Habitat Restoration Project Wrapping Up

These recent  acorn plantings near the Lower Crystal Springs Dam are some of the last under the watershed’s Bioregional Habitat Program’s vegetation removal project. 

Each of the protective Tubex tree shelters houses one Coastal live oak acorn apiece. The tubes will help foster strong, straight trunks and safeguard the young saplings from rodents and other greenery predators. We’ll be nurturing the new trees for the next few years

Still to come is one final series of acorn plantings on land adjacent to part of the Sawyer Camp Trail that we cleared of nonnative invasive trees, mostly black acacias, in 2016. We’ll be doing that  planting as soon as we’re confident we’ve eliminated potential resprouting of the destructive acacias.  

In all, the restoration program is restoring about 180 acres of native grassland, Coastal live oak forest and wetlands at different locales within the watershed.  The historic California habitats foster a rich diversity of native plant, insect, bird and animal life. 

Endangered Mission blue butterfly. 

The 23,000-acre watershed is also a California State Fish and Game Refuge, and home to the highest concentration of rare, threatened and endangered species in the nine-county Bay Area.  More on some of THOSE in future blogs.