[CPEO-MEF] Alameda wetlands backers still hope for refuge

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California
THE ARGUS ONLINE
Monday, April 07, 2003
Alameda wetlands backers still hope for refuge
By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER

ALAMEDA -- The place is still now, except for three pairs of nesting
geese, a lone great blue heron struggling to hide in the iceplant and a
couple of ground squirrels scampering across the cracked asphalt.

But proponents of the proposed Alameda National Wildlife Refuge, more
than 900 acres of land and water at the western edge of the former U.S.
Navy base, hope that one day the former jet runway will be a permanent
home for endangered California least terns, dozens of other wildlife
species and fish, and their human visitors.

"It looks like we are going to get a refuge," said Arthur Feinstein, the
executive director of the Golden Gate Audubon Society, which last year
learned there was a chance the Navy wasn't going to transfer the site to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A rider to the Defense Appropriation bill, which may have allowed for
the military to transfer its "surplus" land to a nonprofit organization
for cleanup, conservation and management, could have endangered the
deal.

"We were pretty scared that we were going to lose our refuge," Feinstein
said, adding that a New Mexico-based nonprofit was interested in
receiving the refuge from the Navy. "But we are happy to learn that the
Navy is not interested in transferring the site to a nonprofit."

A Navy spokesman confirmed that the Navy is still pursuing transfer to
U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

With that concern put to rest, refuge proponents continue to wait for
the transfer, which has been delayed by cleanup of a former landfill, a
110-acre Superfund site on the western edge of the proposed refuge. The
level of contamination is under study.

This article can be viewed at:
http://www.theargusonline.com/Stories/0,1413,83~1971~1306640,00.html

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