Dear Friend of the Watersheds, Greetings from The Watershed Project team! Our best wishes to you for a peaceful holiday season filled with joyful moments and a healthy and prosperous 2023. Giving Tuesday is coming up on November 29 and we hope you’ll join us by making a gift to support environmental education, coastal cleanups, green infrastructure, and climate resilience in the SF Bay Area. All gifts through November 30 will be matched up to $10,000! As we look towards the future, water is at the heart of our work—water is central to climate change, to drought, to forest fires, …
Oyster Reef Ball Monitoring in November 2022
Join us for oyster monitoring at Point Pinole Regional Shoreline! We will have an Oyster Reef Ball Monitoring at Point Pinole Regional Shoreline to see and count the oysters on the reef balls and observe their environment. Over the course of several years, volunteers built 100 reef balls which were deployed in 2013 as substrate for the native Olympia oyster. Twice a year we go out and survey everything that’s growing on the reef balls, including algae, oysters and other invertebrates. Due to the tide schedule in the spring we’ll be heading out in the evening, with light from headlamps …
The Benefits of Vermicomposting: Sustainable Gardening, Climate Change, and Empowerment
By Maggie Chen As the seasons shift and the temperatures begin to cool, we begin to prepare ourselves for the season of fright! And what is more frightening than spooky, scary skeletons nestled in dark soil with wriggly worms? While worms and decomposing skeletons are often referenced under a gory and scary Halloween theme, we can shift this narrative by giving some love and appreciation to all the wonders and work that worms do in the mitigation of climate change impacts. A wonderful way to utilize worms is through vermicomposting! Vermicomposting is the …
What’s in your Watershed? | Benevolent Bats
By Audrey Matusich October has finally arrived, marking the start of the spooky season. Whether you are taking a trip to a local pumpkin patch, staying in to watch a scary movie, or dressing up like an assortment of creepy monsters, it is easy to get into the Halloween spirit. As a result, I thought it would be appropriate for this month’s “What’s in your Watershed?” article to feature an animal that is often associated with the spooky season, the bat! When one first thinks of bats, they may express feelings of discomfort or fear, as this creature is often connected to vampires or haunted …
Welcome New Youth Field Crew Manager: Pinkie Young
Pinkie Young is The Watershed Project’s (TWP) new Youth Field Crew Manager, who will hire and mentor a set of young paid interns (ages 17-24). TWP is honored and excited to have Pinkie join and grow our TWP team! Below, in a conversation with Dan Kirk, Pinkie shares a little bit about her passions and challenges working in the environmental field, her interests and hobbies and a Two Truths and a Lie game that readers can participate in, among other exciting things. Dan: What watershed do you live in and why is it special to you? Pinkie: I live in the Baxter Creek watershed, so South …
Thank you for Rocking the Bay with us!
Hello to all you party attendees and to all of you who helped make The Watershed Project’s 25th Anniversary Celebration on June 30, Rock the Bay, a smashing success! The event was so much fun and we really appreciate everyone that turned out. It was a treat to see so many friends, community members, and supporters after so many dark months of COVID. Thanks for celebrating with us! We’d like to truly thank the fabulous venue, Riggers Loft, who provided us with a superb space and top-notch food, wine, and cider. We’re so glad that we met Barrio Manouche and they were available to …
Blast From the Past – Rainwater Harvesting
TWP’s rainwater harvesting adventures began over a decade ago when we taught our first Watershed Teaching Tools workshop for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission in 2010. That’s when The Watershed Project first crossed paths with Kat Sawyer (who is now our Greening Urban Watersheds Manager). Kat had just completed the installation of a rainwater harvesting system at McKinley Elementary, and TWP was looking for a SFUSD school with a rainwater system to host our teacher training featuring rainwater catchment as a teaching tool. It was the first of many collaborations with Kat to offer …
A Safe Routes to School Project in RIchmond: Implementation Phase Starts on Earth Day
By Juliana Gonzalez Walking to school should be a stress free process. We all have idyllic images of happy kids skipping along the sidewalk along the caregivers sharing stories and enjoying the fresh air as they go back and forth from school to home or to their afterschool activities. Childhood should be filled with joy and imagination. As we try to restore some sense of normalcy (after the pandemic) for all elementary students in the Richmond communities, we are ready to pitch in and do what we can to ensure that those moments of childhood wonder are joy. That is why after many …
