With the New Year, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area has officially launched a competition to save endangered species living in urban island habitats of San Francisco, the Peninsula, and Marin. The year-long event, called the “2008 GGNRA Endangered Species Big Year,” hopes to spur the awareness and actions needed to save the 33 endangered and threatened birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, fishes, and flowering plants found in GGNRA. The GGNRA contains more endangered species than Yosemite and any other National Park in continental North America.

GGNRA, a unit of the national park system, includes the world-renowned destinations of Alcatraz Island and Muir Woods and is the world’s largest urban national park with over 75,000 acres in San Francisco, Marin, and San Mateo counties. GGNRA has a unique geographical position covering a broad range of habitats for plants and wildlife including marine habitats, salt marshes, redwood forests, chaparral and coastal scrub habitats, and grasslands, just to name a few.

Today, leaders of the San Francisco Naturalist Society and others will be hosting a kick-off party for the Big Year at the San Francisco Zoo.

Numerous educational and hand-on events to help the imperiled wildlife and native plants of GGNRA will take place throughout 2008. For example, if you want to learn how to see and save the Northern Spotted Owl, you can go to that animal’s profile page and find out about upcoming events for spotting it in its natural environment while helping to restore its foraging habitat.

Go to www.ggnrabigyear.org for more information.

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Twice a month, I present an endangered California desert tortoise to a diversity of school kids in San Francisco during a docent talk in the theater of the Randall Museum. I am astonished that even kindergartners here oftentimes know what “endangered” means. When I ask, they reply, “It means they are going away.” “They are almost gone.”

On Friday, May 18th, parks, wildlife refuges, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, environmental agencies, conservation organizations, schools, museums, libraries, businesses, and community groups across the country will host events to bring awareness to imperiled species on Endangered Species Day.

I heard about Endangered Species Day from Patrick Schlemmer, President of the San Francisco Naturalist Society. Patrick works at the San Francisco Zoo, where an inaugural celebration of Endangered Species Day will host over 2,000 school children bearing Endangered Species Day “Passports.” Docents will be stationed at exhibits of endangered species at the zoo to answer questions and stamp passports. While visiting the endangered western lowland gorilla, Sumatran tiger, Waldrapp ibis, Grizzly bear, Ring-tailed lemur, and San Francisco garter snake, children will learn about ways to save wildlife.

For more information and to find a list of events, visit the Endangered Species Coalition Web site: www.stopextinction.org.

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