Restoring habitat in a man-made world: SFPUC clears non-natives in portion of watershed

“Our number one reason for owning the land is to protect water quality,” said Tim Ramirez, SFPUC’s division manager of natural resources and lands management. “But we would like to operate the property so that it’s more sustainable.”

Yet restoring habitat is no easy feat, nor may the end product be what some might expect.

Beginning Aug. 1, a portion of the trail will be closed weekdays as large equipment is brought in to remove invasive species of trees across nearly 22 acres and clear out brush to prepare for more than a lifetime’s worth of restoration and management.

Restoring history

Today’s dense watershed forest, filled with Monterey pines, Australian blackwood acacia and eucalyptus, is in stark contrast to how the lands originally looked before settlers in the 1800s formed a small town and subsequently planted non-native species, Ramirez said.

Since the area was dammed, reservoirs created and turned into a watershed, Ramirez said the SFPUC is now trying to revive native habitat that was significantly altered as little more than fire suppression activities have taken place over more than a century.

“We have not allowed much of anything to happen in the watershed and as a consequence, things have just sort of grown. Imagine your front yard if you didn’t do anything for 40 years, what it would look like.” Ramirez said. “What you see now is a very dense, heavily forested area and it was not like that historically. It was very open, there were a lot of grasslands and to the extent there were trees, they were native trees.”

While there were large canopies, they were interspersed with open space, which allowed for more sunlight and native habitat for animals, Ramirez said.

But before Ramirez and his gang of biologists can begin replanting oaks and the thorny endangered fountain thistle from locally collected seeds, there’s “construction” to be done.

Tree removal, construction

That’s where SFPUC Senior Project Manager Joe Ortiz comes in. Ortiz is overseeing the first phase of the ongoing habitat restoration program, which is taking place in both Alameda and San Mateo counties. About 1,800 acres will be restored as part of the utility’s $4.8 billion Water System Improvement Program.

WSIP is a massive capital project that includes the new Bay tunnel and significant seismic upgrades to infrastructure that brings water from Yosemite’s Hetchy Hetchy Reservoir to the taps of 2.6 million Bay Area customers.

The habitat restoration program is part of state and federal requirements to mitigate the impacts of the numerous WSIP projects. The “construction” phase of restoring habitat is unlike any other. Work must be coordinated to avoid things like mating seasons, crews must ensure endangered snakes aren’t in the construction zones and god forbid one of the resident bald eagles decides to nest in the area.

While the Alameda County projects are wrapping up, there are about a dozen Peninsula site crews are kicking into gear. The final is planned for an area south of State Route 92 that is expected to culminate in fall 2017, according to the SFPUC.

But while removing massive trees on uneven ground is an undertaking expected to cost $55.6 million, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Ramirez’s group will then “inherit” the project and begin restoring it by planting new oaks and fountain thistle from acorns and seeds they’ve been collecting.

Replanting fountain thistle, which only grows in San Mateo County and is a protected species, will have dual benefits, Ramirez said.

For decades, the SFPUC has kept the reservoirs approximately 4 feet lower than capacity as a prior spillway construction project required them to lower the water. During that time, new fountain thistle formed around the “bathtub ring” of where the water level sat. By the time they were finished, they couldn’t raise the reservoir level because it would have affected the endangered plants, Ramirez said.

After replanting new thistle as part of the Bioregional Habitat Restoration Program, they’ll be allowed to raise the reservoir back to capacity slowly over the next 10 to 15 years, Ramirez said.

Projects such as these aren’t about the short-term benefits. Ramirez and Ortiz noted they’ll spend about two to three years monitoring for regrowth to ensure non-native trees don’t return before planting new natives.

As part of the project, a third-party land trust will hold easements on the sites while the SFPUC maintains it as habitat and open space in perpetuity, Ramirez said.

Finding a balance

Although the landscape across a relatively small portion of the entire site may appear very different in the near future, SFPUC biologist Scott Simono said it’s about balance.

“It’s about our natural diversity,” Simono said, after collecting seeds near an area slated for fountain thistle restoration. “Having a healthy, native habitat helps keep the non-native species at bay.”

While Simono and other biologists worked along portions of the secluded watershed closed to the public, visitors to the Sawyer Camp Trail will get a closer look at restoration taking place about a mile south of Crystal Springs Road.

An approximate 2.25-mile segment of the trail will be closed weekdays Aug. 1 through Oct. 28. It will remain open weekends and, after removing non-native species, the SFPUC plans to repave the portion of trail.

The ongoing cost to manage the site has yet to be determined, however, the SFPUC is required to have an endowment that will likely reach more than $120 million, according to Ramirez and Ortiz.

While it may take decades to return at least these portions of the local watershed back to how it functioned before humans interfered, Ramirez noted this is a project that will literally continue to grow.

“It’s going to be very dynamic,” Ramirez said. “It’s not like a pipeline project that’s static. It’s going to change as it supports plants and animal habitat.”

Visit sfwater.org/peninsula for more information.

samantha@smdailyjournal.com

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