Speaker: Mack Casterman, East Bay CNPS Conservation Analyst

Wednesday, April 24, 7:30 pm

Location: Auditorium, Orinda Public Library (directions below)

Knowland Park is a jewel in the southern Oakland foothills. Home to rolling acres of remnant native grassland and a stand of rare maritime chaparral, the park was listed as one of East Bay CNPS’s Botanical Priority Protection Areas in 2010. The park was originally purchased by the State of California as a state park and in 1975 was conveyed to the City of Oakland, making Knowland Park Oakland’s largest and finest wildland park. Unfortunately, what should already be a conservation success story has instead turned into one of the East Bay Chapter’s greatest conservation challenges.

Mack Casterman’s presentation will include a virtual tour of Knowland Park and a description of the park’s most interesting botanical resources. Mack will also discuss EBCNPS’s ongoing effort to gain permanent protection for the park. You will learn about current threats to the park’s valuable native habitats and hear an update of what EBCNPS and the “Knowland Park Coalition” have been doing to raise awareness and mobilize the public on behalf of this wonderful place.

Attendees will leave with a greater understanding of our “Foothills of Southern Oakland” Botanical Priority Protection Area and EBCNPS’s ongoing work to ensure that this wonderful wildland gem, located just minutes from downtown Oakland, is permanently protected for future generations to enjoy and learn from.

Mack Casterman is the East Bay Chapter’s Conservation Analyst. He works closely with the Conservation Chair, East Bay CNPS volunteers, and board members. Mack’s duties include responding to development projects through the CEQA process, representing CNPS on various boards and committees, and educating the public and stakeholders about plant conservation in California. The Knowland Park issue was one of the first projects Mack worked on upon stepping into the position in spring of 2011, and over two years later, it is a project that still occupies his time on a weekly basis. Mack has a degree in Environmental Biology and Natural Resources Management from UC Davis.

Before coming to work with EBCNPS, he worked for the San Mateo County Department of Parks as well as the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.

East Bay CNPS membership meetings are free of charge and open to everyone. This month’s meeting takes place in the Auditorium of the Orinda Public Library at 24 Orinda Way (in Orinda Village). The Auditorium is on the second floor of the building, accessible by stairs or an elevator. The Auditorium opens at 7 pm; the meeting begins at 7:30 pm.

Directions to Orinda Public Library at 24 Orinda Way

From the west: Take Hwy 24 to the Orinda/Moraga exit. At the end of the off ramp, turn left on Camino Pablo (toward Orinda Village), right on Santa Maria Way (the signal after the BART station and freeway entrance), and left on Orinda Way.

From the east: Take Hwy 24 to the Orinda exit. Follow the ramp to Orinda Village. Turn right on Santa Maria way (the first signal) and left on Orinda Way.

Once on Orinda Way: Go 1 short block to the parking lot on the southeast side of the two-story building on your right. There is additional free parking beneath the building as well as on the street.

From BART (4 blocks): Exit the Orinda station, turn right and cross a pedestrian bridge, then cross a second pedestrian bridge on the left. Go 1 short block on the sidewalk to the third pedestrian bridge. Go 2 blocks on Orinda Way to the Orinda Library.

The reporting clauses of the management contract between the CIty of Oakland and the East Bay Zoological Society

As you know, for years we have been asking the city for copies of the documents the zoo is required to submit annually under its management contract with the city – namely, a “capital improvement budget, spending plan, actual expenses and schedule describing its projected development for the current budget year and for the next 2 following years.” The zoo has never produced any of these materials. Instead, it periodically produces retrospective feel-good reports couched in broad general terms, so it has been impossible for citizens to see how the zoo planned to or actually did spend its money - despite the fact that it gets a large amount of public funding every year from the city, the county, bond measures and the East Bay Regional Park District. And despite us raising this issue over and over, the city was apparently never willing to do anything about the fact that the zoo did not ever file the required annual reports and ignored its contractual obligation to do so.

Could this finally be starting to change? Following yet another public records act request by a Friend of Knowland Park, a response was received from the city office of Parks and Recreation stating that no records in that department nor any records available at the City Auditor’s office were responsive to the request, but promising that:

“Beginning this calendar year 2013, the Office of Parks and Recreation will be requiring that the Zoological Society provide all reports agreed upon in the agreement between the East Zoological Society and the City of Oakland .”

Since this expectation has been explicitly part of the zoo’s management agreement for decades (along with other provisions the zoo has repeatedly ignored with impunity) this seemed like a ray of hope. Perhaps the fact that the zoo lied about Measure A1 and its real purpose (as discussed in the last post here: http://tinyurl.com/cpes5w3) has begun to make a few city staff or elected representatives notice that the zoo doesn’t keep its promises. Then again, perhaps not.

The zoo’s fiscal year ends in the third quarter, so the 2012 report should have been submitted no later than March 1. However, to date the documents have still not been provided to the requesting citizen. How much more is the city willing to let the zoo get away with? Let’s hope this isn’t an April Fool’s joke and that maybe after all these years they are actually going to expect the zoo to be genuinely financially accountable to the city rather than just patting councilmembers on the head, sliding them campaign contributions and talking loudly about baby animals and children!

Your financial help urgently needed!

Folks, we are at crunch time. We have bills to pay for the ongoing legal advising we have needed as we monitor through public records act requests the responses of the state and federal environmental regulatory organizations to the constantly-changing zoo development plans. Somehow, by scraping it together, getting small grants here and there, and through the overwhelming generosity of so many of you, we have managed to keep going all these year – but we don’t have any current grants and the post-holiday lull has emptied our coffers. You’ve never let us down before–we know we can count on you, so we’re putting out the call here and now: We really need every supporter of the Park to dig deep right now and send whatever you can manage to help keep us going. We need to raise at least $2500 before the end of the month, so please send whatever you possibly can.

As you know, these state and federal regulatory agencies must approve the zoo project before it can be built – because threatened species and rare plant communities exist on the site the zoo insists it must have. And there are legal requirements for their decisionmaking. To date, the zoo continues to deny that the special chaparral plant community that will be affected by the interpretive center is actually a statewide rare plant community, and they continue to insist that bulldozing and building dozens of structures on 50+ acres will have basically no impact whatsoever on the threatened species that live on the site.

Our legal team has been great – they have always given us a discounted rate because they know we are a grassroots group, and they have written off more than $10,000 of expenses from the lawsuit because they believe so strongly in our cause. But we can’t expect them to continue to review documents and advise us for nothing. Please help us get caught up again by sending whatever you can TODAY. Make checks to CNPS (California Native Plant Society, our partner organization and fiscal sponsor) and mail to our treasurer, Lee Ann Smith, 111 Shadow Mountain, Oakland, CA 94605. All donations are tax-deductible.

CNPS members in the East Bay have been our steadfast partners in this fight when other organizations quavered at challenging the zoo.  And remember–no matter how this battle is eventually resolved, it’s not over until it’s over. CNPS is one of the toughest and most savvy conservation organizations in the state and they stand up for their principles. That’s why Point Molate in Richmond is still there and not a casino operation right now – due to the dogged determination of CNPS and our other partners, the California Native Grasslands Association, to fight alongside the grassroots people there who cared about the place and refused to give up even when some leading environmental groups were ready to capitulate. Well, long after some groups had written off Point Molate, CNPS, CNGA and the grassroots activists won that fight and saved the place from development!

(For those of you who may not have heard about that conservation fight, there is a good description of Point Molate in the latest issue of the Bay Leaf, the East Bay CNPS newsletter, which can be viewed online at www.ebcnps.org.)

Knowland Park’s wild creatures and native plants have just as much right to be there as those at Point Molate did. They are making their nests, dens, burrows and other homes  now for their young as they have done every spring since long before this ill-conceived amusement park plan was hatched by zoo management. They have no idea that the zoo’s bulldozers threaten their homes and habitat. But you do. Help us be their voice by mailing a check today – and by telling others about what will be lost if we give up this fight.

Well, a zoo member who decided to attend the first zoo board meeting after the defeat of Measure A1 was interested to hear how the board responded after the defeat of a ballot measure on which so much money was spent. She contacted us later and told us that she was shocked to hear one of the zoo’s own board members calling out the untruth that characterized the whole campaign. According to this observer, the board member said (discussing zoo management’s denials that the money from the measure would fund the expansion):

“I don’t see why we didn’t acknowledge that this is about expansion. Of course it is. We shouldn’t have lied.”

Above is a portion of a flyer the Zoo mailed out as part of its Measure A1 campaign, before the November 2012 election. The yellow box shows their claim about how the funds to be raised by the measure's parcel tax would be used.

Zoo executives in the meeting quickly responded, denying that “Measure A1 money is not for the expansion” was really a lie. Rather, they said, the Measure A1 money would have simply freed up other funds to be used for the expansion. But this is a distinction without a difference, as we pointed out many times. And, according to the observer, at least some of the other board members didn’t appear to be buying it.

The Measure A1 opposition (all of us on the Save Knowland Park/No on A1 side) was also characterized by zoo staff  and some board members at the meeting as “nasty” and “mean.” According to the zoo member’s report, zoo staff claimed that:

“Neighbors up there are really nasty. They kick people out. They don’t want anybody up there.” 

This is a bit much, considering that we have been the ones for years begging  the city to list the Park on its parks website (see http://www.saveknowland.org/blog/page/7/ and http://www.saveknowland.org/2012/05/04/extra-extra-stop-the-presses-after-over-four-years-of-pressure-city-lists-knowland-park-on-its-parks-website/), leading tours of the Park, creating an entire website with information and maps of the Park, writing op-eds and letters about it, speaking on radio and television about the Park, etc.

But when one zoo board member disagreed, saying that she thought that Measure A1’s opponents had made some valid points, her perspective was quickly discounted by zoo staff as related to her living near the Park.

We have started to wonder if maybe other zoo board members have their own reasons for so vociferously defending this expansion plan, a development-heavy project that would destroy such important natural resources and wildlife habitat in Knowland Park. For a “conservation organization,” the zoo board has an unusual number of business development types on it. After hearing more about this board meeting, one of our No on A1 volunteers did some research and reported:

“There are some very heavy hitters on this zoo board. Let’s start with Jim Wunderman, who is also the Chair of the Bay Area Council (BAC). This group advertises itself as presenting the business point of view in California. There are many different such groups, but the BAC is made up of the tops: The Chairman of the Executive Committee of the BAC is the California State President of Bank of America. Also on the BAC Executive Committee are presidents/CEO’s of top banks, the CEO of PG&E in this entire region, the CEO of Kaiser health plan, etc. In other words, the BAC is important enough that the top corporate officers of Northern California’s major corporations run it. And Wunderman sits at the top of the BAC.”

Also on the zoo board is B. Reid Settlemeier, who according to web information owns or co-owns several companies, including Bigge Crane and Rigging Company, Crane Certification Company and Bigge Development Company, all located in San Leandro, CA, and Shaughnessy Heavy Industries, located in Auburn, WA. Is it a coincidence that so much of the planned construction of the expansion development is to be managed with cranes? (See the “refined” zoo expansion plans: http://www.saveknowland.org/2013/02/04/zoo-expands-its-expansion-plans/) Or that, as the zoo member reported, he was the most hostile toward the No on A1 side, calling us “those people up the hill”?

Most of the individuals now serving on the boards of the zoo or its foundation have a primary focus in real estate development, investment, construction or marketing.  It’s a group that would be expected to promote development. It’s hard to find any members on either board with true expertise in conservation, which seems really odd for a zoo that claims to support conservation.  When you add in the destruction of rare native plant communities and wildlife habitat, it becomes clearer than ever that the California Trail Project isn’t about conservation, it’s about money—and we think it would be great for someone to trace where the project money has been going and who actually gets it.

The zoo member who later shared her impressions with us said that when the meeting was over, she was stunned when a zoo staffer actually chased her out into the parking lot to be sure she did not keep a copy of the financial documents distributed at the meeting. The zoo staffer said that the zoo board’s financial reports were not public information. Why not? What are they hiding? If this nonprofit group wants millions of dollars in public support to spend on an ill-advised expansion, shouldn’t they have to be transparent about their finances?

Much of the misinformation and outright falsehood that was used by the Zoo during the Measure A1 campaign was debunked in a blog post we published on this site. To see the full extent of this, you can read the article, Fact-checking the Claims of Oakland Zoo Executives and Spokespersons. It contains links to audio and video recordings of claims and evidence refuting them.

The Zoo's Expanded Plan graphic; click to see a larger, more detailed version.

The US Fish and Wildlife service, which is charged with enforcing wildlife protections and must issue a formal Biological Opinion before the zoo can begin construction, has reviewed the information sent by the zoo to the US Army Corps of Engineers (part of the overall regulatory process). The USFWS concluded that what had been submitted was insufficient and incomplete, and answers to some 30 questions were requested. (See the letter from the USFWS at
http://www.saveknowland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2012-05-01-Information-Request-for-Sec-7-Consult.pdf)

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, we secured the zoo management’s response—and have learned that they have “refined” the proposal yet again. (See that response document, with its interesting graphics, at
http://www.saveknowland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Oakland-Zoo-California-Trail-Response-Package.pdf)

We were shocked to see full descriptions of all the buildings and structures—over 50 that are planned for the site. (See a list of the structures at
http://www.saveknowland.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/RevisedExhibitStructures.txt)

Some of the animal night houses are the size of a modest house in square footage and they include plumbing, lights, heat, etc. There’s a tent cabin village designed to accommodate over 100 people.  Remember the 34,000 square foot 3 story visitor center? The zoo has now split that into two large buildings, moving one of them even further to the east so that it will be even more visible from the remaining parkland. It’s clear they plan to construct a subdivision on the site—a captive animal city.

The latest plan is even more construction-intensive than we ever imagined, or than their soft-focus simulations to the city council ever showed. Check it out and see what you think. This looks like a whole lot more than we ever heard about before: this thing just keeps on growing like a tumor.

And zoo executives still insist that they WILL build it, despite the fact that—even with a million-dollar campaign and an entire paid zoo staff working on it–they could not pass their tax measure. They insist on it, no matter what the public thinks, and despite the fact that the site includes two rare plant communities:  native bunchgrass prairie and ancient, old-growth maritime chaparral that provides important habitat for wildlife, including at least one endangered species. (Recent mapping of remnant native plant communities for the Oakland Museum reveals that maritime chaparral is one of the rarest plant communities left in the East Bay.) They insist on this misguided plan despite the fact that the site is occupied wildlife habitat. Despite the fact that the site is one of the most biodiverse sites left in the East Bay hills. (Check out the video of Laura Baker leading a tour in the park, contributed by Richard Bangert, at
http://youtu.be/9CK7phb3d8Y).

They still insist they must have THIS site and no other for their expansion, and refuse to consider better alternatives. And they insist on it despite KNOWING they will destroy wildlife and rare plant habitat to do it. That isn’t consistent with conservation by any stretch of the imagination!

But this is public property, and they don’t yet have either the money (thanks to your hard work on Measure A1) or the regulatory agency approvals, and even though our city representatives seem willing to give it away to the zoo’s wealthy patrons and politically connected development interests, we are not willing to give it up without fighting to the end. We need your help NOW as we get ready to launch the next phases of our campaign. There are reasons to think this is a very critical time for our efforts!

To contribute, please send a check made out to CNPS to our Friends of Knowland Park Treasurer, Lee Ann Smith, 111 Shadow Mountain, Oakland, CA 94605. Be sure to mark your check as FOKP.

Thanks so much for all your support and your patience as we regroup and organize for the next round. As the public learned about Knowland Park during the campaign, people were shocked to realize that Oakland was actually planning to destroy important wildlife habitat and parkland to construct a development-intensive zoo expansion. Once they see the park for themselves, and learn how the city kept it hidden from its own citizens for years, they get active. We could never have won this campaign without the help of so many of you who took initiative in your own communities to get the word out.

Now it’s time to rev up for the next phase. While zoo executives, displaying the hubris that has characterized all our experiences with them to date, insist they WILL break ground in spring, the fact is that our state and federal regulatory agencies haven’t yet approved the project—and, if their letters are any indication, they are not going to rubber stamp it as our city council did. If they stand firm to protect our natural resources, the obstacles to bulldozing this property will be many.

We need your help to call more attention to the folly of this plan, which is so utterly out of touch with current ideas about conservation. In over six years of work to save Knowland, you have never let us down yet—so remember the baby wood rats snug in their nests, the bobcats hiding deep in the chaparral, the foxes marking their territory, the owl in the tree slated for the bulldozer. PLEASE contribute what you can to our legal fund, call your Oakland Councilperson, write to your favorite media organs, and spread the news to all your neighbors. Let’s all keep working together to protect and preserve precious Knowland Park!

Webmaster
KnowlandParkCoalition

Dear Friends of Knowland Park,

I was all set to vote for Measure A1, until I met a nice lady at the Lake Merritt farmer’s market. I fell hook-line-and-sinker for the Oakland Zoo’s A1 campaign and their spokescat, “Leonard the Lion.” I explained this to the nice lady who ultimately turned me against the zoo and their expansion project. She proceeded to tell me what I needed to know; that all kinds of critters were going to be displaced by the A1 project. Bunnies, bobcats, skunks, etc. all would be homeless! I skeptically thanked her for the info and snottily told her that my opinion was quite nuanced, thankyouverymuch, but I did have an open mind and would make up my mind before the election. Thank God she got to me when she did. I slept on it and woke up the next morning completely opposed to A1 and its horrible scheme to encroach on these awesome creatures’ rightful home.

So this is a note of gratitude and a sincere apology for my snotty attitude to that nice lady. But also, I hope you guys will do a PR campaign to educate people about Knowland Park. I had seen your “Save Knowland Park” signs and I totally scoffed at them. “Save Knowland Park” is not a good tagline, sadly. I envisioned a little kids playground with seesaws and swings. I dug my heels in and hoped you would be defeated (sorry L). I have since come around, but only because Nice Lady got to me at the Farmer’s Market. I am not alone; my friends who I spoke with about this also were clueless about Knowland Park.

When you’re up against Leonard the Lion, you really need to bring it. So if you find yourselves in this unsavory position again, I would suggest a new tagline that tells people like me what is really at stake. Something like, “Save the Knowland 500-acre wild animal habitat and nature preserve.” You may need to shorten it to, “Save Knowland Wildlife Preserve.”

Perhaps you should fight fire with fire and anthropomorphize that  pretty little fox pictured on your mammals page:

“My name is Felicity Fox and I need your help! Please help me keep my home so my babies can thrive…”

“This is my baby Kip with his BFF Scooter the Skunk; please help them keep their home!”

A million thanks and my sincere apologies for almost voting for A1.

Your friend for life,
Mary Swift
Technical Writer