Beaconsfield: Saving a Canyon
Richard Kauffman was pretty worked up the first time I saw him. He was on television, being interviewed by the CBS 5 investigative reporter about the jungle of fire hazards growing below his house. Thick Algerian ivy vines snaked up trees. Himalayan blackberry, Italian thistle, and weedy grasses formed impenetrable, waist-high thickets. Cape ivy (Delairea odorata, formerly Senecio mikanioides) blanketed one entire hillside, hanging from trees like cobwebs. The property owner was the City of Oakland. The producer told me this open space was less than one mile from my home. Beaconsfield Canyon? I’d never heard of it.
Today, three years later, Beaconsfield looks entirely different. The invasive plants are disappearing, and tiny, colored flags on a steep hillside mark the native plants put in by volunteers. The black cottonwood (Populus balsamifera ssp. trichocarpa) saplings along the creek, and the ocean spray (Holodiscus discolor) and coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica) shrubs that used to grow in frustrated, low clumps are stretching out instead of being chopped to the ground every year along with the weeds. Beaconsfield is beautiful, and it is literally right in our backyards. From her deck, neighbor Beth Keer says, “I can see a much healthier ecosystem. Our house bird list is up to almost 60 different species! The weed population is much lower.”
The changes began, appropriately, on Earth Day 2007, when Richard Kauffman asked neighbors to help clean the canyon. They hauled out old tires, a washing machine, sheets of plywood, and tons of weeds. But the decision to have regular work parties solidified a larger commitment. Now, on the last Saturday of every month at 9:00 a.m., you’ll find Kauffman leading volunteers as they pull, cut, and weed wrench their way through the five-acre park. “All of a sudden, we’ve had this terrific response from volunteers,” says Kauffman. But even when just a few show up, he can see the progress. “It gives me the feeling this is taking root.”
One of the regulars is Karen Paulsell, of Friends of Sausal Creek, who, in a moment of abandon, agreed to help. She has since spent hours advising, mapping the creek and hillsides, documenting the existing flora, and drawing up lists of plants to request from the nursery run by Friends of Sausal Creek. With Karen’s help, Beaconsfield has become its northern outpost. The most exciting, she says, are the rare plants. “That big batch of trilliums! The black cottonwoods are really great, I love the sound when the breeze is blowing, and I love it when the leaves turn pale gold in the fall. And the red elderberry…”
The Oakland Fire Department now works in partnership with the neighborhood to protect the native plants as it mows down the invasive weeds. Beaconsfield has become its demonstration project to show what is possible when the city works hand in hand with citizens to simultaneously reduce fire hazards and restore a native habitat.
The Fire Department has even hired a professional botanist, Lech Naumovich, to advise its work crews. Naumovich was surprised by the diversity of the ecosystem. “You have oak woodland and grasslands on sunnier slopes, an intact black cottonwood riparian area…and the wetter upland site includes a fantastic assortment of north coastal scrub.”
Beth Keer, the former president of the board for Friends of the Regional Parks Botanic Garden, lives on the canyon and was already restoring her own backyard. But she and a local teacher gave Beaconsfield a whole new purpose when they turned it into a classroom. Last year for field trips, they began leading elementary students from the local grade school up the winding hill to the canyon. “Some of the kids had never been to a park that didn’t have playground equipment and turf grass. They were curious students of the ecology. The kids created native plant trading cards for use in identifying the trees and ferns. The most exciting field trips were when the fifth grade students did aquatic insect sampling in the creek.”
“Our long-term vision is for Beaconsfield Canyon to be a nature preserve,” says Kauffman. Everyone agrees they want to see the culvert out of the creek, though it’s not yet clear how that will happen. What is clear is the healing process is under way. “The native shrubs…they’ve just started recovering,” says Karen Pausell. “Ten years from now, they’ll be flowering and fruiting.”
“Having places like this near homes really helps people develop a respect for nature,” says Lech Naumovich. “It’s one thing to go and drive out to Yosemite. It’s another thing to come home from work and have an area as fantastic as this.”
When we think about the huge environmental issues like global warming, a five-acre restoration may seem small, but Kauffman explains the significance: “Here’s this little postage stamp. It’s nothing in the grand scale of things. It’s nothing. But it’s our little corner of nothing.” Taking ownership and responsibility is truly where environmental solutions begin, and in this neighborhood, it starts in Beaconsfield.