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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Releasing Common Murres near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. (Photo: IBRRC)

Most of the wildlife victims of the deadly November 2007 Cosco Busan oil spill on San Francisco Bay have been waterbirds, but the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory also found two oiled red-tailed hawks. WildCare in San Rafael took in the birds that had landed on the beach to capture oil-covered waterfowl on the sand. Both birds survived the toxic effects of the oil and are now being released. WildCare is inviting the public to to watch them fly free at noon on December 12 in the Marin Headlands. For directions and details, RSVP on their Web site.

To date, WildCare has received over 580 birds oiled as a result of the Cosco Busan disaster on November 7, 2007. Oiled animals continue to arrive nearly every day. The San Rafael facility has taken in more than 20% of the oiled wildlife found after the spill. As of December 10, 2007, the International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBBRC) in Cordelia reports 1,076 birds have arrived live, 632 have died or were euthanized, 389 have been cleaned and released, and 389 have been found dead.

Now, at a time when more birds are being found dead than alive, the successful rescue and release of surviving birds and widespread concern for wildlife survival can give Bay Area residents something to feel good about. For a video of a releasee at Tomales Bay, go to the IBBRC Web site.

In addition to WildCare and the IBBRC, Bay Nature magazine also lists informational resources, organizations, and volunteer opportunities related to the disaster.

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In recent months, nonprofit presses in Berkeley have released new books that highlight diverse Bay Area neighborhoods and unexpected ways communities come together.

In September, Heyday Books, publishers of books about California history, arts, and culture, released “Under the Dragon - California’s New Culture.” The book is also the subject of a new Oakland Museum exhibit called “Trading Traditions” beginning in January 2008. Written by locals Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg, Under the Dragon follows the lives of a diversity of Bay Area communities while capturing the poignancy of individual struggle in a way that goes beyond the personal. The stories are raw and authentic, and the photographs are stunning.

Another nonprofit Berkeley-based publisher, New Village Press, is celebrating revered community activists at a launch party on December 9, 2007 for “Building Commons and Community” by the late Karl Linn and “Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing” by Louise Dunlap. The event will be held from 3:00 to 6:00 pm at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists (BFUU) Hall at Cedar and Bonita Streets, and is co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee and the NorCal Chapter of Architects/ Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility. Speakers will include Louise Dunlap and Karl Linn’s longtime friend and colleague, Carl Anthony.

For over 40 years, Linn devoted himself to bringing people together in the spirit of reclaiming what he called “neighborhood commons,” creating urban oases, combined park-playground projects from vacant and blighted plots of land.

Linn, who grew up on a farm in Germany before his family was forced to flee Nazi persecution, worked as a child therapist and later established a distinguished landscape architecture practice in New York. By the late 1950s, he had decided to devote his career to social justice, teaching, and creating these neighborhood commons.

In the late 1980s, when Linn retired to Berkeley, he helped found the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility and the Urban Habitat Program at Earth Island Institute. In 1993, Linn’s wife Nicole Milner, environmental justice activist Carl Anthony, and others banded together to convince Berkeley officials to name a city-owned community garden after Linn.

Soon thereafter, Linn teamed up with a UC Berkeley professor, her students, local craftspeople, and neighbors to rejuvenate the dilapidated garden, located in Berkeley’s Westbrae neighborhood. The Karl Linn Community Garden’s transformation inspired the creation of the nearby Peralta and Northside community gardens, the demonstration home known as the Berkeley EcoHouse, and a natural and human history project along the adjacent Ohlone greenway.

A Web site on Linn’s life and work can be found at www.karllinn.org.

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In October, the New York Times published an op-ed article called “The Green-Collar Solution” by journalist Thomas L. Friedman. The piece is about Van Jones’ crusade to bring economic opportunities to disadvantaged communities through job training in emerging and expanding environmental businesses.

Jones, a social justice leader in the Bay Area, has also become a prominent national advocate and voice for underserved and low-income communities that have not had opportunities to participate in the growing green economy. He serves on several advisory boards for environmental groups as well as the new Tipping Point Community, an anti-poverty philanthropic organization founded in 2005 in San Francisco.

With other environmental leaders, Jones recently created a national partnership called “Green For All” to bring “green collar” jobs to urban areas across the country.

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