Creek by Creek

When you’re feeling gloomy about the state of the planet and all the environmental challenges we face, there’s no better medicine than to spend a day outside with kids, planting native plants.

That’s what I did two weeks ago, when I tagged along with our Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Project staff and a class of second graders as they worked to restore a stretch of Matanzas Creek in Santa Rosa. The kids were removing invasive vinca and English ivy and planting California rose, honeysuckle, snowberry, Dutchman’s pipevine, and other native plants.

It was a great pick-me-up. For one thing, it is always fun to be reminded of that long-distant, magical time in your life when holding a live worm in your hand was the genuine highlight of your day. But it is also inspiring to witness the “can-do” attitude of the students.

The wonderful thing about kids is they are still young enough and wise enough to know that their actions make a difference. In fact, the STRAW Project itself was started 15 years ago by a class of fourth graders at Brookside School in San Anselmo. The students had seen a film on endangered species and decided they wanted to do something to help. They learned of a local endangered species, the California freshwater shrimp (Syncaris pacifica), found only in a handful of Bay Area creeks.

California freshwater shrimp (Syncaris pacifica)The students “adopted” the shrimp, researching and publicizing its plight. Next they befriended a rancher, Paul Martin, who invited them onto his property to restore a creek site that had been home to the shrimp. Word spread and now, 15 years and more than 10,000 students later, close to 60,000 linear feet of creek bank has been restored.

This restored creekside—or riparian—habitat provides food and shelter for the shrimp as well as for native fish, birds, insects, and mammals. And it helps to limit erosion and filter pollutants from run-off, thereby improving water quality in the creeks as well as the rivers and bays—including San Francisco Bay—into which the restored creeks eventually flow.

The scale of what these students have achieved becomes evident on a drive around North Bay back roads with Laurette Rogers, who fifteen years ago was the teacher in that fourth grade classroom and now heads The Bay Institute’s Watershed Education Program. Once, driving back from a restoration in western Sonoma, I listened as Laurette read the landscape like a journal, recalling past restorations and pointing out the many sites—some younger, some older—where students have worked over the years. In places you see whole stretches of creek where forests of willow have grown up. And then it dawns on you that these kids, piece by piece and creek by creek, are having an impact at the landscape level.

It reminds you of that old riddle that asks, “How do you eat an elephant?” Maybe our new, think-globally-act-locally equivalent should be, “How do you restore the planet?”

One creek at a time.

Every city and county in the Bay Area has an existing stream channel, wetland, or shoreline that is threatened. Fortunately, most also have local projects and “creek clubs” working to restore these habitats. Find out about opportunities to help in your local watershed by visiting the Watershed Project’s list of community contacts at www.thewatershedproject.org/creekcontacts.html.

Ann Dickinson is Communications Manager for The Bay Institute (www.bay.org), a nonprofit research, education, and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting and restoring San Francisco Bay and its watershed, “from the Sierra to the sea.”