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A Lake's Lifeline
Early involvement by environmentalists may be the key to preserving one of Oakland's most valuable and little known wildlife areas - the channel that connects Lake Merritt to the Estuary. The narrow, half mile long channel flows through a city park and the Laney College campus, under a freeway and railroad tracks and past industrial flatlands before reaching the Inner Harbor.
Portions of its banks are lined with pickleweed, cordgrass, and other marshland natives, and according to the Audubon Society's John Bowers, dozens of birds, including rarities such as the Barrow's Goldeneye, can be seen there, especially during the winter. He says that several species, such as the American Widgeon, seem to favor the channel over nearby Lake Merritt, possibly because of the vegetation along its banks.Oakland Museum curator Paul Matzner, who regularly brings school groups to the channel, says the urban locale makes it an especially useful teaching tool.
The channel, like Lake Merritt, is considerably altered from its natural state. Until 1869, the lake was actually a tidal slough extending inland from the Bay. In that year, Mayor Samuel Merritt had a dam built across the inlet, and today most of the land below the barrier has been filled. The former marsh is now occupied by the College, the Kaiser Convention Center, the Oakland Museum, and a busy residential and commercial district. In the early 80s, some restoration work was done along its banks, but some of the decorative iceplant and pampass grasses planted have grown into unwelcome visitors to the water's edge.
Earlier this year, the city began developing plans that Matzner and others feared might disturb the delicate ecosystem of this "Lifeline to Lake Merritt." Oakland wants to increase public access by building foot and bicycle paths, along with a pedestrian bridge over the freeway, so that people can easily travel from the lake to the Bay. In addition, Oakland has big plans for the waterfront, including a revamping of underutilized Estuary Park, and redevelopment of the land near the channel mouth to accommodate large public events. Environmentalists fear that large numbers of people along the channel banks may trample the plants, leave litter and scare away the wildlife. The channel is only a hundred feet or so across at its widest. "It's open to all kinds of impacts," says Matzner."Those birds have no place to escape, they're trapped." Environmental considerations weren't even mentioned in the initial planning documents, Matzner says. So along with Audubon members and representatives of other environmental and neighborhood groups, he began lobbying city officials and attending numerous meetings. The response, he says, has been good so far. The city council has agreed to include environmental assessments in its plans, and designers of the pedestrian bridge and waterfront redevelopment schemes have also promised to look at their projects' impacts on the channel ecosystem.
The environmentalists would like to see the channel given wildlife refuge status, similar to that of Lake Merritt itself. Pathways could be aligned to avoid damaging sensitive areas, and access could be restricted during critical seasons. Matzner says there would also be an opportunity to build viewing platforms and install interpretive signs to increase people's awareness of the channel's wildlife resources.
Matzner stresses the importance of getting involved from the beginning, before tens of thousands of dollars have been spent and environmental impact reports prepared. By then, the positions of both sides would have hardened, resulting in conflict instead of cooperation. "Once you move from a reactive to a proactive strategy, all kinds of things can happen," he says.
Contact: Paul Matzner (510)549-3010
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