
April 24, 2002
 
Speaking up for  Mother Earth

By Emily Wilson

On the coast, it is easy to appreciate the natural beauty of  the surroundings - the beaches, hills, bluffs, and the open space. It  is also easy to take that beauty for granted.

But luckily, here on the coast there are myriad organizations that focus  time, energy, money and talent on preserving the environment.

One of these organizations, Committee for Green Foothills, was started  40 years ago by a group of people, including celebrated writer and Stanford  professor Wallace Stegner, who were worried about the burgeoning sprawl  in Silicon Valley.

"They were visionaries, really," said Zoe Kersteen-Tucker,  executive director for the organization. "

They didn't want to lose the foothills to developers. They decided they  want to be for something rather than against something, so they got busy  going to city council meetings and lobbying to tighten zoning and filing  lawsuits against inappropriate developments."

Ten years after the organization was started, Lennie Roberts, the legislative  advocate for the group, expanded it to protecting the coast as well as  the Santa Clara County foothills.

Earth Day is a wonderful way to draw attention to the environmental movement,  Kersteen-Tucker said. Earth Day, which was started to educate people about  the environment and to mobilize them to work to protect it, will be celebrated  this year on Monday, April 22.

Many activities have been scheduled on the coast to mark the day, from  cleaning up the beach to removing non-native species to a five-day Earth  Day Bay Walk.

Kersteen-Tucker said taking environmental action to a grassroots level,  as is done on Earth Day, is the essence of what the Committee for Green  Foothills does.

"The most exciting thing we do is spawn dedicated, passionate citizens'  groups. We multiply our power by generating citizens' groups that continue  on like Stanford Open Space Association and Citizens for the Tunnel."

The group is well-respected, Kersteen-Tucker said.

"We do our research so when an advocate gets up to speak, we're  not shooting from the hip."

Kersteen-Tucker said she is proud to be a part of the group. "When  I drive down 101 or 280 and look to rural lands, I feel grateful for that  and for the early founders of this group who saw the importance to stand  up for this local environment."

Protecting and preserving those lands and open spaces in the City of  Half Moon Bay is what Half Moon Bay Open Space Trust (HOST) was set up  to do, said HOST President Ellen Koland.

Koland said some of the organization's biggest accomplishments since  it was started in 1997 include the acquisition of open space that runs  adjacent to Francis State Beach and securing $1.5 million in the state  budget to purchase the Ocean Shore Railroad right of way.

"We're in the process of acquiring some space from Bruce Turner,"  said Koland. "There are some complications, but we expect to acquire  a four-acre wetland."

Audrey Rust, president of the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) knows  all about acquiring land.

For the past 15 years Rust has been the president of this organization,  which was established in 1977. Rust, who worked in management and fund-raising  before she headed the land trust, said she saw working at POST as an opportunity  to establish a mission and implement it and to work with a board of directors  that she respected.

Out of the many accomplishments her organization has had in the past  25 years that Rust thinks illustrates this mission is the preservation  of the Cowell Ranch in 1987.

"We placed a conservation easement on it and resold the ranch to  the Giusti family and created a trail that goes out to the blufftops and  you can walk down to the beach.

"It was a very important project said a lot about what we wanted  POST to do," Rust said. "We kept the scenic corridor and viewshed  as people drive down Highway 1, set a city limit on the southern end of  Half Moon Bay so it's much more difficult to create more suburban development,  and we created low-intensity recreational use trails.

"And we wanted to protect traditional agriculture so it could be  sold for farmland value to a local farmer."

Another project Rust said she is proud of is the 7,500 acres of land  surrounding the Pigeon Point Lighthouse acquired by POST last year.

And one she wants everyone to know about is the Rancho Corral de Tierra  property.

"It's 4,200 acres of Montara Mountain. There are plants there that  grow nowhere else in the world. It's a very important piece of property  in every way and we're trying to add it to the Golden Gate National Recreation  Area (GGNRA)."

John Wade worked at POST for almost 20 years before becoming the executive  director of the Pescadero Conservation Alliance, which was founded in  1999.

"We're still very new and still in the formative stages," Wade  said. "The inspiration (for the group) was a recognized need for  land restoration and stewardship with public and private and nonprofit  landowners, along with the need for local environmental education so people  understand the local environment more."

The big projects that the alliance is working on now include gully erosion  and invasive plant eradication. A lot of progress has been made on the  Mountain Camp in Gazos Creek, Wade said.

"There has been an increasing level of cooperation with pampas grass  eradication with some people doing it on their own. And we have raised  the level of awareness about St. John's wort, getting it on people's radar  screens."

Susan Danielson is the Northern Program Director for Save Our Shores,  an organization that does policy research and citizen action to protect  the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. One of its biggest accomplishments,  she thinks, was the year it was established in 1978 and prevented offshore  oil development.

"It was a significant precedent," she said.

Locally, she thinks one of the most important accomplishments was opening  up a local office five years ago.

"A regional office in the northern area of the sanctuary gives us  the opportunity to stay connected with important environmental issues  and to meet the community's needs," she said.

Danielson sees Earth Day as raising awareness of the choices we make  and the responsibility we have to the environment.

"What we do on land affects our oceans and this gives us the opportunity  to make the connection," she said.

Danielson said her organization is recognized as the leader of beach  cleanups on the coast. In a partnership with Pescadero High School, the  group has cleaned the same site every month for the past five years. This  means they are able to gather statistical information on the sources of  marine debris.

"The chronic offender is plastic. It's a significant threat to wildlife  in general. Everything from birds to sea turtles. To a sea turtle, a plastic  bag floating around in the ocean resembles a jellyfish which is their  delicacy of choice."

Another big offender, said Danielson, is cigarette butts since the filters  are made of plastic and don't decompose.

"Anything that's on the highway on one good, windy, stormy day goes  in the ocean," Danielson said, adding that a lot of people get satisfaction  from beach cleanups since they are able to see the results of their work.

 "We get a high demand," she said. "Last year we did two  or more a month. Folks can make the connection that the way you behave  on land affects coastal waters."

That's a connection Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club's Coastal  Program and a public interest environmental lawyer, made long ago.

Earth Day is a chance to emphasize the importance of the environment  for the wildlife and habitat and peace of mind it brings. But he added  that it also provides a tangible economic benefit.

"The coast is the economic engine of California tourism," he  said.

Massara, who worked for the environmental group Surfriders before becoming  director of the Sierra Club's coastal program 10 years ago, said that  he travels up and down the coast working on about 100 issues annually  having to do with coastal access, development and pollution.

"The pace is relentless," he said. "There is a Wavecrest  in every town."

In spite of the frenetic pace of his job, Massara is not complaining.

"I have a great career for a surfer," he chuckled.


Page last updated May 6, 2002 .

 

 

Copyright 2001 Committee for Green Foothills