After a long hiatus due to COVID-19 caution, we are now welcoming new volunteers to help with weeding of invasive exotic plants in Sibley and Huckleberry regional preserves in the Oakland Hills.
If you are in town on our work days this summer and want to help, email either sibley@ebparks.org or janetgawthrop47@gmail.com to RSVP and join us in the field on any of the following dates (RSVP is required).
Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve
9 am on July 9, August 13, and September 10 (second Saturday of the month)
Meet at the Old Tunnel Road Staging Area on Old Tunnel Road off Fish Ranch Road in the Oakland Hills.
Huckleberry Botanic Regional Preserve
9:30 am on July 17, August 21, and September 18 (third Sunday of the month)
Meet in the main parking lot at the Skyline Staging Area on Skyline Blvd., just south of Elverton Drive in the Oakland Hills (labeled “Huckleberry Staging Area” on page 2 of the Huckleberry brochure).
Why pull weeds on a weekend? Flourishing open space provides the unique benefit of biodiversity in East Bay regional parks, right at the back door of our urbanized landscape. Saving native plants in regional parks requires more human work hours than the district can afford in salaried park staff. Unfortunately, many invasive exotic plants got their head start over restoration in the 1700s. Rather than take on all invasive plant species everywhere at once, restoration crews return to designated sites on a monthly basis to create a more permanent space for oak woodland, coastal prairie, and maritime chaparral remnants.
There are other monthly weeding crews, including the Greens at Work volunteers featured in last month’s Bay Leaf newsletter. The San Francisco Bay salt marshes that the Greens at Work group is working to restore also comprise a remnant plant community struggling with invasive taxa.
If you need more information before you reply via email, go to the restoration map on our CNPS East Bay chapter website and click on the map pins to view the thumbnail descriptions of the restoration projects.
— Janet Gawthrop, Restoration Committee Chair, CNPS East Bay Chapter
July 2022
