Overview and History

The Brown Pelican is the hero in its own real conservation success story! They were listed as a federally endangered species in 1970, endangered in California in 1971. They reached a low of just 466 nests in 1978⁷. Amazingly they recovered and were delisted again in 2009⁵. Today there are estimated to be over 70,680 nesting pairs in California¹. Fortunately for them, they remain protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.⁵

The reason for this dramatic decline in this magnificent bird can be attributed primarily to the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) flowing from mainland sewers into the ocean^5,3. This dangerous chemical disrupts the reproductive system of birds, altering their calcium metabolism and resulting in egg shells so thin that they break under the weight of the adult bird when they sit on them^5.

DDT was developed in the 1940s as the first of modern synthetic insecticides designed to combat insect-borne human diseases such as Malaria and Typhus⁶. Due in part to the public outcry from Rachel Carson’s successful early science communication “The Silent Spring” in 1962, DDT was banned by the EPA in 1972⁶. A move now supported by the UN and the WHO⁶. Worldwide DDT is still used in indoor settings to control the spread of malaria mosquitos, even though DDT has been classified as a human carcinogen.⁶

Pelicans can live up to forty years old!⁵ This means that there are probably pelicans alive today that remember when their nests failed and there were a lot less pelicans!

Identification and Appearance

Pelicans are easily identified by their large resplendent beak and stretchy beak pouch that they use as a basket to scoop up prey from the water. They have cute dumpy angular bodies and four webbed toes on their gray-brown legs.⁴

The earliest fossil record is 30million years old and was found in France. The beak structure and overall morphology of this early Pelican was almost identical to todays bird!³

Brown pelicans have a glossy gray to hazelnut brown plumage on their bodies and adults (over 3 years old)³ have white feathers on their necks and bellies. The beak pouch is a pinkish orange. Males and Females look very similar with males being a little larger⁵ and the male head feathers being stiffer.³

During their breeding season, while they are attempting to woo another pelican; their beak turns pink³. Later in the breeding season the beak resorts back to gray,³ plumage on their heads turns yellow and their beak pouch a deep red. Even the iris of their eyes turns from Yellow-white to a light blue!⁵

There are 5 subspecies³ of Brown Pelican, these look very similar with slight differences in breeding plumage⁵. Even though they look alike, the subspecies are genetically distinct.³

Brown Pelicans weigh about 8lb (similar to a heavy human baby at birth). They are a little over 4ft in length (just over the height of my grandmother) their wingspan can be up to 6.5ft! (The size of a tall human)⁵

Range

Brown Pelicans have a wide range throughout coastal north and Central America, with the occasional juvenile wandering inland a little lost.

However, the range of the California subspecies of the brown pelican is permanently in the coastal marine waters of the pacific, from British Columbia to Nayarit in Mexico⁵ and sometimes even Guatemala.³

Habitat

California brown pelicans are big fans of the ocean, they can often be seen flying over it or sitting on it. They also enjoy hanging out on rocks.^1,2

You usually won’t find Brown Pelicans more than 5 miles from the coast (either inland or on the ocean)³; but incredibly, they can travel a distance of 30-40 miles if they feel like it!^5,1 There is however, a large group of Brown Pelicans who have decided the Salton Sea inland lake in California is actually a pretty nice place to hang.⁴

A great place to see them locally in El Granada is kayaking out of the Half Moon Bay Kayak company past the rocky harbor walls where (depending on time of day or tides or just sheer luck) they will be gathering in the dozens.

Feeding

A pelican’s beak can hold over 3 gallons of water.⁵ Though obviously they would prefer it was 3 gallons of fish! They have the largest beak pouch of any bird worldwide.⁵

Brown Pelicans were the only pelican to do dive/plunge feeding⁵ until the Peruvian subspecies was declared a separate species³.

Around our area you’ll find White Pelicans inland and Brown Pelicans on the coast. I’ve personally not seen many areas with both brown and White Pelicans except estuaries like Moss Landing.

They are champion divers and catch the majority of their prey by diving from a great height. Although on average these dives are usually between 10 and 30 ft, they can in-fact, dive from a height of 100ft⁵ which is over seven building stories high!

The deeper the prey, the higher they dive. A dive from these astonishing heights can reach and stun fish 6ft deep.⁵ They even have their own padding, air sacs⁵ in their bodies to protect them from this sudden impact with the ocean. These portable cushions are also great for helping them float!³

Another way they catch food is to sit on the water watching for the tell-tale shimmer of their favorite snacks and doing almost a little hoppy dive to catch them.⁵

Once a tasty mouthful of fishy water has been obtained, the pelican leans forward to filter out the water from its pouch. It then flicks it’s head backwards to swallow the fish.^5,1 Pelicans can eat 4lb of fish a day!⁵ They can also process any extra salt water they swallow using specialized glands.³

Favorite foods of the California Brown Pelican are the Northern Anchovy, the Pacific Sardine and the Pacific Mackerel⁵. They also often eat Crustaceans, and Smelt.^1,3 They even occasionally eat Amphibians, eggs and nestlings of rival species and other pelicans.³ Scientists estimate that in Southern California Pelicans eat 1% of the total anchovy biomass!^5,1

One major threat to the Brown Pelican is the effect of overfishing, particularly of sardines, and the disturbances in the food chain due to climate change.³ So next time someone offers you a sardine, say no and save a pelican!

Behavior

The Brown Pelican is an outgoing sociable creature and is happiest when chilling in mixed flocks.³ A common sight off the coast is a squadron of Brown Pelicans flying and gliding in single file or in a perfect V shape, often really close to the water’s surface or using updrafts, but they can also fly up to 70ft high to keep a beady lookout for a tasty moursal.^5,2,3,4

You can also find pelicans sitting in often very large groups on the surface of the ocean near to shore. They seem to be flapping their wings on the water, local speculation on this behavior includes “shaking off parasites”. The effect however, of a number of pelicans flip flapping on the water may be a similar technique to that of dolphins and bubble feeding, to corral fish together to make scooping them up for dinner easier.³

Pelicans are pretty smart though, and will sometimes approach fisherfolk for handouts to save the effort of catching their dinner themselves.^1,2

Monogamous for the breeding season, the Brown Pelican likes to keep its options open and doesn’t mate for life.³ The male finds a nice spot for a nest and waggles it’s head elaborately to attract a female. Ladies choose their mates based on this display and their choice of real estate.³ To indicate her approval, she will engage in a dance with the male, of head bowing and swaying and whispering sweet nothings in the form of low “raaa” noises.³

When the California Brown Pelican isn’t breeding, they can migrate north as far up as British Columbia. Some of the more inexperienced juveniles will get lost and wander inland. Particularly in south California and Mexico.¹

Nesting and reproduction

The only breeding colonies of California Brown Pelicans in the western United States are in Channel Islands National Park, on West Anacapa island and now also the Santa Barbara Island (since 1975).⁵ However, 90% of California Brown Pelicans breed off the coast of Mexico.⁵

Brown Pelicans currently breed between January & October with most eggs being laid in March. They have one brood^1,3. Historically their breeding season was much shorter, March to early fall⁵. I’m wondering if this change has to do with the increase in pelican population. I would imagine that if there are a lot less pelicans it would make sense to time your nesting season to be shorter to make sure everyone was in the right place at the right time.

The nests are in breeding colonies on islands unpopulated by sneaky mammal predators and in places where humans don’t live permanently^5,4. Pelicans build large nests (because they themselves are large birds) on the ground or in vegetation or trees.^5,3 Nests are built by the lady pelican with material gathered by their partner.¹

The nests themselves can be quite varied, depending on where they build them and how much effort they can be bothered to put in. They range from a simple scrape in the soil, to a heap of debris with a depression on the top or a large elaborate stick nest in a tree.¹

Adults share incubation eggs of the 2-3 oval eggs that they lay.^5,3,1 Incubation takes about 28-30 days³, over which time the bright chalky white eggs become stained the color of the nest.¹

Not many animals can stomach eating an adult pelican, Bald Eagles, Sea Lions and Sharks being the exception.³ Eggs and babies however are a common snack food of many creatures, including gulls, dogs, raccoons and even bobcats.³

The success of the brood depends on the availability of their primary food source during the breeding season: northern anchovies (Engraulis mordax) and Pacific sardines (Sagax sarinops)⁵. Coastal upwelling of cool nutrient rich water near the Channel Islands is essential for these prey animals to thrive. I speculate that another reason their breeding duration could have changed could be related to climate change / human fishing impact on Anchovies and Sardines.

Pelicans are very sensitive to being bothered by people when they are nesting, including lights and noise. In 1999, a large increase in nighttime squid fishing boats seemed to affect a higher rate of nest abandonment and chick mortality than average; these numbers couldn’t be explained by any other environmental factor.⁵

Baby pelicans are pink³ naked, helpless and completely dependent on their parents for feeding and care for the first 3-4 weeks of their lives.⁵

At around 5 weeks old, now gray-black in color;³ the baby birds in ground colonies grow into rowdy teenagers, sneaking out of their nests to gather in groups (known as pods³) while their parents are out looking for food¹. When the parents return they can recognise their own young.¹ Tree nests being a little more hazardous, the babies tend to stay in the nests for up to 9 weeks before exploring the outside world and discovering branches.¹

They fledge at around 9-13 weeks^5,1, although just like humans taking laundry home to their parents from university, the parents continue to feed the babies for some time once they fledge (8-10 months).^1,3

Fledglings are more likely to survive if they are the oldest child, the average rate of success based on who hatched first drops from 100% to 6% by the third chick³. It is a mammoth mission to figure out feeding themselves so they rely a lot on their reserves initially.⁵ The chicks that do make it, grow up to be the glorious bird we all know and love.

Fun facts!

• They have the largest beak of any bird in the world! It can hold 3 gallons.
• 90% of California Brown Pelicans breed in Mexico.
• The only breeding colonies in the United States of California Brown Pelicans are in the Channel Islands.
• They can live up to 40 years old.
• They can dive from up to 100ft (7stories high) and stun fish 6ft deep.

Sources

1. Audubon https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/brown-pelican
2. EBird https://ebird.org/species/brnpel
3. Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_pelican and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican
4. All about birds https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown_Pelican/id
5. National park service https://www.nps.gov/chis/learn/nature/brown-pelican.htm
6. EPA history of DDT https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-products/ddt-brief-history-and-status
7. Moss Landing Marine Labs https://twitter.com/mlmlmarinesci/status/1493651506473869313?s=21
8. Esasuccess.org https://www.esasuccess.org/birds.shtml

Image sources

• Pelicans in Pillar Point harbour source: Natalie Downe
• Pelican ID images source: Simon Willison
• Range map source iNaturalist
• Channel islands map

Essay written by Natalie Downe as an assignment for the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve Docent/Guide class.

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Courses I’ve taken

In 2019/2020 I took these Stanford classes as a JSK fellowship affiliate:

• Ornithology (BIO221)
• Conservation photography (BIO53)
• Evolution (BIO85)
• Ecology and Evolution of Animal Behaviour (BIO245)
• Applied Ecology at Jasper Ridge preserve (BIO205)
• Geology, Landscapes and Tectonics of the SF Bay Area (GEOLSCI42)
• Concepts in Environmental communications (EARTHSYS 291)
• Ecology (BIO81)
• Introduction to Earth Systems (EARTHSYS10)

Other classes and trainings I have taken during this time:

• Weekly Spanish classes since March 2019
• Pat Brown’s 3 day residential desert bat class in July 2019 in the Mojave Desert
• Drones in Conservation workshop, week long class by The Wildlife Society in April 2019.
• Defensive driving class March 2019
• Advanced animal care training with the Marine Mammal Center 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
• Marine Mammal Center advanced education and tour guide training Feb 2019 (also many other in-the job advanced education training courses)
• Elephant seal progression trading with the Marine Mammal Center, January 2019
• Giving psychological first aid in a disaster, with SF fire department and NERT, Jan 2019
• Two day Marine Mammal Center docent and education training, October 2018
• 3 day residential class on nudibranchs with Alison Young and Dr Rebecca Johnson, the California Acadamy of Sciences and the Jepson Herbarium in Half Moon Bay, California, July 2018
• Week long naturalist kayaking trip in Baja, Mexico to learn about whales, Feb 2018
• Two day ham radio class with the San Francisco Radio Club, June 2017
• Week-long residential bat acoustics workshop (using Sonobat) by Dr. Joe Szewczak, Leila S. Harris and Jill Carpenter and the Wildlife Society. June 2017 in the San Jacinto Mountains, California.
• California naturalist residential course in 2017
• The Wildlife Society day/long bats and white nose syndrome workshop
• Bat banding radio tagging class with Dave Johnston in September 2017
• NERT graduate class in Pet disaster response and first aid, Feb 2017
• NERT graduate class in Emergancy communications, Feb 2017
• Neighborhood Emergency Response Training with the San Francisco Fire Department (NERT) January 2017
• Marine Mammal Center animal care and advanced animal care, and elephant seal progression training.

Conferences I went to during this time:

• Science Hackday October 2019, 2018 and 2017
• The Wildlife Society and American Fisheries Society annual conference in Cleveland Ohio September 2019
• California Bat Working Group summit Feb 2019 and Feb 2018
• Wildlife Conservation Network Spring and Fall Expo 2018
• California Naturalist Regional Rendezvous where I have a talk on white nose syndrome in bats
• The Wildlife Society Annual Conference in New Mexico September 2017
• Wildlife Conservation Network Spring Expo 2017
• Pybay Python regional conference August 2016

Naturalist training and Bat experience

I qualified as a California Naturalist in 2017 through through the University of a California Agricultural College and Camp Ocean Pines. My final project was a bat walk and a presentation about bats. This was such a huge success that I was invited back to the 2018 class to give a paid talk on bats and guided bat detecting walk.

I put this training to good use encouraging friends and organising many trips to help spark that passion for nature (bats and otherwise!). I believe in getting people on that first rung of the stewardship ladder where to care and protect for the environment you first have to be exposed and get interested in nature.

I volunteer with the California Acadamy of Sciences on occasion to help perform biodiversity analysis on the tidepool reef at Pillar point in Half moon bay under the direction of Alison Young and Rebecca Johnson. I have also taken their 3 day residential class on Nudibranchs with the Jepson Herbarium.

I collaborated with leaders in the California Bat Working Group to specify, design and build a website for the group and the logo/branding:

https://www.calbatwg.org

Simon and I also built this Bat website with iNaturalist data to help people realise that awesome bats are around them everywhere!

https://www.batsnearme.com

I attended the residential workshop put on by The Wildlife Society and run by Dr. Joe Szewczak, Leila S. Harris and Jill Carpenter in the San Jacinto mountains, June 2017. We did a deep dive into the biomechanical process of echolocation, diffeeent species of bats, the physics of sound and in teams of 4 we designed, ran and analysed the results of a survey with a Sonobat detector. Paying special attention to where we placed the sensor, what types of bats we thought we might get then learning to analyse the sonogram waveforms for heuristic patterns to identify individual species of bat. We did some mist netting, I helped get a tangled June bug successfully out of the net.

At Pat Brown’s 3 day residential Desert bat class in the Mojave Desert, 2019, I got my first bat handling experience under supervision of Jill Carpenter. I assisted with the construction and breakdown of the netting sites. Record keeping and I held and helped measure several California Myotis and helped get a Canyon bat and two Palid bats out of the net. (I have a recent Rabies Titer)

In February 2020 I had the opportunity to volunteer for Gabe Reyes with the USGS mist netting bats in Marin. I managed the survey record keeping, helped with construction and breakdown of 6 mist nets. I handled some California Myotis and helped measure weights and wingspan, assisted with the removal of one bat from a net and helped release a few after we had surveyed and radio tagged them. More winter survey dates were planned but the global Coronavirus pandemic stepped in the way.

I took a week long drones in conservation workshop with the Wildlife Society where learned to plan routes, fly drones, environmental and wildlife considerations and regulations and how to analyse and collate imagery and geo reference to a map using ArcGIS. We also used ArcGIS for our project in which find a number of hidden plastic turkeys with drone imagery from a route that we planned and executed in teams of 3.

Science communication and Docenting/Guide experience

I have been working with the Scientific community on twitter to support and boost the engagement in science communication games (eg #cougarOrNot / #CrowOrNo #barkingUpATree etc).

I used Python to automate a Twitter bot that retweets science communication games:

https://natbat.github.io/scicomm-calendar/

I have also worked extensively with the iNaturalist API. Simon and I just launched MVP of the site we’ve been working on for the last few days. It’s a site to get people interested in Tidepooling and help figure out the best low tides to visit in the next month that are in daylight hours.

https://www.rockybeaches.com/us/pillar-point

Another site we launched was for the Super Bowl / Superb Owl

https://www.owlsnearme.com

I am working to publish and create a library of nature videos for the Bay Area.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCu_N3UP2o8JdnNmGAhYRijQ

Here is the educational video of me talking about how 50% of all Californian Sealions are born on June 15th and the rest are born that week:

https://youtu.be/Z2B_cbp34D8

My educational video on redwood trees:

https://youtu.be/3DzN2De9ANc

I have been a volunteer Docent/Guide at the Marine Mammal Center for a year, I have done nearly 100 hours of Docenting. This involved customer engagement through storytelling to help spark people’s passion about marine mammals and lead them into behavioural change to save the oceans and the planet. (See below for more details and recommendations I have received on this role). I have also taken the tour guide training and was in the process of graduating as a tour guide when the pandemic temporarily closed the Center.

I took part in Science Hackday 2017, 2018 and 2019.

Marine Mammal experience

I have been volunteering at The Marine Mammal Center in Marin, California on the animal care crew (Tuesday daytime topside) more details on this can be found in the volunteering section of my LinkedIn profile.

In summary this consisted of in-pen experience with marine mammals such as Elephant Seals, Northern & Guadalupe Fur Seals, California & Stellar Sea lions. Working as part of a team to follow protocols (such as tube feeding), do detail oriented work and care for the animals in a high stress, high risk environment.

I trained in ‘Elephant Seal progression’ which involved direct interaction with young & yearling Elephant seals ‘fish school’ monitoring their behaviour and teaching them to activate their instincts to recognise fish as food & overcome gag reflex to swallow and eat fish on the pen floor & in the pool. I spent several seasons as part of the Fish school team. Part of this work required detailed charting of observations and behaviours for continuity between teams and vet-staff to be informed.

The Fish kitchen experience (both participating in and running fish kitchen) involved, organising orders, labels and buckets, measuring quantities, performing quality assurance & adding medication to fish, making measuring and drawing up fish mash and electrolytes.

I ran the fish kitchen operation on several occasions, organising, prioritising and managing teams to take the fish to the pens, taking reports of the feeds/observations and charting this for vet staff.

I helped release Elephant Seals to the wild which is an incredibly magical experience knowing you have helped these animals recover. I have participated as part of the release team on two releases at Chimney rock which is a different sort of high-stress/risk environment because you are out in the wild and there are adult elephant seals around on the beach.

I’ve taken the Animal care class & the Advanced animal care class yearly and the Elephant Seal Progression class.

Neighborhood campaigns and local politics

I have been campaigning with some friends and neighbors to save trees in Hayes Valley, this included putting out petitions, posters, social media campaigns, surveys, writing speeches, and speaking out at public meeting city hearings and appeals (both for hayes valley and other neighborhoods) and negotiating for terms of replacement trees directly with the Bureau of Urban Forestry.

For more information on our campaign’s achievements: https://blog.natbat.net/post/623649015818485760/hayes-valley-trees

Ham Radio and Disaster response experience

I trained with the SF fire department Neighborhood Emergancy Response Team (NERT predecessor to the CERT programs elsewhere in California) in 2017. This was a 3 day program with a license for 2 years and I have renewed again in 2019. I have attended a NERT Drill and have done three graduate NERT classes, psychological first aid, pet preparedness and first aid and Emergency Communications.

I took a Ham Radio class with the SF Ham Radio Club in June 2017. I arranged study groups with some friends. I took the exam for the Technical License and passed first time with a score of 34/35. In September 2017 I passed my General License (Intermediate) exam. My callsign is KM6LCB.

I volunteered at the San Francisco Marathon on the communications team on the part of the route that blocked in the SF blood bank. I’ve taken part in two treasure hunt style simplex competitions with friends, run by a friend who used to write the MIT treasure hunt.

Expeditions

Simon and I went on a week long kyacking and camping expedition in Baja Mexico in with Naturalists and Guides from Seatrek to find Blue and Grey whales in n Feb 2019

I planned and organized a 4 week expedition to Madagascar in September 2019. I wanted to see as many Lemurs in the wild as possible so my plan took me to a distribution of biodiversity hotspots all over the country (some of which were very hard to get to and involved chartering boat or hiking for miles).

I worked with an independant local guide and together we booked accomodations and arranged logistics around constraints of time, budget route and amount of lemurs. We saw 28 (of the hundred or so extant) different species of Lemur in the wild. Hiked twice a day including a lot of night hikes to see bats and nocturnal lemurs and fosa fusana. I learned enough Malagasy to communicate basic needs and facts about animals!

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Department of public works have a proposed replacement plan you might like to see:

http://bit.ly/tree-plan-hayes-valley

In short, lots of lovely flowering trees that support local ecology like birds, bees and butterflies and evergreen trees to continuously scrub toxins out of the air and improve our air quality all year round.

Any questions or comments please email Susan Cieutat susan AT sfdonors.com

Some background

Hi all! You will likely by now have heard about or seen some trees coming down in the neighbourhood. These were Ficus trees that the city wanted to remove because of concerns about branch failures on some of the larger trees.

Info as to why they plan to do this here:

https://sfpublicworks.org/ficustrees

Tons of people either emailed or showed up at the initial protest hearing and voiced their opinions, so thanks to everyone who did that! Susan Cieutat and Josh Klipp filed official appeals after that and more people turned up in support, overall nearly a hundred people have taken part in this process! It’s been a really great turn out.

Why did we protest

The main things being protested were:

• SF has one of the worst urban canopies of any city in the United States, a blanket rule to remove all ficus trees all in a short space of time would exacerbate matters.
• Lots of little trees planted as replacements in our neighbourhood have been vandalised and have died, we wanted to give the replacements as big of a chance as we could.
• We wanted to keep as many non-dangerous mature trees as we could for shade with climate change and increasing local temperatures and for carbon sequestration to fight climate change.
• To have removals take place with minimal impact to the local wildlife of birds and bats. And for replacement trees to have ecological benefits for those species. San Francisco is part of the incredibly important great Pacific Flyway where lots of birds use our urban canopy as a stopover on the long migrations North and south.
• To get planting replacement trees committed to and have community input into this.

What happened as a result

It’s been a long year or so of discussions, protests and appeals and we wanted to update you on how things went through both the initial community protest and the appeals process.

• The initial proposal by the Department of Public Works (DPW) was for 39 trees to be removed, the protests of the community were heard and the Bureau of Urban Forestry (BUF is a Department of DPW) went back and looked again at the individual trees and decided we could keep some by heavily pruning them. As a result we are only loosing 28 - there may be plans to remove more in five or so years but that will be a separate proposal later down the line. - This is a 30% reduction in the amount of trees scheduled for removal, a significant slowdown in the reduction of our urban canopy.
• A passionate appeal by Jacky led to her favourite tree outside what used to be Cafe La Vie, being one of the ones saved.
• With regards for replacement trees, the mandate from the board of appeals was to have a planting plan in place that had community input, before removal of the trees. While this didn’t happen exactly because of a request from hvna to speed up the removal process in advance of eateries re-opening, there is a plan in rough formation now. And thanks to everyone who filled out the survey on replacement trees! (More on this in a moment)
• With replacement trees we tied them to a 3 month replanting schedule from the day the tree is removed. This, by BUF/DPW standards is a super fast timeline and it also guarantees that budget is set aside for the replacements whereas it might have been lost in the shuffle and we could have ended up with no replacements.
• To help the little trees get their best start in life, we got a mandate from the board of appeals that instead of the usual small 15 gallon trees this had to be increased to a 24” box, which represents a few more years of growth and hopefully more robust trees!
• There is budget set aside as a commitment to watering the replacements for 3 years which should be enough to establish them such that they can support themselves.
• BUF have been planting up some of the empty basins in the neighbourhood and are continuing to plant more and considering the possibility of making more basins.

Tree replacement plan

Thanks again to everyone who filled in the survey Josh posted in this fb group and John Nulty sent out on his mailing list. There were over 60 respondents!

The most asked for tree was the Jacaranda tree. After that magnolias were popular and overall a strong preference for flowering trees.

(While a few people in the comments section requested Cherry blossom, it has been observed by BUF that they don’t grow well in San Francisco as a street tree, have a look at the ones in Japan Town, they are old but still very tiny)

There was a preference toward evergreen trees over deciduous with a preference toward clumps of the same tree on a street. (Deciduous means they drop their leaves seasonally and evergreen means they keep their leaves all year round)

Evergreen trees are great because they filter the air all year round, scrubbing the air and improving our air quality!

With replacements BUF is limited to what is available in the larger 24” box size and they have been working very hard and diligently in trying to meet the desires of the neighbourhood from the survey, health considerations for the tree, availability of trees in the nursery and the requirements of the individual basins (for example choosing shorter trees under power / muni lines etc)

All the replacement species are designed to be drought tolerant once established, as we seem to have little sky-water over here (I’m from England, we have too much of it over there!)

Here is a map of the plan from BUF / DPW as to which trees are due to be replaced and with what:

bit.ly/tree-plan-hayes-valley

The key to the map is looking at the colour of the little tree markers:

Pale green = Ficus trees that were proposed for removal but are staying.

Purple = Jacarunda trees

Blue = California Lilac / Ceanothus the ‘Ray Hartman’ subspecies

Dark red = Catalina Ironwood

Dark green = Magnolia (st Mary’s variety)

Black = being removed but because of where it is a replacement is not possible

A little about the replacement species:

JACARUNDA

Flowering - Deciduous - Not California native

Beautiful Purple flowering tree, can grow quite tall and keeps its flowers for a long time during spring and summer once the tree is mature.

As someone with hayfever, personally I had reservations about flowering trees but it turns out that Jacarunda is pollinated by bees, not wind, so it doesn’t need to spread its pollen far and wide which is great for us summer-snifflers!

There is one flowering on Grove st between Laguna and Octavia if you’d like to see one in action right now.

Fun fact: the bloom in Pretoria, Australia coincides with the year-end exams at the University of Pretoria, legend has it there that if a flower from a jacaranda drops on a student’s head, the student will pass all their exams.

https://www.thespruce.com/growing-jacaranda-mimosifolia-3269356

CALIFORNIA LILAC

Flowering - Evergreen - California native

This is a pretty blue flowering tree that is really great for our native pollinators! Butterflies, Bees and humming birds love them!

It’s fast growing but doesn’t get very big so it’s a good tree for places that have overhead power lines. They are also known as ‘nitrogen fixers’ which means they can help keep the soil healthy.

Fun fact: The seeds of this plant can lie dormant for hundreds of years and are typically dependent on forest fires to trigger germination of their seeds!

https://www.gardenia.net/plant-variety/ceanothus-california-lilac

CATALINA IRONWOOD

Lyonothamnus floribundus

Flowering - Evergreen - California native

This tree can grow up to about 15 metres (nearly 50 ft) and has glossy dark green leaves and small woolly white flowers.

Planting trees native to the state is a great way to support local wildlife, even though this tree is native to the islands around Catalina and not to San Francisco specifically, it will be great for nesting birds and native bees and other wildlife that live in both places.

Fun Fact: natural populations of this tree grow in distinct groves. Each grove contains up to several hundred genetically identical clones!

https://www.fuf.net/tree/fernleaf-catalina-ironwood/

MAGNOLIA

Flowering - Evergreen - Not California native

Magnolias have lovely thick dark glossy leaves and produce really good shade. They have big white fragrant flowers. It’s slow growing but long lasting and has a lovely big oval canopy once mature

The St Mary’s magnolia is a medium sized tree and it sequesters a good amount of carbon

Fun fact: San Francisco botanical gardens has (when it’s open) over 200 different species of Magnolia, one of the best collections of its kind in the world. When they bloom in late-winter / early spring you can take a tour round the gardens with their magnolia curator!

https://www.sfbg.org/magnolias

https://www.fuf.net/tree/southern-magnolia/

Here’s a link to that replacement tree plan again if you want to look at it in google maps:

bit.ly/tree-plan-hayes-valley

The above is a shortened link to:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1ZOdYbNxJP7-dsB92GIp-LZGzQ9w487cU&usp=sharing

Any questions or comments please email Susan Cieutat susan AT sfdonors.com

• Tags
• ecology
• trees
• hayes valley
• san francisco

Bats, or as I prefer to call them “sky puppies” are adorable, wonderful and play an essential role in ecology. But they are facing a significant new threat. White-nose syndrome is a fungal disease that is spreading at an alarmingly fast pace, affecting colonies of hibernating bats. It has killed 90% of some species in the USA, literally millions of bats since its introduction from Europe in 2006. It started in New York, then spread to the central states and with a recent outbreak as far west as Washington it’s imperative that we prepare in California.

Ecology and Importance of bats

Bats make up 20-25% of all known living species of mammals (1,240+ out of 5,400+), and as the primary predators of night-flying insects they play an important role in controlling bug populations.

They enjoy eating Mosquitos, which helps reduce the spread of mosquito-based diseases such as West Nile Virus and Zika. They also eat bugs like the Stink Beetle, Cotton Ear Worm moth and the cotton Bullworm moth that are hugely damaging to crops and they can reduce fungal infections of corn, thus saving Farmers billions of dollars in pesticides in the US alone.

About a third of bat species worldwide are fruit or nectar feeding. These bats pollinate numerous plants and disperse seeds in their fertile poop. Plants that benefit from bat pollination worldwide include about 450 commercial species such as avocado, figs, dates, peaches and almonds. Insect feeders such as the Pallid bat, can also be important for pollination. Even the Giant cactus and Agave — for tequila — is pollinated by bats!

We have about 20 species of bat here in California, and all except two (Mexican long tongue and CA leaf nosed bat) eat insects. The pallid bat changes it’s diet depending on habitat and is even immune to scorpion venom and will happily munch on scorpions as a snack.

White-nose syndrome

Recently a deadly threat to bats has been sweeping the nation causing the fastest wildlife collapse of the past century. White-nose syndrome is a fungal epidemic affecting all species of hibernating bats in North America. Introduced from Eurasia to a single cave in New York in 2006 it has now spread to 31 US States and 5 Canadian provinces in just over ten years.

The pathogen causes a white fuzzy growth over the nose, hair loss and damages wing membranes which disrupts the bat’s water balance causing dehydration and waking it in winter when there isn’t enough food, causing it to consume winter fat stores and starve to death.

The fastest wildlife collapse of the past century

This fatal fungus has killed over 6 million bats, wiping out over 90-100% of some populations in affected states and threatening species like the northern long eared bat with extinction!

Sites that used to have thousands of bats now just have a few individuals clinging to life.

To put this into context if everyone in San Francisco (860,000) was a colony of bats, the surviving individuals would amount to less than a hundred people, about the capacity of a reasonably sized brunch spot.

As well as the spread from the east, recent cases in Washington State are grave cause for concern for many reasons, and for California a worry because it potentially speeds up the arrival of the disease.

If you are thinking that we are safe in California from a disease that affects hibernating bats because we are a so called ‘hot state’, you’d be wrong. Cavers for Bat Conservation International have identified over 400 caves and roosting spots in South California alone which have the perfect cool, damp environment for the fungus to propagate. Even bats that don’t hibernate may still contract the desease from infected caves and mines.

Unlike in the eastern states, our colonies of bats tend to be smaller, rather than the huge spectacles of thousands. We have vastly different topography, geology and plants leading to much variation in roosting spots. This does not mean we are immune.

From the map below, you can see the speed of the disease and also note that we have a much greater species diversity than the eastern US. It’s important that we act now.

What about California?

Not a lot is known about the winter ecology or the susceptibility of our western bats to white-nose syndrome. There are variances in hibernacula microclimate, skin microflora, roosting behaviour, body mass and physiology for example, that are different to the bats in the currently affected states.

We need to do baseline studies of our bat populations, roosting and hibernacula spots and their natural history, before the disease gets to us.

We can learn lessons from the already affected states. Biosecurity and decontamination are essential to slow and minimise the spread and impact of the disease.

The fungal pathogen can spread bat to bat and remains present in the roost sediment and walls. It can also be transmitted from clothing or equipment as people enter caves and roosting spots.

If you work with bats: glove up, and use a different pair of gloves for each bat, throwing away the old ones and decontaminating your equipment in between bats. There is a national decontamination guidance protocol that we can start following now.

Scientists are working on various cave decontamination theories and potential vaccines and treatments for the disease.

If you find a dead bat, particularly one which exhibits suspicious signs, take photos and report it to your local fish and wildlife biologists so that the bat can be sent for testing as soon as possible.

Act now!

We need to work together now to hold off the spread of white-nose syndrome and to learn as much as we can about all the bats in our state, and to do baseline studies and to identify roosts where we can target our decontamination efforts.

If you are a caver, make sure that you respect the local, State and Federal cave advisories and closures – especially if the cave is off limits or has restrictions. Help protect bats from white-nose syndrome and educate other cavers. Avoid caves, mines or passages containing hibernating bats, to minimize disturbance to their well needed winter hibernation. When you do enter caves do so carefully and decontaminate all equipment and clothing immediately after visiting. Do not allow dogs or other pets in caves, as they may also act as carriers of the fungus.

Another helpful thing you can do — given that I am sure you have your representatives on speeddial now — is encourage state and federal legislators to allocate funding to help understand and fight this devistating epidemic. You can also donate to Bat Conservation International.

Outreach and education on bats and white-nose syndrome to friends, family, and everyone – is absolutely essential to create empathy, educate and engage people to help safeguard the future of our bats.

So get out there! Celebrate the adorable bats we call sky puppies!

Resources

• Report suspicious bat behavior or dead bats to the California Department of Fish and Wildife.

• Information on white nose syndrome, the national decontamination protocol and what to do if you spot unusual behaviour or evidence of white nose syndrome can be found on whitenosesyndrome.org.

• Bat Conservation International also have a lot of useful resources.

• Tags
• bats
• white-nose syndrome
• conservation

Those of you who know me personally will likely know that I have always been passionate about wildlife and the environment.

The News: I have decided to leave Eventbrite and Lanyrd. My plan is to use my technical and organisational skills to make a difference in environmental conservation.

Read on for some musings on the intersection of my career to date with my passion for environmental and wildlife conservation.

Read more

• Tags
• career
• environment
• conservation
• technology
• eventbrite
• lanyrd