CGF Coyote Ridge hike in Morgan Hill Times

Just a quick note that our annual hike to Coyote Ridge got a nice writeup in the Morgan Hill Times:

....Last weekend, I was reminded of this there's-more-there-than-meets-the-eye lesson here in my own back yard.....How many times does mom need to remind us that the charms of a person or a place may not be evident at first glance? Our guided walk up Coyote Ridge was a reminder than mom knows what she is talking about. A number of phenomena converge here to create a community of rare and unusual interest.

....

We lunched among the flowers, taking in the beauty near and far. A small herd of tule elk lounged on the ridge below. A prairie falcon darted overhead. A golden eagle drifted across the face of the ridge below. 

In 1868, John Muir, in California for only a matter of days and on his way to Yosemite, walked along this very ridge and later wrote, "the landscapes of Santa Clara Valley were fairly drenched with sunshine. All the air was quivering with the songs of the meadow-larks, and the hills were so covered with flowers that they seemed to be painted."

The work of good people at the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority (www.openspaceauthority.org), the Silicon Valley Land Conservancy (www.siliconvalleylc.org) and the Committee for Green Foothills (www.greenfoothills.org) have allowed us to enjoy this setting much as John Muir did 140 years ago.

Sign up for our Action Alerts to be notified about this hike, other events, and calls to action to help the local environment.

-Brian

Support for the Single-Use Carryout Bag Fee Ordinance

(We submitted the letter below to the City of Morgan Hill regarding the proposal to require a fee for using plastic or paper bags. -Brian)

January 8, 2009

Tony Eulo

City of Morgan Hill

Re: Committee for Green Foothills' support for the Single-Use Carryout Bag Fee Ordinance

Dear Tony;

The Committee for Green Foothills supports Morgan Hill's proposed Bag Fee Ordinance. As any Morgan Hill resident that has taken the opportunity to hike Coyote Ridge can see (and if any residents haven't hiked there, they should), even a well-managed landfill like Kirby Landfill has problems with wind-blown plastic bags escaping the landfill and polluting the countryside. These bags often settle in Coyote Ridge stream areas where they obstruct growth of endangered plants only found by the streams. Any streamside hiker or canoeist throughout the County will find countless plastic bags along larger creeks and rivers, and bags often obstruct storm sewer grates and limit flooding drainage. From the esthetic ugliness along roadsides alone, plastic bags constitute the perfect example of an environmental externality whose cost, absent the proposed fee, is imposed instead on society at large.

Paper bags create similar problems. When we opposed the permanent logging permit that San Jose Water Company requested for thousands of acres of redwoods and Douglas firs from Lexington Reservoir extending southeast halfway to Morgan Hill, we were appropriately challenged as to where wood and wood pulp would come from instead. An important response to this challenge is to avoid wasting wood pulp and energy in paper bags, and the fee will appropriately reduce that waste.

We hope that Morgan Hill will move forward in support of the position of City staff, Santa Clara County Cities Association, and the Recycling and Waste Reduction Commission of Santa Clara County.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

Ten of the most endangered charismatic megafauna

Scientific American has a nice post and slideshow about ten endangered animals that may go extinct in the next 10 years. They all are found outside of the US (except for the leatherback turtle that occasionally enters US waters) and so the Endangered Species Act does relatively little to help them. Still it might indicate something about the ESA that no domestic species is shown.

It might indicate something else about the ESA and about the slideshow that the animals are charismatic megafauna. Species that are less charismatic, like endangered mussel species, have done less well, because they get less attention.

Our area has its share of endangered species. We like the term "charismatic microfauna" for the federally-threatened Bay checkerspot butterfly, and we're working hard to protect it.

-Brian