All-volunteer Friends of Five Creeks has Worked for clean water and healthy watersheds since 1996
Hands on, we revive natural areas that a welcome people and animals from Bay to hills, Berkeley to Richmmond. We collect citizen-science and other information important to making decisions, especially in light of climate change. We also collaborate and advocate with local agencies and other nonprofits.
Join us to make a difference!
TENDING NATURE,
HANDS ON
Join our small, informal Tuesday morning Weed Warriors! No obligation, no RSVP – come when you can.Email us for more info, or sign up to get emails about locations.
Monthly (more or less) work parties are open to the public — scroll down for details on more volunteering.
Email us about events for your group on your schedule, or adopting a site.
Citizen Science, Monitoring
Use iNaturalist and other tools to contribute to informed policy, build baselines for climate change, and get to know plants and animals.
Current focus is on Aquatic Park and Albany’s varied shoreline. We also have opportunities for birders and those who know native plants, as well as more quantitative monitoring. Email us about your interests.
partnering, teaching, advocating
Our small group has worked with many others over the years. Many skills welcome!
Currently, we are helping developing a future exhibit at the Berkeley Historical Society and Museum and partnering with Shark Stewards and others to help with environmental challenges at Aquatic Park’s lagoons.
Coming events, opportunities
Join Weed Warriors on Bay shore as we continue an important new campaign: Bridal creeper (asparagus fern), escaped from gardens, is smothering native California holly and other evergreens in Eastshore State Park grasslands north of Point Isabel (photo left). In February, we also expect to work at the El Cerrito Hillside Natural Area, Cerrito Creek, and Tilden. Sign up on our About page to get weekly notices of Weed Warriors locations! No obligation, no RSVP — just come when you can.
Enjoy and explore nature: Help track sea-level rise and coastal changes You will help create a record of change and a foretaste of sea-level rise to come. F5C volunteers and interns have recorded local sites for years, rain or shine — storms are ideal! Email f5creeks@gmail.com if you are interested in helping us.
Observe creatures between and below tidelines at minus tides: Lowest tides are mostly after dark through January, but they will drop low close to dusk Jan. 30 & 31. Looking west at sunset isn’t ideal, but if weather is not stormy, we welcome a few helpers interested in the wonders and willing to download and learn the basics of iNaturalist in advance. Email f5creeks@gmail.com if interested.
We also seek GPS’d photos of flooding, damage, and erosion during and after storms, on shorelines, tidal channels, and creeks, as well as hillside slippage and recurrent street flooding. Email f5creeks@gmail.com if interested.
We had a grand time partnering with Friends of Hillside Area on MLK Day! February work party, another partnership, to be announced!
What’s New
No volunteering on lower Codornices Creek due to Leptospirosis outbreak, annual creek meeting postponed. Friends of Five Creeks has weeded, planted, and fought to protect the threatened steelhead trout on Codornices Creek west of San Pablo for more than 25 years. We have stopped all volunteering there due to an outbreak of Leptospirosis, a potentially lethal disease, in the dense, rat-infested, unsanitary and dangerous camps on 8th and Harrison near the creek. The bacteria are spread especially by dogs and rats, and can persist in water, mud, or damp vegetation. More information on Leptospirosis is in the Berkeleyside article here.
Our volunteers worked is these conditions continually, assisting Albany, Berkeley, and UC Berkeley. More than 50 volunteers and interns worked along the creek in late October, most doing emergency erosion control needed because of a major fire in creekside camps long tolerated by Berkeley. (Such camping has finally been declared illegal.) No agency bothered to warn us when the outbreak was discovered in November. Signs along the creek and adjacent sports fields went up only in mid-January, after F5C was notified, sent out an email alert, and demanded action.
Berkeley, Albany, UC Berkeley, and Alameda County need time to work out a plan: for cleaning, reducing rat populations, and ongoing control, surveillance, and notification. The agencies involved have postponed the annual Codornices Creek stakeholders’ meeting, set for Feb. 4, for this reason. Friends of Five Creeks hope this outbreak of potentially lethal disease, on the heels of a major inferno that could have easily have killed campers, shows that it is negligence, not humanitarianism, to allow packed-together tents, crates, stoves, and garbage without sanitation.
The East Bay Regional Park District’s draft plans for the North Basin Strip – Schoolhouse Creek area, finalized in November, are not yet scheduled to come before the Board. The former executive director resigned abruptly and is suing. The plans are online here. The link has extensive background and info on other ways to comment. Agendas and info on how to comment at board meetings will be here.
This plan has many strong points. More details are on our page on Schoolhouse Creek. We at Friends of Five Creeks are disappointed that the Park District has chosen not to “daylight” the mouth of Schoolhouse Creek.
Most important, this plan must deal with how to adapt to rising sea levels and increasingly intense storms. We sent the District Board and planners a strong memo detailing how background documents and consultants’ reports misconstrue, misrepresent, and selectively ignore evidence, building a case for gravel and cobble as a way to lessen erosion. These techniques are being piloted at projects around the Bay, making them attractive to consultants and agencies. However, they remain experimental. Selling them on false evidence risks millions in costs and maintenance, as well as real danger.
Slide shows reveal how shorelines are changing
Our slide show, “Virginia Extension: Conditions and Implications” These slides show the decrepit conditions that led us to conclude that in the face of rising sea levels, this flood-prone, eroding old dump road should be allowed to become salt marsh, with a new road much farther inland. We are delighted that the North Basin plan has accepted this approach. Click here to view slide show in a new window. This is a large file! Please be patient. It is meant to be viewed on a large screen. Slides are set to advance slowly, for reading and a close look.
How are our East Bay shorelines changing? Tracking history as climate changes. Click here to view slide show in a new window. This is a large file! Please be patient. It is meant to be viewed on a large screen. Slides are set to advance slowly, for reading and a close look. This is a beginning effort — please help us build these records!