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The Bay Area Historical Ecology Project
Can You Tell Tales of Wildcat Creek?
A team of local scientists, students, and teachers is studying how
the local landscape has changed over the past two centuries. We
are searching for maps, photographs, written accounts, and personal
memories of the lands draining to Wildcat Creek during earlier times.
If you know of information describing the area during the 19th or
early 20th centuries, please contact us. For example, memories of
playing or fishing in the creek, old photographs showing oak trees,
or descriptions of flood or fire events would be useful.
Historical ecology projects are part of the San
Francisco Estuary Institute's programs in Bays, Wetlands,
and Watersheds. As part of the SFEI Watershed Science pilot program
for Wildcat Creek, SFEI and the Center for Ecoliteracy are working
with local groups in the Wildcat Creek Watershed (includes parts
of the Richmond and San Pablo and the Tilden and Wildcat Canyon
Regional Parks) to develop a detailed understanding of historical
and modern environmental conditions in the watershed.
Understanding the past helps us interpret the present and plan
intelligently for the future. Information developed in this project
will be available to local citizens, scientists, and resource
managers working in the watershed. In August, educators from local
schools and community groups had access to this data while developing
educational materials at a Summer Institute held at SFEI.
We are developing three views of the watershed during recent
human history:
- Native Landscape View (ca. ~1800): showing conditions under
recent Native land use, prior to most European effects.
- Agricultural Landscape View (ca. ~1900): showing the land
at the point of maximum agricultural use.
- Modern Landscape View (ca. 1998): aerial photographic-based
view showing modern landscape.
All information developed in the Historical Ecology Project will
be integrated into the Bay
Area EcoAtlas and made available to all interested parties
in a variety of forms, such as slides, paper maps and overhead
transparencies.
If you know of information showing early conditions in the Wildcat
area, or would like to find out more about the project, please
contact Robin Grossinger at robin@sfei.org
or 510-231-5791.
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sfei.org