Wheelchair Rider's Web Guide
Following on the success of its wheelchair rider's guides to accessible coastal sites in Los Angeles and Orange County and in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Conservancy approved $100,000 to Access Northern California to produce a web-based guide to the rest of the coast. The guide will provide essential details about coastal parks, trails, piers, and other recreational areas for people with impaired mobility. Users will be able to search and print the guide, and will be encouraged to provide feedback to help keep the information up to date.

First to be covered will be San Diego, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties. After that, Access Northern California will cover the North Coast. Information from two books previously published by Coastal Conservancy Publications, A Wheelchair Rider's Guide: Los Angeles and Orange County Coast (2001) and A Wheelchair Rider's Guide: San Francisco Bay and the Nearby Coast (2006), is already available online at www.scc.ca.gov/Publications/wheel.htm.

Historical Ecology Studies to Help in Restoration Projects
The San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI), a pioneer in the relatively new field of historical ecology, will undertake three studies with the help of $675,000 approved by the Conservancy in May. This work will enable scientists engaged in habitat restoration work along the coast and on San Francisco Bay to design projects in light of information on how those systems functioned in the past. One of the approved SFEI studies will focus on Ventura County's coastal wetlands and rivers. Another will map and analyze historic coastal wetlands from Point Conception in Santa Barbara County to the Mexican border. The third, under a grant to Contra Costa County, will examine historic habitats in that county.

In Ventura County, which has some of southern California's least developed coastal valleys and watersheds, several major conservation and restoration efforts are under way, led largely by the Conservancy: Santa Clara River Parkway, Ormond Beach Wetland Restoration, Ventura River Parkway, and floodplain restoration projects on lower Calleguas Creek to Mugu Lagoon. The SFEI team, which includes the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project, the California State University Northridge Geography Department, and Stillwater Sciences, will develop a detailed picture of how the rivers and wetlands looked and functioned before they were significantly modified more than a century ago. Researchers will study historical landscape characteristics, including the stability and migration trends of the river channels, the extent of wetlands, the composition and distribution of other habitat types, and the watershed drainage pattern.

For the historical mapping of southern California's coastal wetlands, the team will rely heavily on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey's topographic maps (T-sheets) completed between 1851 and 1893 (see George Davidson and the Point of the Beginning. They will determine how far inland wetland habitats then extended and how different types of wetlands were distributed along the coast. The digitized maps will allow scientists to calculate more accurately how many total acres of wetlands have been lost, as well as how much of each habitat type, which will help regional planners and land managers set goals for how much of each should be restored.

Contra Costa County's study will provide information on the distribution, type, and size of habitats found in the county over the past 150 years. SFEI will use Mexican rancho documents from the 1840s and 1850s, early aerial photos, and other records from historical societies and city and county archives. This information will be synthesized, analyzed, and aligned with current known locations and latitude/longitude to create maps and documents describing how habitat patterns and natural physical processes have changed in the county.

Information gleaned from the study will help to guide the East Contra Costa County Habitat Conservation Plan/Natural Communities Conservation Plan, which calls for spending up to $350 million to acquire and conserve 30,000 acres for 28 rare, threatened, or endangered species. It will also help in the design of individual watershed restoration projects, including those planned for Marsh Creek, Walnut Creek, and Mount Diablo Creek. The Contra Costa Watershed Forum, a partnership of watershed groups, government agencies, and other interested groups and individuals, will use the maps and reports to improve current projects and to foster greater public awareness of creek and watershed issues.

In collaboration with local partners, SFEI has produced detailed views of landscape change throughout San Francisco Bay and along the California coast (see www.sfei.org/HEP). Some of this work was recently featured on KQED-TV's Quest and can be viewed at www.kqed.org/quest/television/view/416.

Progress on the Coastal Trail
In May, the Conservancy approved $1,052,000 for California Coastal Trail projects along the length of the coast. These funds will provide for the building of new trail segments in Humboldt, Sonoma, and San Mateo counties; reconstruction of a stretch of existing trail on the University of California Santa Barbara campus; and for planning and feasibility studies for future segments in Mendocino and San Mateo counties.

In the Lost Coast Headlands of Humboldt County, south of the town of Ferndale, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will build nearly a mile of new trail on 400 acres of former ranchland, enabling the public to reach a sandy beach. The pathway will begin at a recently constructed parking area and travel along a blufftop and down to the beach near the mouth of Fleener Creek. Along the way, hikers will be able to enjoy extensive ocean views, open grasslands, and several streams that cascade over steep bluffs to the ocean. BLM will use $75,000 granted by the Conservancy for this project.

The two properties that comprise the Headlands, Lost Coast Ranch and Barri Ranch, were acquired by the Conservation Fund with the help of $1,970,000 from the Conservancy and transferred to the BLM in 2001 and 2003, respectively. The new Fleener Creek Trail will be designated a spur trail of the Coastal Trail if future acquisitions of public rights make it possible to extend the Coastal Trail through this area.

In Sonoma County, at the southern edge of Bodega Harbor, two popular regional parks will be linked, closing a gap in the Coastal Trail. The Sonoma County Regional Parks Department will use $305,000 approved by the Conservancy to install a 110-foot prefabricated metal bridge over Cheney Creek Gulch and build 1,654 feet of wheelchair-accessible trail. The bridge will connect Bird Walk Coastal Access Park with popular Doran Beach Park. This project is part of the 2005 County trail plan, which calls for a safe route away from Highway 1 for bicyclists and pedestrians. Eventually the trail will extend south from Salmon Creek, just north of Bodega Bay, to the Marin County border, five miles away.

In San Mateo County, the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) will use $377,000 approved by the Conservancy to build nearly a mile of Coastal Trail, other connecting trails, and a small parking lot with a restroom at Pillar Point Bluff, north of Half Moon Bay. The 119-acre Pillar Point Bluff property was acquired by POST in 2004 with the help of Conservancy funding. It overlooks beaches, tidepools and, much further offshore, the famous Maverick's surf break. The new trails will mostly follow an existing system of former farm roads and informal trails, but will be upgraded to allow fire and emergency access and correct erosion problems. One route from the parking lot to the blufftop will be wheelchair accessible, while another will follow a steeper grade. A boardwalk will be built through the property's seasonal wetlands, and some informal trails that connect the blufftop to the beach through an active landslide area will be closed.

On the U.C. Santa Barbara campus, the student government organization, Associated Students, will use $175,000 from the Conservancy to reconstruct the West Campus Bluff Trail, a half-mile Coastal Trail segment that runs from the western edge of Isla Vista to Coal Oil Point Reserve. The trail originated as an unplanned, informal route along the bluffs, but in 1990, the University improved the surface with decomposed granite and added border posts, signs, and benches. Since then, the trail has eroded and deep ruts have formed due to poor drainage and heavy use by joggers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. The Associated Students will improve and upgrade the damaged trail and make it wheelchair accessible, regrading, stabilizing, and resurfacing it with decomposed gravel treated with a binding polymer. In some places the route will be shifted away from the bluff for safety. Informal trails will be closed and planted with native plants. The completed trail will be ten to 12 feet wide, have two-foot shoulders, and will be landscaped to deter off-trail use. Associated Students has raised $90,000 toward planning and construction, and will assume management of the trail.

The funding approved by the Conservancy in May also included $90,000 to the County of San Mateo to prepare plans and construction documents for a quarter-mile segment of the Coastal Trail through the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve and a new ramp to Moss Beach Reef; and $30,000 to the Moat Creek Management Agency for a feasibility study for Coastal Trail access on property between Moat Creek and Arena Cove in Mendocino County.

Steps toward Humboldt County Estuary Restoration
A key piece of a plan to restore wetlands and alleviate flooding in Humboldt County's Salt River-Eel River estuary was put into place in July, when the Western Rivers Conservancy acquired the 444-acre Riverside Ranch on the flood plain near the confluence of the two rivers. Eventually much of the former dairy ranch will be inundated, as tidal flow is restored to hundreds of acres of former saltmarsh. In May, the Conservancy approved $250,000 to the Western Rivers Conservancy toward purchasing the land. The bulk of the $2-million purchase price will be funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Coastal Wetlands Grant Program, and by the Wildlife Conservation Board. The Western Rivers Conservancy will transfer the land to the California Department of Fish and Game to own and manage.

The Salt River-Eel River Delta is the fourth-largest estuary in California, although it has shrunk by about 60 percent since the 19th century, when diking, draining, and filling began. Steamships once plied the Salt River; now one can step across the channel. During the rainy season the river tends to flood, inundating farms and communities as well as 600 to 1,000 acres of pasture, dairy waste systems, and several sections of road. The Ferndale wastewater treatment facility has come close to flooding at times, and during high flows, sewage spills directly into the Salt River--and thus to the Eel estuary--are commonplace. In the 1980s the Humboldt County Resource Conservation District (RCD), with a grant from the Conservancy, explored ways to address the situation. At the time, the proposed approaches were deemed infeasible or too costly.

Revisiting the issue in 2003, the RCD began to develop the Salt River Enhancement Plan, which would restore some of the river's natural hydrologic functions by restoring wetlands, controlling streambank erosion, and related measures. When the owners of Riverside Ranch put it on the market in 2006, the RCD sought to include the property in its enhancement plan.

The ranch is in the flood plain between the Salt and Eel Rivers and can easily be restored to a mix of estuarine habitats. The restored wetlands will mitigate flood hazards and provide habitat for Aleutian cackling geese, migratory songbirds, and salmon and other fish that have historically inhabited the estuary. Areas not prone to flooding will be leased to local ranchers for grazing.

The Salt River originates in the Wildcat Mountains above Ferndale and joins the Eel River about a mile from the ocean. The Eel River estuary is 20 miles south of Eureka.