[CPEO-MEF] REUSE, NATURAL RESOURCES: Presidio (CA): "Back to Nature"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

PRESIDIO AT 25
Back to nature
Habitat restoration has replaced landfills, military buildings and weeds from other parts of the world with thriving native flowers, trees and animals. And some endangered species have been revived along the way.

By Peter Fimrite 
San Francisco Chronicle ()CA)
December 1, 2019

The wry look on Lew Stringer’s bearded face should have been a giveaway, but there really wasn’t anything about the inconspicuous bush he was gesturing toward that seemed special.

“This is a Franciscan manzanita,” said Stringer, the associate director of natural resources for the Presidio Trust, pointing to a large, green, ground-hugging plant.

This particular manzanita species was thought to be extinct outside of nurseries until 2009, when one was discovered growing in the Presidio of San Francisco and later moved to a secret location.

The careful nurturing of the last remaining wild manzanita of its kind is part of a wider experiment - one of the most ambitious ever undertaken - to engineer and rebuild a wild ecosystem in an urban setting that over its 200 years as a military base had been paved over, polluted, pocked with landfills and overrun by weeds.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Time-moves-backward-as-restoration-sites-regain-14861346.php

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org





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