Sears Point: Sears Point: Making the Connections, July-September 2007

The southernmost hump of the Sears Point ridge, known locally as Cougar Mountain, looms over Highway 37. Not its height but its isolated station makes it visible from highways and byways all over the North Bay. Now its windswept slopes and the diked fields at its feet belong to the Sonoma Land Trust, forming a keystone in the emerging arch of landscape and habitat along the San Pablo shoreline.

Acquired in 2005, in the aftermath of the withdrawn casino proposal, the property straddles Highway 37, encompassing both former marsh and adjoining uplands, a rare combination. It also fills in a gap between two older habitat restoration sites, the Tolay Creek inlet to the east and the Sonoma Baylands project extending west to the mouth of the Petaluma River.

Whenever scientists and stakeholders sit down to talk about restoring habitat, a debate takes place about which species to favor: marsh birds? waterfowl? shorebirds? burrowing owls? red-legged frogs? In this case, though, there was little argument. The higher ground north of the highway would be managed for upland critters. To the south, a large marsh restoration would bring tidewater wetlands up to the road and the very toe of the ridge and provide that rarest of "ecotones," the marsh-to-hillside transition.

This is still the favored plan, but part of it is being deferred, due to the reactivation of a long-quiet freight railroad line across the site. For the time being, then, 400 acres between highway and railroad are to remain in oat hay, ponding up in winter to form seasonal wetlands, with their own considerable habitat value. The Bay Trail will run along the new bayfront dike, next to the tracks.

That still leaves some 900 acres of bay-front tideland, between railroad and bay, to be the latest laboratory of the tidal marsh restoration engineers. When the first small tracts around San Francisco Bay were reconnected to the tide in the 1970s, experts weren't even sure that these subtle natural systems could be regenerated at all. But three decades later, much has been learned.

A key early lesson was that marshes are not gardens that need planting. If conditions are otherwise right, tidal action and seeds floating in the water or present in the soil will do the rest. A second lesson was the importance of elevation. Ideally, the ground to be flooded would be just a bit above sea level. If the base is a shade too high, marsh vegetation will form without the circulatory system of small sloughs that makes up so much of the richness of the habitat. If it is too low—the usual case, given the subsidence of most diked baylands—admitting the tide may produce persistent pools rather than marshes.

Cougar Mountain (Sears Point) looms over Highway 37 and the San Pablo Baylands. Photo by Stephen Joseph for Sonoma Land Trust, 2004.

In the early 1990s, accumulated knowledge was brought to bear on the site next to Sears Point called Sonoma Baylands. This project involved the Coastal Conservancy, which channeled funds for the land and the work, the Sonoma Land Trust, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Port of Oakland, and sundry scientists, engineers, regulators, and back-seat drivers. Congress blessed it with money and Vice President Al Gore came out for its dedication…

View from the Farm

You reach Fred Dickson's place by turning south off Highway 37 near Sears Point on Reclamation Road, the very name a reminder of the glory days of diking and draining. "This was nothing but a marsh at the beginning of time," says Dickson, whose home will soon disappear under encroaching waters. He faces the prospect with mingled pride, resignation, and regret.

Dickson and three relatives, co-owners of property diked in the 1890s and in the family since 1937, were never tempted to develop. "That's the worst thing we could do as stewards of the land," Dickson says. In the 1980s, he spent eight years on the board of the Sonoma Land Trust, always urging it "to befriend the farmer." It was to the trust, in 2004, that the family sold its 648 acres, the heart of the Sears Point tidal restoration project.

Dickson sees poetic justice in this. "It's like a donation back to nature from the human beings who took it away." At the same time he knows that the decision represents another loss for the county's beleaguered agriculture. And it is a loss for him as well. "I'm having a hard time with it. Part of what I'm giving up is my identity. If I'm not a farmer, what am I?"

Dickson's colleague Craig Jacobsen, also a tenant at Sears Point, is not quite in the same boat. His home ranch lies elsewhere, up the Petaluma River at Cloudy Bend, and his future here on the bayshore seems secure. Much of the acreage he farms will stay dry, and the land trust is glad to have him. "He is not going to tell you how important he is to us," says the trust's Wendy Eliot. Among other things, Jacobsen has helped shape hollows for seasonal wetlands in damp corners of the field. "I do what I can for them," he says. "They'll ask about pumps, ditches, things like that. I give them the farmer's perspective."

Jacobsen is all for keeping farmland undeveloped—he put his home ranch under conservation easement years ago—but he's not so philosophical as Dickson about seeing soil go underwater. "We hate to see it be anything but farmland. Farmers have been preserving this land for a century. Then it gets scooped out from under our feet."

You will find the rest of this article and additional features in the July-September 2007 issue of Bay Nature, available through our online store or by calling
(888)4-BAYNAT or (888)422-9628. You may also purchase the current issue at bookstores and other retailers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

John Hart is the author of a dozen books on environmental issues in Northern California, including San Francisco Bay: Portrait of an Estuary (UC Press, 2003) with photos by David Sanger, and Legacy: Portraits of 50 Bay Area Environmental Elders (Sierra Club Books, 2006) with photos by Nancy Kittle. His articles have appeared frequently in Bay Nature.

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