f'OWL play

Look , I don't hate burrowing owls. I like 'em. I love birds of all kinds, and owls have a special place in my heart because as a small child I found a young owl inside a paper bag stashed into a garbage can in Kuala Lumpur. Does that sound like a far fetched story? Like so many in my strange and wonderful life, it is 100% true. My brother and I carried the owl home and my Mum drove us to a wildlife centre where they were enthralled at our find. I was pretty in love with the owl till I saw them feed live mice to it. When I met, much later, an animal rescuer called Ronnie who had liberated hundreds of mice from a vile research lab in England, I wondered whether he had released them in fields (where presumably they became prey for, among other things, owls) before he was arrested. I didn't ask. Ronnie served 7 years in jail for the act of placing animal life above the corporate greed and scientific stupidity of human beings.

So, don't accuse me of not caring about the wild, of not being sensitive enough to 'habitat preservation', or 'resource protection' or whatever fancy phrase some khaki pants and button down shirt 'park planner' wants to come up with.

The story involves the worst kind of political back room wrangling, park planning decisions, state parks vs local people, soccer mom playing field advocates, corporate boardrooms and environmentalist dealmakers and a population who seems to have come to believe that if the Sierra Club says 'jump' all we do is say 'which cliff shall we go off?'

The end result is that as part of the 'creation' of the Eastshore State Park, which made a homogenised whole of a set of unique and unusual ecological, cultural and functional open spaces, the meadow at the old Albany Landfill was designated as a burrowing owl habitat. Not that there ever was a burrowing owl there; not that the owl which supposedly lived where now the water guzzling, electricity hungry, environmentally wasteful Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex sits was ever actually seen; not that there has ever been (according to a naturalist employed by the parks system) a successful burrowing owl transplant in this area - but never mind reality and truth in political machinations - the fencing and the earth moving machines tell the story.

"You stupid people of this area" (the khaki 'Dockers' might say) "who thought that the vibrant plant and animal life, co-existing as it did with human and canine activity, must have been nuts to think that we could just let this organic urban wildness continue. Where would we put all of our chain link fence if not around your park? What would we do with all of the money we seem to have burning holes in our pockets? Why would we do a better job of maintaining our current parks if we can 'build' a new one, especially if it brings us Sierra Club support next time we want to fleece the voters for new bond money? Why let it just be when we can screw it up?"

The Albany Landfill - it's hard to explain what it's like. I have been walking there with my dogs and on my own for almost ten years and almost every day of those years photographing every nook, every cranny. Every day, I discover something new. Maybe one day I'll discover a burrowing owl. Chances are he'll be outside the fence, and if I ask him 'dude, whatcha doing outside the habitat area? Are you crazy?', he'll probably answer 'hey, all the mice left when we moved in and I'm tired of waiting for some animal liberationist to bring food'.

Or he might respond 'The really tasty gophers moved once there were no dogs to tease'.

Or 'hey Jill, you have to do what the environmentalists tell you to do. We don't'. Whoo hoo.

But he'd probably say 'hey I burrowed, Ok? I burrowed, and all I found was some garbage left here by humans in the 50's. You think I wanna live like that? Do you? Would you? Would you?'

Comments

[Gillian]

I am chuckling because I can just imagine you talking to this owl - but I think you are right that it seems a strange place to try to put new habitat, plus a sad loss for human creativity and those who not only think but live 'outside the box.'

[Deb in Minnesota]

Wow, your description of the new park sure seems different than the description I found on a park page:
"Eastshore State Park is one of the most outstanding achievements in the history of open space protection. It is the result of decades of citizen efforts to protect San Francisco Bay as a public open space resource. Over 4,000 major stakeholders and interested parties reached substantial consensus on the future uses and improvements for the park. The newly designated State seashore is a recreational facility harmonious with its natural setting."

Interesting to hear your point of view about it.

[Deborah]

I don't think I've ever seen an owl, burrowing or otherwise, except in the zoo.
Sad.

[Jill]

Aww Deborah, come visit the Bay Area and I'll take you for a hike in the hills at dusk - owls stare down from fir trees; raccoons, skunks and possums slink about; if you're lucky we'll see a coyote ahead on the trail. California newts with their bright orange bellies lumber across the path; lizards and garter snakes flit about, hummingbirds, finches, red wing blackbirds dash, and crows circle. The stream is home to trout and dog owners carefully stay away (mostly). Hawks hover above. Bring your dog. Hundreds of miles of off leash trails.

Compare that to the power moves at Eastshore where the 4000 'stakeholders' they talk about are soccer playing kids and their parents (the blog about the shocking 'deal' made for playing fields in Eastshore State Park coming soon!), Clint Eastwood and the other State Park commissioners, park planners, environmentalists, other assorted politicians, commissioners. Many people who fought for saving this land got pretty demoralised when the plans actually unfolded. Chief of those was the magnificent Jean Siri, the late East Bay Parks Board member who was among the 30,000 signatories - actual park users who signed the Let It Be online and paper petitions. We didn't count I guess....