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New Orleans City Park

November 28, 2011
I spent the last day of my Thanksgiving vacation in New Orleans, the first time I've been back to that city in many years. After the requisite stroll through the French Quarter, I wanted to see something new. So I hopped on one of the old vintage trolleys on Canal Street and rode out to the end of the line at City Park. This vast park is the New Orleans equivalent of Golden Gate Park, with a couple of museums, a botanical garden, and 1300 acres of beautiful open space. It is most famous for having the largest groves of live oak trees in the world, which was the main attraction for me. From the trolley stop, a grand boulevard leads up to the museums, which are situated in a large circle, with the New Orleans Museum of Art on one side and the New Orleans Museum of Modern Art on the other. Just beyond the museums is a small lake, which fills in the bayous leading off of Lake Pontchartrain. Here I found a quiet bench to sit and read my book, next to a fallen live oak tree. After reading for a while, I looked up in the tree and was startled to see a large pelican sitting in the top branches, pruning his feathers. Next to him was a small ibis, an elegantly beautiful bird with snow white feathers and a long curved orange beak. I wandered on to find the oak groves, a great place to sit quietly and read, a nice relaxing finish to a vacation of family time and exploration.

November 23, 2011
We went to visit a state park today, and it was interesting to see how the Alabama state parks are doing compared with the struggling state parks of California. The park is called Fort Morgan State Historic Park, an old pre-Civil War gem of military architecture that guards the entrance to Mobile Bay. We took a half-hour ferryboat ride across the bay to get there, a great place to see lots of seabirds, including gulls, terns, cormorants, brown pelicans and the elegant white American pelicans. We also saw pods of dolphins swimming by, making their way gracefully across the bay. The views across Mobile Bay are dramatic, taking in the two peninsulas that enclose the bay, a long distance view of downtown Mobile, 40 miles to the north, and of course, dozens of oil rigs.

The fort was just a short distance from the ferryboat landing, with a great museum that provided a good introduction for visitors. I had a nice conversation with a state park employee, who was telling me that Alabama is going through park closures and budget cuts similar to the ones that California is experiencing. Fort Morgan is a revenue-generating park, so it is not threatened with closure, and its visitor fees are used to help fund other state parks in the state. Nearby Blakeley State Park on the other hand has had its funding cut completely by Governor Bentley's budget this year, and all state parks have had to deal with significant cuts in funding, resulting in reductions to amenities and visitor services. This is happening to state parks throughout the country, and it is a real tragedy. Looking at all the families with children visiting the park, it is clear that state parks provide an important educational function, as well as recreation and healthy activity.

Fort Morgan State Park, Alabama

November 22, 2011
The annual family trip for Thanksgiving this year is to Dauphin Island, on the Gulf Coast of Alabama. The island is small, easy to explore, and known as a major stopover point on North American bird migrations. It is also a major target for hurricanes, so the island has a unique form of architecture to protect against storm swells, with most of the houses elevated on stilts above the beach. The white sandy beach is seemingly endless, running for miles along the gulf side of the island. The only thing marring the scene would be the dozens of oil rigs that dot the horizon, a sad commentary on our willingness to sacrifice a beautiful environment for the benefit of shortsighted energy policy. Dauphin Island was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, as well as the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, but luckily the damage was not as severe as in some other areas. We spent our first day here exploring the island, including the old 1821-era Fort Gaines, which guards the entrance to Mobile Bay. The fort has some great exhibits about the history of the place, including the Native American settlement of the island, the early French exploration, the Civil War, and the Battle of Mobile Bay.

Today we continued our exploration of the island, visiting the Aububon Bird Sanctuary, which forms a large park near the eastern tip of the island. We walked a trail around Gaillard Lake, taking in a variety of habitats including forest, swamp, and coastal dunes. The forest was beautiful, with many graceful longleaf pines (Pinus palustris), whose fallen 15-inch needles were draped over the lower trees like Christmas tinsel. Slash pines (Pinus elliottii), southern live oaks (Quercus virginiana), magnolias, and some of the largest rhododendrons I've ever seen added more beauty to the forest. Another common tree was the Chinese Tallow (Triadica sebifera), or Popcorn Tree, which is an invasive tree that has become a widespread problem throughout the south. It actually had some pretty leaves, which had turned bright fall colors of red, orange, and yellow. After an easy stroll, we came to Lake Gaillard, where dragonflies flitted over the waters that are reportedly home to alligators in this coastal swamp. We didn't see any gators, but we did see lots of turtles, herons, and pelicans as we made our way to the strip of coastal dunes that separates the forest from the gulf. The dune habitat was beautiful, with beach heather (Hudsonia tomentosa) and seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) adding color to the bright white sand dunes. After walking around the lake and taking a side trip through the dunes to gulf, we returned the trailhead and began to think about lunch.

November 5, 2011
Our Friday Night Crew had a busy, challenging, and very educational night at the Marine Mammal Center last night. The ongoing epidemic of leptospirosis, a bacterial infection that affects the kidneys of sea lions, is still going strong and a number of new patients were admitted in the past week. We are also seeing a lot of younger sea lions that are suffering from malnutrition, possibly from seasonal variations in the food supply. Among them were Cowboy, a yearling sea lion (who is female in spite of her name), who was found at Moss Landing State Beach, and Bloke, a yearling male sea lion also found at Moss Landing, who was suffering from pneumonia.

We also had a crisis when a large adult male sea lion name Mongo went into a seizure and had to have a shot administered to him immediately. We then faced the difficult task of moving this 400+ pound animal into a more secure pen, away from a pool in which he could drown. It took about eight to nine people half an hour, trying a number of different strategies, before we were able to get him to move just a few feet to the nearby pen. It was a pretty exhausting night, but we all learned a lot about the series of procedures necessary to treat a sea lion having a seizure.

Cowboy, a Yearling Sea Lion

Rally on the State Capitol Steps to Save Our State Parks

November 1, 2011
I had a long day today in Sacramento, where the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife and Accountability and Administrative Review Committees held a joint hearing. The day began with a march through the city, starting off at the Leland Stanford Mansion, one of the 70 state parks slated for permanent closure by next year. People from the California State Parks Foundation, along with volunteers from state parks throughout California, walked through the quiet early morning streets, ending up at the Capitol Building. I was joined by Arlene Halligan and Arlin Weinberger, fellow members from the Mount Tamalpais Interpretive Association, and together we represented the Marin County parks on the closure list, such as China Camp and Olompali. We carried with us giant postcards signed by park visitors from around the world, with the message that Closing State Parks is Bad for California. We arrived at the Capitol Building, and held a rally on the north steps, listening to speakers such as Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation. We then went inside to deliver the postcards, along with several boxes of petitions, to the Governor's office. From there, we went upstairs to the Assembly committee hearing room on the fourth floor.

The hearing was entitled "Impacts and Status of State Park Closures," and was the most comprehensive discussion of this issue that I have heard since the closure list was announced last May. It started off with testimony by Bill Herms, Deputy Director of the Department of Parks & Recreation, on the process and criteria used for selecting the parks to be on the closure list. Mr. Herms testimony was scattered and disorganized, leaving little confidence in the decision to shut down one fourth of the state park system. He stated that they had little or no data to back up decisions on individual parks, and much of the process involved subjective evaluations of parks as "iconic" or arbitrary designations of "Outstanding Park Unit" and "Respresentative Park Unit." Committee Chairman Jared Huffman, along with most other members of the committee, was visibly annoyed and dismayed at Mr. Herm's lack of knowledge and preparation on such a critical and far ranging issue.

Additional testimony came from Professor Patrick Tierney of San Francisco State University, who spoke about the economic impacts of the park closures. Dr. Tierney gave much more compelling testimony, and the overall message was that closing 70 state parks is not necessarily going to save money, and more like will cost the state money in the long term. Discretionary spending by park visitors in surrounding communities generates a significant amount of tax revenue for the state, which needs to be factored into this decision. More testimony came from two panels of speakers, who talked about local and regional perspectives on the park closures, and the hidden costs of these closures.

At the end of a marathon four-hour hearing, I had the opportunity to testify before the committee, and being the very last speaker, I kept my message brief. I introduced myself as a member of Friends of China Camp, and expressed my surprise that this park was included on the park closure list, given its historical and cultural significance. I then went on to point out that a disproportionate number of the parks on the closure list are State Historic Parks, which serve an important educational function. The ended with a late lunch at the offices of the California State Parks Foundation, where we discussed the days events. Overall, it was an informative hearing, although I think we all felt frustrated and exhausted at the haphazard process by which this draconian proposal has been reached.