wildlife

What Went Wrong at Cotoni Coast Dairies?

Someone new on the scene recently asked me to explain the history of what went wrong at Cotoni Coast Dairies. After many, many years, the property still isn’t being managed for wildlife or public safety, and it still isn’t open to the public. As a prelude to this, I urge readers to read my essay on how the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) came to manage the property in the first place…a curious story, indeed. This essay compliments that prior essay with more details, especially since BLM took over managing the property. Soon, I’ll be writing the third in this series with suggestions about what is needed to improve this unfortunate situation.

Years of On the Ground Nothing, or Worse

Since its purchase for conservation, Cotoni Coast Dairies has a history of very little stewardship and management. Trust for Public Land purchased the property in 1998 and held it until 2014. During that time, managers working for the Trust for Public Land did almost nothing to maintain the property. Occasionally, someone would show up to clear some anticipated future trail. For instance, TPL contractors extensively cleared riparian vegetation along Liddell Creek, chainsawing decades-old willow trees that shaded endangered fish habitat and provided cover for the endangered California red-legged frog. They argued that the clearance was along an ‘existing road,’ and they started putting this trail on early maps as a favored future public access point. (The trail later appeared on BLM’s maps, but federal wildlife protection agency personnel demanded otherwise, so the trail disappeared from plans.) Otherwise, TPL let fences, gates, and culverts rust away, roads and trails erode, weeds spread, and fuels build up creating hazardous conditions for future wildfires.

Eight years ago, BLM took over management of Cotoni Coast Dairies, and those same patterns largely continued. Early on, BLM staff constructed a new trail, carving through nests of state-listed sensitive wildlife without required State consultation. Like TPL, BLM staff have either overlooked erosion issues along roads or graded long abandoned ‘existing roads’ (aka ‘future trails’) with uncannily similar detrimental impacts to rare fish and amphibians. Meanwhile, terrible weeds and immense wildfire risks continued to spread across the property. The reason BLM staff have given for such poor stewardship: ‘we don’t have an approved plan.’ That changed, but management hasn’t…except for one new stretch of cattle fence and subset of future trails being created mainly by volunteers. The trails and fence came before any work on invasive species or wildfire mitigation, so we sadly sense BLM staff priorities have been directed away from conservation towards recreational access.

Decades of Funky Planning and Community Engagement

Staff from both TPL and BLM have sporadically spent a bit of time working on poor planning processes or participating in largely perfunctory public meetings about property management at Cotoni Coast Dairies. In the year 2000, TPL convened and facilitated a Community Advisory Group (CAG) to advise on guidelines meant to be used by future managers. A few of us on the CAG were asked to provide feedback about the biological portion of those guidelines, but we were unable to improve the largely cursory and incomplete biological assessments used to guide future property management. It is unclear if those guidelines have ever been used by BLM, or if TPL even cares.

BLM has done little to inventory the property, so it has very poor information with which to plan its management. Like TPL, BLM staff have shunned offers to improve biological survey data and so, as with the TPL plans, BLM’s plans have overlooked species and ecosystems that are easily identified and/or previously catalogued by reputable sources. This alienates the conservation community including the wealth of well-trained scientists that this region enjoys.

Instead of the long series of TPL’s CAG meetings, BLM staff showed up for a single community-engagement-style meeting convened and facilitated by the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County. That meeting surprisingly and very oddly focused on weighing pros and cons of parking lot locations, but it was never clear why public input was sought or what became of it afterwards. In the midst of this, an outside funder parachuted in hundreds of thousands of dollars so that several local organizations could mount a seemingly ‘grassroots’ Monument Campaign.

Monument Ahoy

In 2015, The Sempervirens Fund led the “Monument Campaign,” a fast-paced, highly scripted, well-funded effort to organize rallies and letter writing to show public support for National Monument designation of Cotoni Coast Dairies. In what is increasingly common “fake news,” the bulk of the Monument Campaign messaging was about opening the property for public use, while in fact Monument designation is more about improving conservation of the property…which would typically increase limitations on public access. This nonsense was compounded by campaign organizers’ refusal to address how designation would increase deed restriction protections already in place from TPL. Furthermore, organizers dismissed concerns about managing the anticipated influx of visitors drawn to something called a National Monument. How important the Monument Campaign was in Obama’s designation is unclear, but the divisions in the community were deep and lasting. Organizers were successful in coalescing well-meaning but very poorly informed people whose nonsensical byline was “Monument designation means my family will be able to visit!” On the other hand, there was a surprisingly politically diverse coalition equipped with well-informed questions and concerns that were never addressed. After that local experience, it is difficult for me to believe that any political faction is immune from using scripted ‘truthiness,’ hype, or even lies when they feel those tools necessary in attracting popular support for secret agendas. Unsurprisingly, leaders of the ephemeral Monument Campaign movement have since disappeared from involvement, leaving the aftermath for the real, long-term grassroots organizations to deal with, and we have yet to experience any conservation benefit of Monument designation.

Pop Up Trail Plans, Abandoned

As the Monument Campaign launched in 2015, BLM issued a proposal for the property’s first public access trail, aka the “Laguna Trail,” in an expedited environmental review process that showed our community how poorly equipped BLM staff were to adequately plan for the property. BLM staff relied on old, insufficient biological inventories for their analysis, failed to survey for endangered species, and did not include any analysis of how the trail would address social equity concerns in providing for visitor use. BLM staff did not respond to the many concerns raised by the public but instead completed their pro-forma circulation and approval of planning documents and rapidly deployed machinery and workers to clear the trail. Trail construction proceeded without conforming to even the nominal environmental guidelines outlined in BLM’s planning documents. The hastily constructed trail cut through state-protected wildlife habitat, degraded historical artifacts, and came very close to a native village site which BLM failed to plan for protecting. In addition, if the project had proceeded, BLM would have opened a trail beginning at Laguna Creek Road and Highway 1 without any new parking, litter, or bathroom facilities, without sufficient staffing for enforcement or interpretation, and without a recreational plan for the property as a whole to analyze how to best protect wildlife while providing public access. This pop up trail was BLM’s way of introducing themselves to the land and to our community.

Introductions to BLM Planning Procedures

As the first federal land manager in the County, it was BLM staff who introduced our community to the federal government’s environmental planning process. This introduction was surprising in many ways. We had been accustomed to public lands managers paying careful attention to protecting “environmentally sensitive habitat areas” (ESHA) according to Coastal Commission rules. Not so with this property – BLM staff didn’t even provide the public maps of those regulated habitat areas in any of their planning documents! With the promise of National Monument protections, we were hopeful that BLM staff would follow the required and highly regimented process outlined in BLM’s policy “Manual 6220,” which provides staff with guidelines on how to manage national monuments. Again, not so! In fact, BLM staff have not used the 6220 manual and have neglected any public acknowledgement of the manual, as if they do not intend to use it, at all. Moreover, BLM staff have never specifically acknowledged the many species and ecosystems protected through the monument designation process. Monument management protocol seems irrelevant to BLM staff, who are apparently bent on expediting the public access so vocally anticipated by the Monument Campaign (coincidence?).

The job ain’t finished until the paperwork is done!
Cartoon compliments of DeCinzo, Caption by Grey Hayes

Expediting Public Access

BLM staff have chosen expediency over thoroughness in each of their property planning exercises. For their most recent property-wide plan, instead of data-based predictions of visitor use, BLM staff chose a largely arbitrary low-ball figure of 250,000 anticipated visitors/year for the property. Instead of the logical in-depth alternatives analysis of a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), BLM staff have chosen expedited Environmental Analysis (EA) processes, complete with incredible conclusions of ‘Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI),’ despite significant contrary expert testimony that has gone unaddressed and unacknowledged. As we learned for the first time about its ‘federal consistency process,’ the Coastal Commission recently mandated that BLM use a phased approach to opening the property to public use. The Coastal Commission required that only if/when the BLM proved it could adequately manage public use could it open the full range of parking lots and trails; that proof requires monitoring and such monitoring would normally require a baseline inventory of sensitive natural resources, but we have yet to see that happen…we don’t even know the language to which the BLM and the Coastal Commission have agreed.

Nipping at the Community

My personal interactions with BLM staff have historically been less than pleasant, perhaps because those staff members are unused to much public engagement. My experience of poor interactions with BLM staff isn’t isolated. Someone suggested that this might be partly because those staff feel ‘rocked back on their heels’ because of criticism of their work, which is odd because our comments have been professional, polite, and part of what BLM should expect as public lands planning processes. A BLM staffer told me long ago that their colleagues were in for a surprise as they encountered the very actively involved communities of Santa Cruz County’s North Coast. Previously, most BLM staff working at Cotoni Coast Dairies had worked very much out of the public eye, in remote parts of California with little/no public oversight.

While we can’t ascertain why BLM staff have avoided offers for assistance, their subterfuge is as enlightening as it has been damaging. My compassion about staff feeling rocked back on their heels is limited because BLM staff have sought to discredit my work and harm my reputation, even approaching employers with false information to negatively affect my job while also giving ultimatums to conservation networks to preclude my participation. During one encounter at a public meeting, a BLM staff person told me that they would never collaborate with me or the groups with whom I worked because I was “against any public access at Cotoni Coast Dairies.” That was an incorrect statement about my position that I had likewise been hearing from a particularly activist, radical group of mountain bikers. As this BLM staff person echoed that quote, it was possible to better understand communication channels and allegiances.

My earliest interactions with BLM staff at Cotoni Coast Dairies were when I proposed assistance for biological monitoring. I and a few other biologists offered BLM free assistance with biological surveys to improve their understanding of the property. After that proposal, over a very long time, a BLM staff person strung us along through an incorrect informal process without ever encouraging us or acknowledging the potential value of such work. There was a chain of calls and emails that each ended with something like ‘well, maybe….’ By the time we subsequently discovered the correct application process and applied in that way, leadership had changed and the application was then officially refused.

Cumulative Impacts: Traffic, Trauma, Toilets and Trash (the 4 T’s)

It is important to view BLM’s problems in the context of issues related to visitor access on conservation lands throughout Santa Cruz County. As with all of the other public lands managers, BLM has been planning for visitor use and conservation in a vacuum, as if the surrounding lands don’t exist: this is a deeply flawed perspective. Much of the land from Santa Cruz City to the County line is heavily used by recreational visitors. Most weekends, parking lots overflow with cars and parked cars dangerously line the highway. There are too few trash cans and toilets to serve those visitors. Police and emergency responders are stretched to respond to the many accidents such visitation is bound to create.

County Parks, State Parks, the City of Santa Cruz, the Rail Trail, and BLM each have their own properties to manage and the same 4 T’s issues to address, but they aren’t doing it collaboratively. It is clear that none of those agencies has the resources to address those issues and so those issues are borne by our community. Visitors have come to expect trashy beaches. Emergency responders have come to expect exhaustion and insufficient support. Visitors with elderly family members or small children are avoiding parks due to dangerous or disgusting conditions. As each agency plans in isolation to provide for the maximum number of visitors, parks managers are dooming wildlife and visitor experience – the carrying capacity for the entire North Coast will be surpassed. It is no wonder that our community does not trust BLM to be able to manage their land and the visitors that they plan on attracting. BLM entered an arena of mistrust and fueled the fire with their own mistakes.

Who is Responsible?

Those of you who know me well know I don’t like the passive tense: I like clearly stating the subjects of verbs…who (specifically) is responsible for doing what (specifically). And yet, agencies like BLM are opaque…staff even refuse to specify who is specifically responsible for anything you might witness happening. But, placing the entire blame of the tragedy of Cotoni Coast Dairies on current BLM staff is unfair. Local, state and federal elected officials also bear some responsibility; good intel is that some of them have even winked behind closed doors in Washington DC, saying that local concerns needn’t be addressed. But again, placing a large amount of blame on elected officials also doesn’t seem fair: after all, they should be swayed by popular opinion (or at least election).

We saw how enough funding swayed popular opinion with the Monument Campaign, right? Apparently, no funders have been inspired to sway popular opinion in favor of wildlife protection on conservation lands in this particularly biodiverse region. Even if they did, there is a dearth of organizations who would lead that campaign. And so, in regard to the tragedies unfolding at Cotoni Coast Dairies and across Santa Cruz County’s North Coast, we must bear the brunt of blame within our community, which has long lacked leadership, energy, and focus on environmental conservation. For more on that, read my essay “Democracy and the Environment.” And, stay tuned for the third in this series of essays where I will outline steps forward out of this unfortunate predicament.

-this article adapted and updated from what appeared in late March at Bruce Bratton’s blog BrattonOnline.com

Oh Goodness, What Rain!

Rain and storms and wind and hail and thunder, and more rain keep buffeting the landscape around Molino Creek Farm. At the same time, we welcome the new moist spring and its seasonal phenomena: wandering cats, amorous coyotes and ravens, ribbiting ponds and puddles, roaring ridges, gushing creeks, re-leafing trees, emerging forest wildflowers, and smiling tree tenders returning to their work.

The Storms

Storm after storm, trees have been snapping off and tipping over, both live and dead, previously burned trees…trees on ridges and trees in valleys, young trees and old trees.

This most recent two-eyed cyclone had the weirdest winds! Automatic reverse 911 alarms rang out: “SEEK SHELTER!” They told us to go into the middle of our houses where no hurdling window glass would cause injury. But, hours before, the weather service told us it was ‘just another’ atmospheric river that would scuttle down the coast and mainly impact southern California. Suddenly, they changed their story, we tuned into radar, and saw a west coast hurricane spinning and spinning with its center(s) stalled right over the Santa Cruz Mountains. Three giant power polls out at the ocean overlook snapped off – PG&E technicians have seen those types sway widely back and forth flexibly under higher winds, but the latest storm must have had vortexes and twisters and the like. Silver dancing sheets of rain that normally come from one direction in storms are beautiful to watch against the dark redwood canyon background. But with this last storm, that changed: my eyes bugged out, I gasped, and I saw sheets of rain passing one another in opposite directions at high speed (>40mph) in just the few hundred yards across the farm. Such things had seemed impossible!

Farm Moisture

Lake Molino is rising for the second time and the farm is WET. Every low point burbles and flows with runoff. Even days after one of the storms, the ground bubbles and burps with muffled underground light-tinkling rumors of streamlets flowing through gopher runs. Footsteps go squish….squish…squish; there is no moving fast without slipping. Roadbed puddles splash, mud-spattered vehicles advertising our country living to the urban folks. Many, many young avocado trees are tipping over in the wind, but we are staking; their rhizospheres have been freed of drought-accumulated residual soil salts from irrigation – fresh soil for an era of vigorous fresh new growth.

Roots and a Moist Rhizosphere

Rhizosphere is a good word: it means the area of soil in the vicinity of plant roots. I envision plant roots doing a different kind of foraging for nutrients washed past them during the deluge. Biomimicry of this deluge foraging phenomenon would replace your walking down aisles of food at the market, with your plopping down on nice comfy padded benches instead: food parades past, and you grab what you want when it comes within reach. For plants, rainwater is washing nutrients through the rhizosphere, presenting the smorgasbord to each plant….slurp, gobble, and grab the next nutrient molecule….yum-yum-yum…what a way to eat!

Plants are leaping skyward so fast and lush and wet that they are toppling over like couch potatoes after a(nother!) gluttonous pizza fest. We’re going to have some nice cover crop biomass, even if it grows sideways a bit. Cover crops are all about enriching the rhizosphere.

Spring Animals’ Behavior

Here’s to all the humans with November and December birthdays! Spring was in the air….As it is now with All Beings around the Farm.

Maw and Caw are bowing and nuzzling, sitting closer together and eying each other amorously. The bigger burly white saddled male coyote trots happily behind the coy, lithe female on their head-tilting then pounce-filled rodent forays.

From spring wanderlust to mewsing about the treetops: whether from antsy fierce neighbor dogs or from slyer more untamed coyotes, a farm neighbor’s domestic cat spent some nights in a tree (since rescued!).

Homing Swallows

Swallows are Good Americans – emissaries seasonally crossing geopolitical boundaries of North and South America. Flocks of these graceful songbirds knit together cultures, carrying news between the geographies of Panhispanism/Bolivarianism movements and the (likewise proud but oft-repressed) anti-capitalist bird conservation movements in the USA. Pay no attention to the mist netters…

Last Friday March 17, barn swallows returned to Molino Creek Farm from Central or South America. Meanwhile, we watch for the return of the antagonistic cliff swallows, graceful tree swallows, and other species that follow this arc.

(BTW, Golden Crowned Sparrows do not yet dare venture North, meanwhile they gorge on forbs, fattening on rain drenched salads)

Flowers Bright

The gloomy drizzly weather helps the wildflowers stand out. Bright yellows and deep purples grace Molino’s well-tended wildflower ridge. In peak flower are footsteps-of-spring, purple sanicle (aka satellite plant) and buttercups. The first tulip-sized poppy blooms are emerging, opening for the (rare) hour(s?) of sunshine. In the woodlands, houndstongue is huge – its bright blue borage flowers keeping fresh with the abundance of rain. Forest understory milk maid flowers are attracting the large white butterflies that feed on the plants’ leaves as caterpillars and the same species’ nectar when adults: beautiful near flocks of white butterflies flutter around the forest! On another of our farm ridges, 2’ tall star lilies in full bloom! And then there’s the dreaded French Broom…just starting to blossom. A better shrub and one in the dark forest is the subtle, pendulous, deep-maroon-petaled woodland currant, currently in full flower. It’s a good time to get to the forest with its drippy mosses, flowing drainages, and tipped over trees.

Pruners Galore

Farmers can do one thing on these early spring days when the ground’s too wet to do anything with the soil: pruning! The Two Dog Farm chardonnay vineyard is as tidy as can be: pruned up and weed-whipped down. The Community Orchardists have spent too few, but quite energetic sessions pruning many a tree: we’re half way done increasing the tidiness that we have been moving towards, together, for many years. We have taught each other pruning and the orchard reflects that loving care.

This blog also simultaneoulsy published at the website for Molino Creek Farm

Cold and Sleet

This past week, screaming gusts and roaring big waves transformed the North Coast into a less-than-hospitable world replete with flying tree debris, whirling eye-stinging chunks, and ocean spray whipped a mile inland. The wind carried frigid air from the north with sleet and snow even down to the beaches. This morning, thousands of our neighbors along the coast woke to the rare sight of white-covered ground. Inches of snow above 1200’ and, at the Farm, a thin and gravelly crunching of rice sized hail. As the day progressed, massively tall patches of billowy clouds, dangerously dark gray at their bases, peeled across the sky dumping big wet drops mixed with sleet and hail. Patches of blue sky allowed roving beams of bright sun to briefly illuminate vibrantly green meadow terraces and silver hillsides of moist sage scrub.

Re-Wetting Welcome

There had been enough dry weather for vehicles to start making dust again along the roads. The last two years the rain stopped early and everything got dry and brown in the middle of what would normally be our rainy season. So, the return of some rain, however cold, has been especially welcome. If the wind dies, we’ll be able to burn some more brush. Meanwhile, the recent dry weather allowed for big machinery to take care of some of the fuel problem another way.

Chip Chip!

There are these agile caged tractors with brush eating drums which are designed to make chips from standing biomass. It’s a a good time to chew up brush- no nesting birds and its wet enough not to start fires if the machinery makes sparks. This past week, one such piece of machinery made a lot of brush on the Farm into tiny chips, even somewhat mixed into the soil in a few spots. The person artfully managing such transitions is Kenny Robinson, a welcome new operator in fuels management. Much of that stuff he was chipping was dead from the 2020 fire, so it was very dangerous fuel for the next wildfire. Thanks a ton, Kenny!

Year by year, we are transforming the Molino landscape back into the grasslands we see in photos prior to the 1980’s. This also makes it less dangerous for wildfire. A broad swath downhill from the barn has been our main focus. There, the forest is turning more park like- redwoods and oaks limbed up high with a carpet of sorrel and brambles 6” tall. New chip-scapes make it possible to drive around and pick up firewood and new camping spots are becoming possible.

Coyote

The orange-tipped small adult coyote snuffles and scoots between patches of weeds approaching its own height. Nose not far from the soil, it mixes nonchalance with intensity but is always on the move. We don’t have a name for this newish resident, but it has become a consistent neighbor.

Feudal Voles

The vole fiefdoms are spreading. Each week, new areas get converted from gopher strewn barrens to vole trailed fiefdoms. I pity the sleeping gophers, cuddling in their carefully crafted dens when the bug-eyed ear-nipping marauders zip in and evict them. They must squeak and complain, retreat to a less dry and comfy tunnel, shiver, starve, and perhaps die with these cold nights. Voles have been multiplying quickly but the next gopher breeding season is a bit further off. The population war is on.

Forest and Fields: Flowers

As we steward roadside oak shade, oak understory herbs are moving in. Drive through hounds tongue patches are coloring the entry. Milkmaids are also in full bloom. Deeper in the redwood forest, redwood sorrel is increasingly flowering. On the trail to the creek…checkerlily and false solomon’s seal are swelling in bud. In the meadows, the earliest poppies are blossoming alongside wild cucumber. We even have a patch of footsteps of spring- splashes of bright yellow like spilled paint signaling that the floriferous season has begun. The first buttercup blossoms have burst open. Leafy whorls of rosettes of only a few lupines suggest that this won’t be such a great lupine year. In the orchard, more plum flowers are emerging and the hazelnut catkins are waving in the wind.

-this is from Molino Creek Farm’s website, my weekly blog posted there first and then here

Newt and Salamander Weather

We live in a very rich area for salamanders and newts. And, when it starts raining, everywhere becomes newt and salamander habitat.

The Menagerie

Right nearby, if you went searching, you could find 8 salamander species: Gabilan and California slender salamanders as well as arboreal, California giant, Santa Cruz black, Santa Cruz long-toed, and tiger salamanders, and then the oddly-named yellow-eyed Ensatina. Add to that our two local newt species – rough skinned and Coast Range newts – and you will realize how much there is to learn about these 10 species.

Where do you find these creatures? Well, that depends….let’s start by thinking about their most vulnerable life history stage, when these creatures are teeny tiny eggs.

Pond Breeding

The newts and some of the salamanders depend on aquatic habitats for breeding, and that’s where they lay their eggs.

Dark, long-lasting, deep shaded ponds are the easiest place to find newts. Interestingly, both the rough skinned and Coast Range newts are found in our area. Some ponds have both species, but other ponds just have one or the other. These newts attach balls of eggs to sticks, roots, and such to make sure that the pre-hatched babies are nurtured in the right depth of water, in the right amount of shade, with the right amount of cover. In the right part of the Monterey Bay, those same egg-laying spots in shady ponds are also coveted by another salamander…the endangered Santa Cruz long-toed salamander, which is found only in southern Santa Cruz and northern Monterey Counties.

Those 2 newt species also can raise babies in warmer, sunny ponds, where another species of salamander is also found. California tiger salamanders love those warm pools, rubbing elbows with western pond turtles, western toads, and California red-legged frogs. These are often grassland ponds managed by ranchers to provide water for cattle. Tiger salamanders like to attach their eggs to pond debris, and you can find their eggs in ponds from southern Santa Cruz County into ponds across Fort Ord and beyond. Our population of California tiger salamanders is protected by the federal government because they have been listed as Threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Spring and Creek Breeding

Those 2 species of amazingly adaptable newts can also raise eggs in stream pools, but streams aren’t the best place for wee newts or salamanders. As you might have seen from this winter, streams get flowing pretty fast, and eggs would soon be headed into the salty sea! So, newts head to streams in the spring as soon as the storms calm down where they raise a summer brood. That spring movement also coincides with the mysterious migration of California giant salamander larvae. The biggest of our local salamanders, the rare California giant salamander probably raises most of its eggs in the muck, under the gravels and among the woody debris of near-stream springs and seeps, safe away from raging floods. Once hatched, the larvae must wriggle and flop downslope into streams. Head upslope, and there are still more odd salamander egg-raising habits.

Eggs Out of Water

A few salamanders raise eggs on what is broadly known as ‘debris,’ but they are probably more picky than we understand. I’ve seen and heard about the rare and only recently described Santa Cruz black salamander tending eggs in gaps on pieces of hard rock…near streams or in moist areas. Those beautiful star-studded sallies are nearly impossible to spot, and there are so few places known that I can’t share a place that you could go to spot them. You are much more likely to encounter arboreal salamanders, maybe even in your neighborhood park if there are native oaks nearby. Those toothy arboreal salamanders place their eggs in moist tree cavities…or ‘in debris.’ Similarly, California (northern Monterey Bay) and Gabilan (central Monterey Bay) slender salamanders place eggs ‘in debris.’ Then there’s the yellow-eyed Ensatina, which I’ve only found in holes and bark of big, rotting moist logs – again ‘debris.’ In case you haven’t gathered – there is a lot to learn about ‘upland’ salamander egg placement and what constitutes nesting ‘debris.’ Share your observations with me on this group, if you’ve seen something interesting!

Groovin’ and Movin’

Their eggs need water or at least moisture-laden debris, but when it is raining newts and salamanders are EVERYWHERE. That’s bad news for them because of the many roads replete with squashing tires of fast-moving vehicles. But, let it rain and adult newts and salamanders take the opportunity to move around, and they sure can move!

In the pouring rain, I’ve encountered California giant salamanders hiking streamside redwood fire roads. In the middle of stormy rainy nights on several occasions, I’ve found arboreal salamanders on my porch. By the second winter of age of a brush pile, slender salamanders have somehow used the cover of drizzly nights to find their way under the stacked branches…hopefully not going to get cooked by a feckless fuel reducing pyromaniac. On those same rainy nights, yellow-eyed Ensatinas stretch their tiny legs to crawl across the forest floor to crawl up and then wedge themselves in just the right rotten bark plate of a 3-year old downed fir.

Meanwhile, the first winter storms see California tiger salamanders hiking along cattle trails in the meadows to find new ground squirrel holes to call home for a while. Because of their rarity, scientists have actually monitored this salamander’s movements…up to 1.2 miles out of ponds and then across the wide-open grasslands! Like tiger salamanders, newts also move far across the uplands. Newts, tiger salamanders, and perhaps Santa Cruz long toed salamanders tend to move in great big groups during the nights of the first biggest rains. Along Carmel Valley Road – and hopefully in more places, soon – you can see signs warning about newt migrations. Migration areas aren’t extensive: they are normally fairly concentrated. Some folks are trying to create underpasses where rare salamanders can safely cross roads…the problem being how to guide them to those narrow culverts or bridges.

They Need Your Help

How can you help our area’s rich newt and salamander diversity? If you live in the country, the first best thing you can do is to not drive at night during the first 3 storms of the winter. You can see the weather forecast…get your groceries early and cancel your evening appointments. Then convince your neighbors and friends to do the same…figure out a way to remember this next rainy season! This past year, the migration was narrowly restricted to the early December storms in our area. Since then, there have been very much fewer newts and salamanders on the roads.

Likewise, watch where you walk in the forest- newts are constantly wandering around dark, moist forest trails all winter.

Oh, and did you catch that need for debris? It seems our inclination to ‘clean up’ debris. Wherever you can keep debris around – logs, sticks, brush – those are newt and salamander habitat. Likewise, for those of you looking to do some fuel reduction, it is best to move the contents of your brush pile, branch by branch, onto a burn pile a few yards away from where it has been stacked for more than a month.

Finally, whenever or however you can…let’s restore more native plants to our landscape- the newts and salamanders all eat bugs and there are more bugs emanating from diverse, native ecosystems.

-This column originally printed by Bruce Bratton in his BrattonOnline.com blog, which contains a wealth of intelligent writing: sign up for a weekly feed!

Oh Deer, What a Year!

The deer have had a good few seasons. Before the CZU Lightning Complex Fire of August 2020, the forest had grown back shady and dense after the prior fire of 2009. Between the shade and the passing of time allowing shrubs to get tall, deer food had slackened off quite a bit. Shrubs are the deer’s favorite food. Also, that extensive shady forest provided just the kind of cover mountain lions like best; they might have been taking out quite a bit of the deer population. Nowadays, there’s not so much mountain lion sign, but lots of post-fire small shrubs, and a burgeoning deer population. Several healthy bucks are roaming in and around the farm. At least one of our does seems to be getting pretty big around the tummy right now, so more are on their way. All the deer are looking quite healthy: there are at last 8 here and there nearby…back to our old record number.

Slack’n Lion

Another sign that the cougar population has slackened…coyotes! I heard a coyote calling again the other night, very nearby. 2008 was the last year the farm had any regular yipping coyotes, but they returned after the 2020 fire and have been regular visitors ever since. Coyotes are a good sign of few (if any) lions in the vicinity. I’d rather have lions, but the coyotes are nice visitors, too.

Hawktober

Winged predators are also doing well: hawks seem quite numerous and healthy. I see the resident Cooper’s hawk and kestrel frequently resting between what must have been successful hunting sprees. The 2-3 red tailed hawks likewise have some down time. There are nearly always hawks wheeling lazily overhead now that the breezes have returned. Oh yeah…it’s hawk migration time along California’s coast! Some are just passing through.

Pomologically Speaking

The apple harvest this Fall has been surprising in many ways. ‘Normally’ the Community Orchardists gather just once a week for the working bee: on Saturday afternoons. During those gatherings, we saw the apple crop growing and growing. We thinned the fruit 3 times to make sure the fruit were fewer and far enough apart to nurture bigger, more pest free apples. The turnout at the working bees was great through the Spring and Summer. As the well-spaced fruit started swelling, we went from weeding to propping branches. We did not expect so many apples to survive the thinning and the pests, including 25 jays and woodpeckers which pecked hundreds of fruits mercilessly. We kept testing apples for ripeness every day until they started ripening the second week of September. For the last 5 weeks, we have harvested a record crop and it has required many extra hands on so many levels.

Two Tons of Fun (for starters)

Mind you, we are very part time apple farmers. The Apple Corps are a couple of focalizers, a few dedicated regulars, and a whole lot of others sporadically joining to nurture the Molino Creek Farm Community Orchard. We have sent around 1500 pounds of apples to farmers markets, 500 pounds to Davenport’s Pacific School food program, and 2000 pounds to the cider press. And, we aren’t even done…

Mountains of Fuji

The last part of our apple harvest are from the orchard’s original planting of Fuji apple trees. Fuji apples are half Red Delicious and half Virginia Ralls Janet. They were so named because of the town near the agricultural research station where they were developed: Fujisaki, Japan. Dense, sweet flesh and great storage potential makes this a very popular apple. We sent 200 pounds of those to Saturday farmers markets this week. They will sell out.

Green Manure

When I first learned about organic farming, cover crops were called ‘green manure,’ a term I haven’t heard much more recently. The idea is that you don’t need farm animal dung to fertilize your crops- nitrogen fixing legumes can do the trick if you manage them right.

We’re planting cover crops now across the farm. This evening, I finished harrowing the sixth of 50 rows in the apple orchard: 3 rows to the hour to spread the seed and then run the tractor implement called a harrow to cover the seed with soil. There are many hours yet to go, but it is nice to chip away at the project. Bell bean seeds are big and shiny and fun to throw, like casting marbles around the trees. Tossing about oat seeds has its rhythm, too, and the seeds are bright blond and easy to see how evenly they are landing on the dark soil. Vetch seeds are jet black, perfectly round, and it is impossible to know how well you are casting them about, handful after handful.

A Harrowing Experience

The harrow leaves a pleasant looking seed bed consisting of bits of leaf litter and chopped up plants mixed with soil and rolled flat. Perennial plants are spared (they sprout back right away), and earthworms and other soil organisms mostly survive. We use a BCS Italian-made walk-behind tractor. The harrow is mounted such that you have to back up the whole time while running it, always looking over your shoulder. That’s a harrowing experience!

Fall Report

Fall is progressing in both the wild and cultivated areas. Poison oak still wins the award for the most colorful native plant display: crimson patches brighten hillsides in forests and shrublands everywhere you glance along the coast nearby. The orchard’s apricot relatives and hazelnuts are the latest things to add to the fall color palette with their menagerie of yellows, oranges, and everything in between. Breezes have returned, but the fall leaves are most thick just under the trees’ canopies. Colorful leaves, thickly strewn in tree understories are delightful, each orchard visit presenting a new display.

-original post at my blog on Molino Creek Farm’s webpage, Facebook page, etc.

Caring about Public Land Management

What’s going on with public land management around you, and what are you doing about it?

Most citizens of the U.S.A. state that they want healthy wildlife populations and clean water for their communities and for future generations to enjoy. And yet, repeated surveys of Santa Cruz County residents suggest declining efforts to learn about wildlife so that individuals could take action to protect assure wildlife conservation. We can see this decline also reflected in our activism and politics. When was the last time you heard about an environmental activist group taking a stand to protect local wildlife? Which politician can you name that had environmental conservation as a major portion of their platforms? Have you looked at the agendas or minutes from Santa Cruz County’s Commission on the Environment or Fish and Game Commission – both advisory bodies to County Supervisors? I challenge you to find any evidence of solicited or unsolicited advice to the Supervisors. In short, our County, at the top of the nation’s biodiverse counties, is effectively asleep while their precious natural heritage is being rapidly eroded by neglect. I frequently hear how much Santa Cruzans appreciate the wildlife, the open space, and the natural beauty of this area. If we take these things for granted and do not make efforts to be involved with conservation, I think we know what will happen to these values: they will decline, whither, and disappear altogether with time. It is time to make a shift, and the shift is best focused on our public lands management.

One of the most important things we can do as citizens of this county is to be involved with the management of the public lands around us. There are many ways to be involved in wildlife conservation on public lands throughout the region: volunteering for stewardship, rallying political support for increased conservation on public lands, and supporting environmental conservation organizations. There are three main threats facing nature conservation public lands: changed disturbance regimes, invasive species, and poor management of visitor use. I discuss each briefly in the following and present ways that you might be involved in solution for improved public lands management.

With climate change and increased development encroachment on natural areas, natural disturbance regimes, such as fire and grazing, are rapidly changing presenting a high degree of danger to nature conservation. With climate change, fires are expected to be more frequent and more severe; this is exacerbated by increased human interactions at the Wildland Urban Interface where accidental fires more frequently occur. Likewise, we have removed tule elk and pronghorn and it is becoming increasingly difficult for natural areas managers to use livestock to mimic natural grazing regimes. With both fire and grazing, public lands managers need more public funding to increase their ability to manage natural systems. There needs to be more public outcry and support for both funding and expertise within those agencies to improve lands management. Those kinds of support are also important for invasive species management. A different kind of support is needed for better management of natural areas in the face of poor visitor use management.

Badly managed visitor use in natural areas is a major cause of concern globally for nature conservation, and locally this seems to be nearly entirely ignored. The most glaring evidence that this is a problem is the nearly ubiquitous and unquestioned philosophy that increased access to natural areas is an important goal for nature conservation. Look carefully around our local parks agencies and you’ll also notice that there are no personnel trained at managing the conflict between nature conservation and visitor use, the field of study necessary to assure nature conservation in parks. The most recent planning effort for visitor use in a public park was with the BLM’s Cotoni Coast Dairies property, a real disaster in public process with recreational infrastructure development proceeding apace despite an active and unsettled legal appeal by a very small of citizens who have seen too little community support. Of the many larger, environmental groups in the area, only the Sempervirens Fund has offered publicly stated concern…”Important details remain to be determined and we look forward to working with BLM to resolve them.” For the grave impacts to nature from visitor use in natural areas, there seems to me to be a need for a fundamental shift in both public perception and in the public lands management agencies to better recognize and address this issue. The following section outlines some actions you can take to help this process forward.

There are many ways, big and small, for you to be more involved with the paradigm shift needed to better address the serious issues surrounding visitor use management in natural areas. First and foremost, many more of us should become educated about the science documenting the concerns and how those concerns are addressed through social and environmental carrying capacity analysis and adaptive management. Social carrying capacity analyses define the limits of acceptable change from visitor use conflicts: conflicts between different types of uses (for instance, mountain bikers vs. passive recreational use of families with children) or conflicts due to overcrowding. Ecological carrying capacity analyses define the limits of acceptable change for soils, biota, or other natural phenomenon (for instance, amounts of trail erosion, wildlife such as cougars that are easily disrupted by visitors).

Another thing we can do to help the situation of poor visitor use management in our parks is to advocate for improvement. We should tune our senses to notice negative impacts of visitor use and then aim our activism towards change: make formal reports of issues to natural area managers, follow up on those reports, and also message higher level administration, commissions overseeing those agencies, and politicians who are invested in agency oversight. Persistence will help. Let’s also vote for politicians who promise to help. And, let’s support environmental groups who promise to work on these issues. Finally, many more people who care about these issues need to be involved with public lands management planning. Currently, mainly exploitive and well-funded non-passive recreational users are organized and vocal during these processes (i.e., Outdoor Industry Association funded groups like mountain biking advocates). Meanwhile, traditional conservation groups like the Sierra Club and Audubon Society have shied away from such issues due to either controversy or co-option. We need a new group or need to sway old groups to take these issues on.

-this article originally appeared at Bruce Bratton’s weekly BrattonOnline.com If you haven’t subscribed, I recommed it: “The last great news sources of Santa Cruz.”

Botta Pocket Gophers

Pocket gophers are an important and very common mammal in many habitats in our area, so it seems appropriate to learn a little more about them. Most people know them as pests of ornamental plants or crops, but they play important roles far beyond that pestiferousness. And, just look at how cute they can be- photo by Flickr user Chuck Abbe:

What is a Pocket Gopher?

Why is this critter called a pocket gopher? No, it’s not because of some 1970’s fad of domesticating gophers and putting them inside pocket protector-lined pockets. BTW, this fad fantasy must include pocket protectors because gophers have sharp teeth that they habitually gnaw with to wear them down…without such nervous-seeming gnawing, their teeth would be 11” long by the end of the year. This fad could really take off one day because pocket gophers are not legally protected by the State!

Back to the subject at hand…the ‘pocket gopher’ name comes from odd pockets that these critters use as their cargo containers, hauling soil or food. Those pockets extent from the cheeks back to their shoulders. Inside those furry pouches, they haul food into their burrow, creating food storage piles in a deep portion of their burrow system. This food pantry also serves as their sleeping, baby raisin area, so food’s close at hand. That makes me think that maybe there’s a niche for food-storing bedroom furniture for humans!

Local Gophers

Our local species of pocket gopher is the most widespread in California, and so there’s lots of information around about its natural history. Our species, Botta Pocket Gopher, is almost everywhere in the state except the high Sierra Nevada. Like most pocket gophers, the males of this species are larger than the females. So, its likely that the Jury Room sign that was posted for years ‘Home of the Giant Gopher’ referenced a male. Not that you’d try, but you tell pocket gopher species apart from where they live and then the size of their rear feet, the shape of their ears and the relative size of the dark area around their ear.

Territorial Gopher

Pocket gophers are very territorial, protecting their extensive burrow system which represents the extent of their feeding ground. The size of their territory depends on how much food there is, but they range from the size of a tennis court or, sometimes, you can fit 10 gopher territories in the space of a tennis court. If you kill a gopher, its burrow system won’t be vacant for long…

Waves of Dispersing Gopher Young

During breeding season, gophers become less territorial, allowing visitors into their burrows, which seems sensible for reproduction. Where people aren’t watering plants, and the summers are so very dry, pocket gophers have a single breeding season in late winter. They bear 2-5 blind babies (aka ‘pinkies’). Gophers kick these offspring out of their burrows as soon as they are weaned (40 days after birth), and those young have to find a place to live. Those dispersing gopher children are why folks suggest leaving root protection cages out of the ground 6 inches. That wave of dispersing gophers will try to occupy whatever burrows they find…including the burrow complexes that have been abandoned by other gophers due to trapping or old age. People think that our gophers only live 3 years.

Gophers Drought Solutions

Gophers are soil engineers and are so good at their work that they are known to be an important solution to California’s water crisis.

Some have suggested that restoring mountain meadows in the Sierra Nevada could store as much water as two new giant reservoirs. Part of this would be done with reintroduction of a different rodent, the beaver, but another part is already under way by the pocket gopher. Pocket gophers are excellent hydrological engineers, assuring infiltration of snow melt and rain through the soil through their burrows, which include specific drainage architecture. Gophers can drown and need to breathe air, so their burrow systems must accommodate drainage for the rainy season.

Native Meadow Gardener Gopher

The better local natural historians around us will already know about the super-diverse and super-interesting mima mound meadows around Santa Cruz. These are caused by eons of soil movement by gophers, which means that they are literally “ecosystem architects.” Atop the mima mounds, there are poppies, lupines, purple needlegrass and other ‘dry’ loving species; between the mounds there are buttercups and rushes as well as streams and pools of water weeping from ancient gopher mounds during the winter. Dry and wet gopher-created ecosystems in close proximity makes for extraordinary species diversity.

Gopher Burrows: Habitat for Other Creatures

All of those gopher burrows are quite inviting to other creatures. In other places, scientists have described insect species that only live in gopher burrows. I see a species of brown fly come out of gopher burrows around here- there’s probably much more to be discovered. Pocket gophers don’t much like to invite things to enter their homes, so they plug their holes with a distinctive soil plug. However, I’ve seen newts poised for nocturnal forays at the mouths of gopher burrows. Others have seen rare California tiger salamanders using gopher runs. Those tunnels would of course be cooler and moister than the surrounding habitats in the summer. I commonly see the aptly named gopher snake winding its way from one gopher hole to the next, only the middle of its body visible. If gophers plug their holes, how do the snakes find their way in? Somehow they know…I saw a gopher snake recently quickly and energetically ‘dive’ into a gopher-strewn dirt pile and disappear quickly. Many are thankful for gopher predators because of the damage gophers can do to human-plants. Gopher snakes and alligator lizards are the most effective gopher control, because they can get down in the gopher burrows and eat the pinkies, controlling many gophers at one sitting.

What to do About Gophers

There are plenty of websites with information about how to, and many tools to, kill gophers, but is there another way to coexist with these creatures? I have spent a fair amount of money and time killing gophers or protecting plants from gophers using buried metal caging, and I have a few suggestions for gopher coexistence.

Lawns are pretty much passe at this point in California, so how about letting gophers make their homes in what would have been a lawn? The only drawback I’ve experienced is the mounds of dusty soil that they pile up, making a mess of what I want to be level ground without trip hazards. Use a gravel rake and smooth those mounds out and you’ve got a great seedbed for wildflowers to sprout from next spring. Yes, with all of that soil disturbance, gophers are doing a great job of preparing wildflower beds- poppies, lupines and other wild pea relatives, new yarrow seedlings, redmaids, owls’ clover, and lots more appreciates that fresh ground.

Another thing to do is choose plants that gophers don’t bother. Colt rootstock for cherry trees is highly resistant to gophers. Wild rushes (especially Juncus patens) stay green through the summer and are so tough that gophers can’t destroy them.

A final solution is to cultivate meadow voles, which are superior at running gophers out of their tunnels. Voles like lots of mulch- put mulch around and voles proliferate…and the gophers run away (or die at the homicidal teeth of the vole militia).

I’d like to see more discussion about human-gopher coexistence, so these important creatures can continue to do so much good across our region.

-This post originally presented as part of Bruce Bratton’s BrattonOnline.com weekly blog…check it out!

Two Young Deer and the Pending Summer

Two fawns are losing their spots, following their healthy mother with her shiny coat and her healthy, full, and muscular body. She watches us carefully as we traverse the farm, walking carefully to a safe distance, the young twitchy and nervous, sprinting and hopping when we approach. Often, there is food sticking out of their chewy mouths. The other day, I saw one of the fawns walking around on two feet, not just for seconds but for a good while. WHAT? Oh, that one was eating high up walnut leaves: what a trick!

Fruit

The tomatoes, apples, onions, pears, and peppers are getting bigger and bigger by the day. The apples are gaining color.

Dry Grass: what next?

It is mowing and mulching time. The lads are swinging weed eaters a’buzzing. They protect the roadsides, the wells and generator houses. The sickle bar is on the bigger BCS walk-behind tractor, the hay is falling and curing, the mulch cart is rolling, and deep dish ’apple fritters’ of mulch a’forming under the orchard trees.

Patterns of cut hay and uncut hay (where the wasp nests are). Mulch 2 B

Drips

It rained this morning. A light sprinkle, very off-season, enough to calm the dust for a moment. A pitter patter falling from the rooflines. Birds sipped droplets from sparkling leaves as the sun broke through the clouds late morning. Beautiful.

Martins

A flock of nesting purple martins wheel and chirp high in the sky above the highest point of the farm. The fierce males’ battle cries ring out against the prowling hawks. These are rare birds around here- glad to host them in cavities in burned trees from the 2009 fire. The snags from the more recent fire will support nesting generations to come.

Wildflowers of Summer

Little white puffs emerge from drying grass, among the post-fire thistles and between resprouting coyote bush. The complexly sweet smell of the native perennial cudweeds drifts on the gentle breezes. The clusters of bright white flowers fade to straw white that feel papery when rubbed to check out their scent (recommended).

We hope you are enjoying the entrance of summer with its warm spells, foggy beaches, and occasional whiffs of dry grass and resiny sagebrush.

-from my near weekly postings at Molino Creek Farm’s webpage.

Teach Your Children Well, Part 2

I received lots of great feedback from my column a couple of weeks ago, maybe in part because people resonate with the need for raising our children with love and respect for nature. When we see people damaging nature, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we avoid making new people like that – by reaching out to children, to teach them well. This made me wonder what are core lessons we need for children (and adults!) for being good to nature right here in Santa Cruz. I hope the following is a good start- please send me more ideas for a future, more in depth publication.

News: Apocalypse Cancelled

The most damaging words I hear regularly about nature is how we are doomed. Even generally well meaning and educated people I know enter into what I call the apocalyptic mindset. You’ve probably heard it…maybe even participated in such a dialogue. It starts with, for example, how can we ever address global warming…its such a huge lift…governments aren’t doing anything…oil companies have too much power…people are greedy…the planet is going to be uninhabitable…the human race is going to disappear. This type of conversation seems to always end with ‘the human race is going to disappear,’ sometimes due to disease, sometimes nuclear war, and now sometimes global warming. Maybe we avoid this story with children, saving it for adult conversation, but if you entertain such notions at all, you can bet the children catch on. This story is magical thinking, and the rationale for such stories is beyond my expertise (but, please: ask yourself “why?” if you hear such things). Humans have survived very hard times – through plagues, terrible wars…through ice ages, famines, massive volcanoes, long droughts, etc: it is a safe bet that there will be people around for a very long time…long enough for us to tell a different story, so we think about a longer term presence and the need for earth stewardship.

A Better Story

The different story is supported by evidence near at hand. Go to Pinnacles National Park and watch a condor soar. Take a whale watching boat and see a blue whale. When you drive across Pacheco Pass or tour Pt. Reyes, see the tule elk. All of these species were ‘doomed’ but people decided that they were worth keeping…we changed our behavior, and they are recovering. The better story is of the inherent compassion of humans and our ability to improve how we live with nature. If your better story has people living alongside elk, whales, condors, and mountain lions in a world with grizzly and polar bears, elephants, giant pandas, and coral reefs, then it will inspire us to work together to make it so.

Stewarding Soil, Air, and Water

There are, of course, other things to teach the children, such as care for soil, water, and the air. The science of soil formation has been taking place on Santa Cruz’ North Coast for a while, so we are fortunate to be proximate to the story of soil, and how incredibly slowly it is created. The Dust Bowl lessons are long forgotten and chemical fertilizers have been hiding the need for soil, but all the same- soil is sacred and everyone should know that soil loss is a terrible thing, that prime agricultural land is precious to conserve, that soil needs stewardship. All children should know where their food comes from. The same goes for water; I wonder how many appreciate where their water comes from and the care that must be taken so that it isn’t contaminated…thanks to government and rules. And, it is similar for the air. That we have good soil, water, and air are again testaments to the good that humans can do when we work together. But, we can all use some education about what we can do to help keep those situations improving.

For the soil, water and air lessons, here are some field trip ideas. Next winter, go for a walk at Wilder Ranch and see if the soil is covered or if it is washing off into the ocean. Take a trip to Loch Lomond then to an auto repair shop upstream in Ben Lomond; discuss the dangers of petroleum ending up in drinking water. Watch road runoff in ditches next winter and think about what that oily sheen means for water quality and how it might be captured. Stand next to a busy street and smell the air, talk about what is in tail pipe emissions and where that stuff goes and what it does. To have these kinds of conversations might take some homework- how many of us can have informed conversations about these simple and everyday situations? If children knew more about these things, would it help?

Non-Humans

Children should know about living well with non-human animals. Often, kids are introduced to domesticated animals…and too often they share their parents’ misconceptions about how best to care for and train those pets. Perhaps family time discussing well vetted videos about living with pets is in order. Meat eaters have an obligation to have some honest conversations about how livestock are raised and how they come to the plate. Field trips may be in order on that front. A little more on the wild side is the need for children to understand the host of issues from animals that aren’t domesticated that tag along with human civilization – termites, Argentine ants, roaches, stray cats, rats, mice, pigeons, starlings, etc. Just around the corner is another teaching subject: native wild animals which are doing perhaps too well at adapting to human ecosystems, such as ravens, crows, gulls, jays, racoons, etc. By learning about these and the invasive animals, perhaps children will learn to be more tidy and perhaps they’ll figure out other ways to mediate the impacts of these species. Into the real wild, children need to learn about the needs of wildlife – for habitat, landscape connectivity, peace, respect, and for the science needed to better plan for conservation.

Children Becoming Citizens

As age appropriate, children will one day be old enough to need education about how the above concepts enter the civic world. They will need to understand how land management agencies do or do not protect open space for wildlife. They will need to understand how clean air and water regulations are promulgated, incentivized, and enforced. And, it would be good to teach them how to critically think about the environmental issues they encounter and how to seek credible information to inform their thinking. Are these issues addressed in schools adequately? How else might we help children to understand these issues so that they are engaged citizens?

Engaging

Nature brings peace, so perhaps the most important lesson for children is how to experience nature. I see families taking talkative strolls with children, but few parents sitting quietly in nature with their young ones. With luck, children should be able to witness a bird building a nest and feeding its young. They should see tadpoles and then tadpoles with legs. We all feel delighted to see a fox or coyote pounce on prey. There’s a fascination to watching the dusky footed wood rat taking a huge mouthful of twigs to its 4’ wide stick home. There are salmon swimming upstream to spawn in nearby creeks during the early winter. Giant whales are lunging into schools of anchovies close to boats that leave every day from local harbors. None of these things are easy to see as chance encounters. Like all good education, it will take some work, but it is worth it.

The more time we spend with children sharing these types of lessons, the better the chance of future generations saying ‘we are sure glad that people figured out how to restore beavers!’ or ‘wow- look at that tule elk!’ Richer lives and a better planet require us collectively to raise children who are eco-literate. Please do your part, even if you aren’t a parent.

-this article appeared first in Bruce Bratton’s BrattonOnline.com weekly blog.

Full Moon, Sparkling Ground

Last Saturday night, the bright full moon shining from the clear cold sky, set off the grassy fields into a sparkling hoarfrost that lingered in the low, shady spots well after sunrise. That same startlingly clear sky graced Sunday with a cool light breeze, inviting my gardening self to expose sun onto skin for too long: my back burned red to ouch, now itchy painful. Following that temptation was not too smart! The week plugs away with echoes of last week’s email: drizzle, sun…warm…repeat. But, now the National Weather Service says it will really rain tomorrow and Friday, so our orchard irrigation rounds will be delayed once again. The rain has been just enough for a while to keep up with the increasing demand for soil moisture from the leafing out orchard trees. The forecast looks like it will get dry again soon- maybe next week will begin the long, dry summer? So hard to say. We are extra thankful for the late rains re-wetting everything. As we learned a couple of years ago, drought makes for extra heat and then fire! The late rainfall boost will make a lag for the heat, pushing it further into the summer and reducing fire danger a little longer. The clouds sneaking southward in advance of tomorrow’s storm were particularly ominous- perhaps hinting at the predicted ‘instability’ and perhaps marble (!) sized hail.

Very Odd clouds coming before the storm this evening

Out in the recently-burned forest around Molino, the understory is bursting with flowers. The iris are still thick with blossoms- around here, a pale yellow or creamy white, but higher on the mountain all the way to rich blues. The local pink version of globe lily has just come into full bloom with especially many plants post fire. There are yellow or white violet flowering carpets. Native sweet pea and checker lilies are fading but the woodland tarplants are blossoming and, in moister places, there are many sprays of white, sweet-smelling false Solomon’s seal. The forest understory never faded from the drought in January and February and it is especially lush and green now with the recent return of rains. Madrones aren’t flowering anywhere near as thickly as last Spring. The creeks are singing their watery songs.

Orchard Renewal

Some may recall Drake Bialecki’s patient revival of burned trees last year…his skill with the summer grafting of avocados and cherries. After he was done, we kept an eye on the cherry bud grafts and watched as they slowly healed into the rootstock stems, splitting the grafting tape and pushing forward as if to say ‘we made it!’ Few of those buds did much last season. But now, we’re watching them burst out with promise of making new trees. We’ve never seen this work before, so stay tuned as we document what was a dime-sized bud become a branch then get comfortable being a trunk and on up to the sky. I have a hard time guessing how big these might get this year- the roots are huge and established for full-sized trees…might these get 6’ tall and around this year? They’ve got all they need from water and finely stewarded soil.

Drake Bialecki’s expert cherry bud graft from last July coming alive this Spring

Other Fruit

The lime trees are popping with nearly ripe fruit, the lemons close behind, but the oranges a ways behind. The early apples have set their first fruit, now wanting to be thinned. Avocado blossoms are opening, some getting past- alas, few trees are mature enough to bear fruit this season (or the next). Some of the avocado trees we thought survived the fire are showing themselves to be zombies as their basal bark peels off to reveal lifeless and fire-girdled stems. Similar things are going on with many of the fire-surviving trees: their expanding trunks are revealing large dead portions of trunks near the ground- ah, shoot!

Respect yer Elders

On the field margins and in a far part of the North Orchard: elderberries! Elderberry flowers are opening. The California native elderberry plants that George Work donated to the Farm in 2008 sprouted vigorously after the fire and are large, lush bushes adorned by many flower clusters. Then there’s the herbalists’ patch of exotic elderberries quickly establishing but not yet blossoming.

Oh Crop!

For the row-crop farming, all eyes are on the greenhouses where the starts are getting big enough to plant – planting will start soon, the soil is prepared and waiting. The field enterprises are multiplying with a new organic vegetable seed growing partner on a quarter or so acre in the Brush Field.

Another crop has identified itself: wild nettles! Anyone want to harvest them? The wild miner’s lettuce is fading, but the nettles are going strong.

Here Today, Gone Tamari

Chewing on these wild things are the migratory deer. Two lithe brave but wide-eyed teenage deer loped up the main road a few days back, stopping here and there to gaze at the deer fence, sizing it up to see if they dare test it but then running further along. The fat female has gone missing. No bucks.

Other missing wildlife: turkeys, kestrels, red tailed hawks…bobcats, harrier hawks…skunks….But, some expected are here: there are more than 18 band tailed pigeons eating walnut catkins. They aren’t any braver about nearby humans even with the higher numbers.

PS: there is no tamari, only today, he added saucily

-this post simultaneously published to the Molino Creek Farm website as my weekly blog.