The California Department of Parks and Recreation (State Parks) is working on the classification of Tesla right now, and they want your opinion! Please help us advocate for Tesla to become a State Reserve—with an R—the highest level of protection that can be given to a state park. There are important ways you can help right now (more details below):
- Send an email to Info@AlamedaTeslaPlan.com describing why making Tesla a State Reserve is important to you and why higher-impact recreation should take place outside of Tesla. Emails will receive serious consideration.
- Sign up on the State Parks email list to be informed of upcoming meetings, workshops, and other opportunities to express your opinion and get involved.
Background
In September of 2021, after advocates worked for more than 20 years to save Tesla Park, Governor Newsom signed legislation that stopped Tesla from becoming an expansion area for Carnegie State Vehicle Recreation Area (SVRA), the nearby off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation area. The legislation also allocated $1 million to State Parks to plan for Tesla’s future and almost $30 million to the off-highway division of State Parks to purchase and develop other land for OHV use.
What’s happening now
Each new state park must be classified, named, and planned, with a general plan plus an environmental impact report. State Parks normally undertakes the classification and planning processes simultaneously. However, because of the unusual amount of interest and advocacy surrounding Tesla, State Parks has separated the classification from the planning process. State Parks needs your input on classification of Tesla.
Possible classifications for Tesla are, from the least to the most protective: State Recreation Area, State Park, State Historical Unit, or State Reserve. In addition, smaller areas within a park can be designated as Preserves.
What qualifies an area to become a State Reserve?
The California Public Resources Code describes two kinds of reserves, natural and cultural, as “areas embracing outstanding natural or scenic characteristics or areas containing outstanding cultural resources of statewide significance,” respectively. Tesla has outstanding natural and cultural features, making it eligible to be designated as both a natural and a cultural reserve.
Why a Natural Reserve?
As we’ve described here before (see Tesla in the Bay Leaf, below), Tesla has outstanding natural resources (plant, animal, habitat) studied by generations of scientists. Although Tesla’s plants and wildlife were saved from the destruction visited on Carnegie SVRA, the legislation that saved Tesla from becoming an OHV park did not prohibit other types of motorized activity or high-impact recreation at Tesla. Classifying Tesla as a State Reserve will give Tesla’s natural resources the greatest possible protection.
Reserve status would protect Tesla from high-impact human recreation that destroys native vegetation, disturbs wildlife, and damages and fragments habitats. Higher-impact recreation, including camping, mountain biking, and e-biking, could be accommodated outside of the reserve on State Parks land near Tesla or at Carnegie SVRA. For example, Carnegie SVRA already allows e-bikes. State Parks could create dedicated mountain biking trails at Carnegie SVRA and also allow mountain bikes on the adjacent State Parks land. Similarly, State Parks could expand existing camping facilities at Carnegie SVRA and create camping sites on the adjacent State Parks land. State Parks can increase opportunities for these higher-impact activities without placing them inside Tesla.
Low impact, passive recreation such as hiking, wildlife watching, and photography is allowed in state reserves and would be appropriate at Tesla.
There are no land-based state reserves in our part of California. Considering the extreme damage done to the land at the adjacent Carnegie SVRA, it’s more than appropriate to grant a higher level of protection to the remaining habitat at Tesla.
Instead of making Tesla a Natural Reserve, why not create Nature Preserves within the park?
When all the special status plants, animals, and animal habitats are mapped onto Tesla, it becomes apparent that almost all of Tesla requires protection. It’s not possible to fence off and protect important parts of Tesla because the layers of important plants, wildlife, and habitat cover almost the entirety of the land.
Why a Cultural Reserve?
Tesla has been the home of local Tribes for thousands of years. There are important archaeological, ceremonial, and sacred sites at Tesla.
Katherine Perez is a representative of the Northern Valley Yokuts, Bay Mewuk, and Ohlone Tribes, and president of Nototomne Cultural Preservation. She wrote an opinion published in the Stockton Record on December 17, 2020, describing the cultural significance of Tesla, which “holds exceptional archeological and spiritual features, including sacred ceremonial and burial sites.”
Perez explains why protections for important Native American sites at Carnegie SVRA are not consistent with cultural preservation and why maintaining Tesla’s integrity is so important:
Carnegie SVRA may build a fence around or cover over a cultural site, but then surround it with a mass of roads, trails, damaged vegetation, dust and noise.
… The entire Tesla landscape which holds these Native American treasures must be preserved, not just a fenced footprint. The vistas, native plants, wildlife and quiet solitude of the surrounding land are central to the power of Tesla’s cultural sites.
Further, she suggests that State Parks use Tesla to teach all Californians about the Native American experience on the land. “Tesla is vital to our heritage—it’s our history and connection to our future. Tesla also provides an invaluable way to expand the understanding of all Californians of the First Californians to inhabit our state.”
The whole of Tesla speaks to the Native American experience on the land. It would be appropriate for State Parks to acknowledge this by protecting the integrity of the land and respecting local Tribes by designating Tesla as a cultural as well as a natural reserve and giving Tesla a name supported by local Tribes.
Please participate in this rare opportunity to advocate for the classification of a new state park and request that Tesla be classified as a State Reserve.
- Email State Parks at Info@AlamedaTeslaPlan.com to tell them in your own words why making Tesla a reserve is important to you, and ask that higher impact recreation such as mountain biking, e-biking, and camping be accommodated on nearby State Parks land or at Carnegie SVRA. Emails received will be given serious consideration.
- Sign up on the State Parks email list to stay informed of upcoming meetings, workshops, and other opportunities to express your opinion and get involved. And learn about State Parks’ plans for Tesla through the website for the Alameda-Tesla Plan.
- Learn more about Tesla and how to help protect it by visiting the Save Tesla Park website and joining Save Tesla Park’s contacts list to receive updates.
—Beth Wurzburg, Conservation Committee, CNPS East Bay Chapter
March 2024
Tesla in the Bay Leaf
Saving Tesla, Gem of the Diablo Range, July 2020
Conservation Update: A Significant Victory in the Fight to Save Tesla Park, February 2021
Tesla: Home of Rare Plants and Plant Communities, June 2021
Tesla Park is Finally Protected, October 2021
