Guide to San Francisco Bay Area Creeks
GUIDE
TO EAST BAY CREEKS
A
book providing information on science, history, conservation, and
recreation
Chapter
1
INTRODUCTION
Take a walk
along Redwood Creek on a sunny afternoon after weeks of winter rain.
The air is saturated with the smells of damp earth, bay laurel, and
decay. Hidden in the trees, warblers trill their high notes, and in
the distance a kingfisher rattles. Mostly, though, it is the water
that mesmerizes. There is something primordial about a living stream,
the clear water rushing over boulders and beneath fallen logs, succumbing
to gravity's inescapable demand to head from the hills to the sea.
People are
enthralled by flowing water even when they don't understand its power,
and perhaps in their visceral response they know creeks are something
essential. For creeks nurture life and shape our landscape to a degree
many never have considered. The entire area we call the flatlands,
where we have built the cities of Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland,
was created by creeks carrying soil down from the hills. And the creeks
create rich habitats where wildlife thrives, from freshwater fish
to birds and mammals that depend upon streamside vegetation.
But because
people have dimmed their awareness that streams are essential arteries
of the terrain, they have treated them badly, causing widespread erosion,
floods, and habitat destruction. People are unaware that disturbing
a stream has impacts upstream as well as downstream, and that almost
anything dumped on the ground anywhere eventually makes its way into
this living system, moving into the creeks and ultimately into San
Francisco Bay.
Increasingly,
however, people are struggling to bring our waterways back to health.
In Richmond local activists stopped a plan to channelize Wildcat Creek.
In Oakland an ethnically diverse neighborhood is cleaning up Courtland
Creek. Throughout the East Bay city dwellers are recognizing that
even in urban areas we have wildlands valuable to humans and other
animals. These people are learning ecological relationships through
direct experience, and they are hoping that ultimately there may be
an attitude shift, a cultural recognition that even city dwellers
are an integral part of a living system.
--Sarah
Pollock
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