Greetings Sign Hill Stewards,

I hope that this new year has brought you all a feeling of renewal just as the wet season’s first rainfall has rinsed the dust from plants’ leaves and started the unfurling of seedlings across Sign Hill. Winter welcomes several winged travelers such as cedar waxwings, ruby-crowned kinglets, and fox sparrows as they make their journey along the Pacific Flyway. Meanwhile, many of Sign Hill’s year-long residents such as coyotes, brush rabbits, and great-horned owls are in the midst of their courtships. Of course, the wet weather also gives rise to a wide variety of fungi growing from woody debris and wet soil across the park. 

All this wildlife activity is a great reason to brave the cool weather and take a trek on Sign Hill, and it is a perfect time to volunteer! Many invasive annual plants start to pop up in winter and it is an ideal time to pluck them out while they are still small. 

Many of you have surely noticed that Sign Hill Stewards has not been meeting for the last few months. I am excited to announce the very special reason for this temporary hiatus. I have been in the process of welcoming our newest and all-time youngest Sign Hill Steward to the team, my newborn son George. I look forward to introducing him to the great outdoors and lots of friendly faces as we resume our work days in March!

Candace LaCroix

Natural Resource Specialist

Leading the Sign Hill Habitat Restoration Project

After a brief hiatus, Sign Hill Stewards workdays will resume in March with with a newly revised schedule. You will now have even more opportunities to volunteer with workdays every week!

Sign Hill Stewards will now be meeting every other Monday and Saturday from 9am-12pm.

We hope that adding Mondays to the schedule will be a better fit for many volunteers, and adding more Saturdays will encourage more students and families to get involved!

Mark your calendars for our first workday of 2025 on March 15th!

The Parks Division intern through Youth Summer Internship Program (YSIP), Sergio Santoyo, assisted with mission blue butterfly egg surveys as well as grassland management on Sign Hill. It is exciting to see young folks getting involved in environmental stewardship!

By summer many of Sign Hill's invasive plants are beginning to set seed, and it is our last chance to remove them before they have a chance to disperse. Sign Hill Stewards dedicated much of our efforts to controlling the spread of common invasive plants such as shortpod mustard (Hirschfeldia incana) and sweet fennel (Foeniculum vulgare). We also tackled a newly emerging invasion of bull thistle (Cirsium vulgare) hoping to stop it's spread before it can take hold.

In the picture below our volunteers work at the border of City-owned and privately owned parcels. You can see on the privately-owned parcels a heavy infestation of short pod mustard. The swaths of yellow make it easy to see the invasive nature of this plant. Invasive plants like these are a serious threat to biodiversity because they outcompete and displace native plants.

We work every year to keep it at bay, and we have made great strides to combat similarly widespread infestations on City-owned properties using carefully-timed annual mowing with the Green Climber.

Generally only our most seasoned volunteers will brave slopes like this!

Check out Mauricio, a volunteer of nearly 3 years and 100+ service hours, defying gravity to get each and every fennel stalk.

Later in the summer as most of the remaining invasive plants' seeds have already set, we shift our focus to other projects like combating reforestation where we have previously removed trees. This includes pulling young saplings, cutting back tree stump suckers, and covering stumps with landscape fabric tarps to prevent regrowth. We also removed some of the tarps from stumps that had been covered for over a year, plenty of time to kill them completely.

This stump is good and dead!

The vast majority of tree stumps treated with these landscape fabric tarps are successfully killed. They consist primarily of blue gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) and black acacia (Acacia melanoxylon) trees. However, we have observed that red gum eucalyptus (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) show more resistance to the treatment and some regrowth has been able to push through or grow around the tarps. This is what an unsuccessful treatment looks like. You can see that the regrowth is stunted, but being kept alive by the branches that manage to escape and photosynthesize.

It was somewhat surprising that the red gum eucalyptus trees, which regrow far less vigorously than their blue gum eucalyptus counterparts, were able to evade the tarp treatments more effectively. It may be that their slow and steady approach helps them to navigate a path out while the blue gums use up all of their energy more quickly and exhaust themselves before they can escape.

These volunteers are performing some repairs by removing the regrowth and patching holes in the tarps. Hopefully with a little more time these stumps will die.

Another important part of grassland management is countering scrub encroachment. California's ecosystems are not stagnant, they are dynamic, gradually changing from one plant community to another. Grasslands are the early successional plant communities that follow natural disturbances such as fires or floods, but without periodic fires or large grazing animals, they slowly become shrublands, and eventually woodlands and forests.

Urban expansion and sprawling agricultural developments have made grasslands one of the most scarce ecosystems in California. They require minimal clearing and have rich soils which make them ideal for building and planting on. Today only about 1% of California's native grasslands remain, and more endangered species in California rely on grasslands than any other ecosystem. We no longer have vast open spaces where grasslands can form and shift in the wake of natural disturbances, so it is our duty to help maintain them where they still exist.

Sign Hill Stewards help keep scrub encroachment at bay by pulling young coyote bush and thinning out older plants. We then use these branches to cover social trails to encourage park visitors to stay on designated trails. This is a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

Thanks to all the volunteers who have put their time and energy into protecting Sign Hill's grasslands. Cannot wait until we are at it again soon!

As many of you likely noticed, Sign Hill Stewards has not been meeting over the last few months. The reason for this hiatus is very exciting for me personally. I have been welcoming my firstborn baby to the world, George River Weinik.

Baby George got in plenty of work-hours on Sign Hill while in utero and was already donning his honorary SSF Parks Staff uniform at only 2 weeks old. At this rate this little guy might be identifying plants before he can talk.

My partner, Josh, will be bringing George along to some of our workdays. We hope him attending will be a nice little reminder that Sign Hill Stewards is a family-friendly event open to all ages, as long as children under 16 are accompanied by a parent or guardian.

Josh and I cannot wait to introduce George to the beautiful wild nature of Sign Hill the amazing volunteers working to protect it. We'll see you in March!

Amaryllis belladona, commonly known as naked ladies, bloom in a broad patch on the southern slope of Sign Hill. These flowers are a common sight around the Bay Area from gardens to disturbed areas. Their leaves grow in dense clusters in spring which die back before solitary stems topped with bright pink blooms arise in late summer. These unique flowers are native to South Africa, but are not considered invasive in California.

While their bulbs can spread quickly, and they are long lived (up to 75 years!), they have become so widespread due to their ornamental value. These blooms on Sign Hill are likely the result of local residents attempting to beautify the park. Planting in wildlands can cause irreversible harm by introducing foreign fungi and pathogens, so it is strongly discouraged. Still, we leave these alone since we have plenty of invasive plants to contend with!

On Saturday, July 6, San Francisco-based Sculpture Artist, Gabriel Garza, hosted a hike on Sign Hill exploring the unique history of the Hillside Sign and it's cultural impact. SSF Parks Natural Resource Specialist, Candace LaCroix, also guided guests though Sign Hill's wildlife habitats and provided education about efforts to support the endangered mission blue and callippe silverspot butterflies.

We had a great turn-out. What a fun opportunity to welcome some new faces to Sign Hill and celebrate art in nature!

Carol, a South City resident that lives at the foot of Sign Hill submitted these stunning photos of a two-tailed swallowtail (Papilio multicaudata) sipping nectar in her backyard garden.

These eye-catching butterflies are not a common sight on Sign Hill, so it was an exciting observation.

Planting nectar flowers , especially native varieties, is a great way to support local pollinators and invite pretty butterflies like this one to visit your garden!

Mauricio, who is a regular Sign Hill Steward volunteer and very familiar with the park's resident butterflies, was on a walk in South City when he noticed a sweet fennel plant covered with nearly a dozen anise swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon) caterpillars right next to a busy roadway.

He kindly took the time to carefully transport the caterpillars to Sign Hill where they could find respite from the chaos and pollution of the roadway and finish their lifecycle in a more natural environment. There is plenty of sweet fennel for them on Sign Hill, a pesky invasive that these butterflies happen to love.

This is an adult anise swallowtail, they are one of the most common butterflies on Sign Hill.

A big thanks to Mauricio and Carol for being local butterfly heroes!

June 24, 2024

An anise swallowtail caterpillar munches on sweet fennel.

A western harvest mouse clears the way for the green climber.

June 25, 2024

A fledgling California towhee is spotted nestled below the tall thistles by the SFCC while mowing the fire break. They made sure to give the little fellow plenty of space.

July 5, 2024

Variable checkerspot (Euphydryas chalcedona) larvae clustered in the silk nest they have spun on California bee plant (Scophularia callifornica) for protection. They will munch away on leaves until it is time to drop down and find a place to hide and enter diapause through the winter.

July 31, 2024

A garden snail slinks across the Sign Hill placard.

August 2, 2024

A perfectly camouflaged praying mantis makes its way through the dry thatch. Can you spot it?

When: Every other Monday and Saturday from 9am-12pm. Only cancelled for heavy rains.

Where: Volunteers will park at the Sign Hill Parking Lot nearby 964 Ridgeview Ct, South San Francisco, CA and hike with staff to the restoration site.

Registration: Registration is required. Volunteers under the age of 18 must have a youth waiver signed by a parent/guardian. Youth under the age of 16 are welcome and must be accompanied by an adult. Click the link below to RSVP.

What to bring: To prepare for working outdoors, please bring work gloves, plenty of water, sturdy shoes, long pants and long sleeves, a hat/sunscreen, and a completed waiver for each volunteer. Volunteers should expect some hiking on steep terrain.