Team Oakland working on water quality testing and benthic macroinvertebrate identification, at the Montclair Golf Course. Here, Cobbledick Creek meets Palo Seco Creek and becomes Sausal Creek.
Photo by Elizabeth Boegel.
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Friends of Sausal Creek is a volunteer-based, community organization. We appreciate your support of our education, monitoring, and restoration programs in the Sausal Creek Watershed. |
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Explore the Watershed
Go Climatarian!
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With climate change at the forefront of our minds this hot, dry summer, we are searching for more ways to make a positive impact on the climate at a personal level.
FOSC volunteers Jess Beebe (top) and Gwen Rino (bottom) co-authored this article, Go Climatarian!, which was featured in the May issue of Medium. With permission from the authors, we reprint that article here.
Three Ways to Shrink Your Foodprint
If you're privileged enough to have many choices about food, you already face what Michael Pollan calls the omnivore's dilemma. Humans can digest everything from abalone to zwieback, so we are continually asking ourselves What should I eat?
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Kudos Corner
Team Oakland
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Thank you to the youth of Team Oakland, who helped us remove invasive plants, pick up trash at several sites in the watershed, and worked in the nursery. Coming out once a week, Team Oakland also learned about rainbow trout in the creek, took a long hike from Fern Ravine to Dimond Park, tested water quality, and learned about macroinvertebrates. We appreciate your efforts in the watershed!
Team Oakland is a City of Oakland sponsored summer employment program for Oakland youth between the ages of 15 and 24. Young people in the program gain practical job experience while learning about various community topics. To learn more, please visit the Youth Employment Program website here.
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Friend of the Month
Michael Thilgen
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On this 25th--year anniversary of the Friends of Sausal Creek, we want to spotlight the stories of some of the founding members and their vision for the future of the watershed.
Michael Thilgen, co-owner of Four Dimensions Landscape Company, lives in the Sausal Creek Watershed and has a deep love for the area.
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In the early 1990s, he and Kathy Kramer met as members of the East Bay Citizens for Creek Restoration, where they worked on educational outreach and small creek restoration projects in the area. Kathy then initiated a new group focused on the Sausal Creek Watershed, which Michael said yielded an “extraordinary team of motivated neighbors.”
Michael emphasized that the young group, serendipitously, had the right mix of skillsets; teachers, social workers, wildlife biologists, ecologists, landscape designers, administrators, and an attorney came together with a shared passion for the watershed. He feels that this diversity of skills, along with a fervent desire to improve the quality of life in our watershed, was essential in developing the organization during those first few years.
Early FOSC efforts included increasing public awareness of the watershed, showing how our personal activities affect its health, and engaging in hands-on restoration work. The new group found the watershed to be significantly degraded, so everyone got to work. The teachers adjusted their lesson plans to include the creek, and started to bring groups of students there on field trips; the biologists studied water quality, hydrology, and aquatic habitat improvement; Michael and other landscape gardeners focused on the first restoration project, where the goal was to show the community how an ecologically appropriate landscape might look.
Michael says, “an active and healthy relationship between neighbors and with city and county government grew, and in the process, we nurtured our young community.” Funding from the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda provided vital support, and the Friends went on to participate in a series of projects, including restoration efforts in Dimond Canyon and the native plant nursery in Joaquin Miller Park. The Dimond Park Demonstration Garden continues to showcase native plants, and over two decades later, it is still stewarded by Michael and other FOSC volunteers. Michael also helped design the native planting in the daylighted section of Sausal Creek in Dimond Park, and he continues to consult with FOSC and the City of Oakland on future maintenance activities.
Michael feels a deep sense of place and connection to the watershed, which is a feeling he hopes the entire community can experience. He reiterated that “our personal actions can have an effect on the health of the watershed,” and that what we do in our own gardens can improve the wellbeing of the creek and its surroundings. Eliminating pesticides and chemical fertilizers and focusing on gardening with native plants (which need less of these inputs and, as a bonus, less irrigation) can really make a difference.
Michael is proud that the group continues to work to restore the health of the watershed, and to educate the public, especially the youth in the community. In closing, Michael shared a story of a child who had planted seedlings while on a field trip to Dimond Park with his elementary school class and later came back to visit as a high school student, telling Michael that he planned to pursue a career in the environmental field. Michael said that FOSC has “helped raise a generation of environmental activists,” and it is this that makes him most proud.
To learn more about Michael’s landscaping business, which focuses on bringing people and nature together, visit the Four Dimensions Landscape Company website here.
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Upcoming Volunteer Events
Pollinator Garden Workday
Sunday, August 1 and 15, at 9:00 a.m.
Bridgeview Trailhead
Marj Saunders Park Monthly Cleanup
Monday, August 2, at 11:00 a.m.
Marjorie Saunders Park, Oakland
Native Plant Nursery Volunteer Drop-In Hours
Wednesdays in August, 1:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Nursery
Board of Directors Meeting
Wednesday, August 11, 7:00 p.m.- 9:00 p.m.
Park Blvd. Presbyterian Church
Native Plant Nursery Workday
Saturday, August 14 and 28, 1:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Friends of Sausal Creek Native Plant Nursery
Oak Tree Rescue
Sunday, August 8 and 22, at 9:00 a.m.
Bridgeview Pollinator Garden
Trail Stewardship Crew
Sunday, August 22, 10:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Bridgeview Trailhead (off Bridgeview Drive)
Beaconsfield Canyon Restoration Workday
Saturday, August 28, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
2639 Beaconsfield Place
Monterey Redwoods Restoration Workday
Saturday, August 28, 9:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Bridgeview Trailhead (at Monterey Blvd)
Creek Clean Up
Saturday, August 28, 10:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Dimond Park Historical Scout Hut
We need volunteers in the watershed now more than ever! Join us for one of our many workdays this August.
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Our mission is to restore, maintain, and protect the Sausal Creek Watershed. We educate future generations, involve the community in local environmental stewardship, and collaborate with agencies and other nonprofits to have a positive impact on the local ecosystem. |
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Amazon Smile purchases donate 0.5% to FOSC --
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Contact:
Anna Marie Schmidt
Executive Director
510-501-3672
Jay Cassianni
Restoration and Nursery Manager
510-325-9006
Satoko Mills
Restoration and Stewardship Intern
Elizabeth Boegel
Communications and Community Education Intern
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Photo Credits: Jess Beebe,Gwen Rino, Elizabeth Boegel, Michael Thilgen, Elizabeth Boegel
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