FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NOVEMBER 7, 2002
Claremont Canyon Conservancy Celebrates First Year's Accomplishments
The Claremont Canyon Conservancy is a newly formed non-profit organization dedicated to the long-term stewardship of Claremont Canyon, the largest relatively undeveloped watershed on the western slope of the Berkeley-Oakland hills.
It will celebrate its first year of significant activities at an open membership meeting at the Claremont Hotel, November 17, 4-6 pm.
The Conservancy evolved from a task force formed by the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association in January 2001. In November 2001, the Conservancy received a capacity-building grant of $27,000 from the Bureau of Land Management and the Community Based Wildfire Prevention Grant Program of the Sacramento Regional Foundation. The purpose of the grant was to develop an organization with a membership of 500 local residents and businesses with the resources to promote greater wildfire safety, better public access, and conservation of biological and aesthetic values in Claremont Canyon.
The Conservancy's first-year activities and fund-raising efforts are aimed at reducing risks of wildfires in the Canyon, opening a trail system for public enjoyment, and restoring/preserving native species.
After months of studying the history, ownership, ecology, and previous plans for Claremont Canyon, the Conservancy concluded that the area still poses a significant wildfire risk to hundreds, if not thousands, of homes in the nearby Oakland and Berkeley Hills.
The 510-acre Canyon has a colorful history, having once served as the route of the Pony Express, where the first telegraph lines were put over the East Bay Hills, and later as dairy and horse farms. Today, most of the undeveloped parts of the Canyon are nature preserves and ecological study areas that receive very limited management.
Thirty years ago, Berkeley and Oakland residents waged a hard-fought campaign to block residential development in the Canyon. This ultimately led to the acquisition of almost a third of the Canyon by the East Bay Regional Park District. Today, the Park District and the University of California own most of Claremont Canyon. Yet, the area also includes more than 200 private homes, a City of Oakland park, EBMUD watershed land, and at its base, the venerable Claremont Hotel and Claremont/Elmwood District in Berkeley. The Canyon itself is almost entirely within the Oakland city limits.
Plans for a network of Canyon trails - on the books for years - have been stymied by a lack of funding and access. Meanwhile, eleven years after the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, the risk of a catastrophic wildfire in the Canyon has increased. Fire-prone weeds and roadside trash have continued to accumulate on the Canyon slopes and through-roads, and maintenance programs have been inadequate, although the Oakland Fire Department and the Hills Emergency Forum have spent much time this year studying the Canyon.
"We need new pressures and new resources to deal with Claremont Canyon. We cannot let institutional indifference leave the Canyon in a condition that is likely to result in unfightable fires that will both destroy neighborhoods and wipe out the nature preserves," says Conservancy President Tim Wallace.
"There is much that we residents can do to encourage stewardship in cooperation with the major landowners in a long-term effort to preserve this beautiful and important Canyon," observes Bill McClung, Vice-President.
The Claremont Canyon Task Force issued a Summary of Findings in August 2001, and a 2002 Wildfire Hazard Assessment in August, concluding that "time is of the essence" in respect to vegetation management, and calling agencies and area residents to action.
The Conservancy has many projects underway in the Canyon and has a website (claremontcanyonconservancy.org), which provides additional information and pictures.
For more information about the Claremont Canyon Conservancy, please contact Tim Wallace at 548-7647, or Bill McClung at 841-8447, or at 649-1485, or Joe Engbeck at 841-0339.
WHY WE NEED A CLAREMONT CANYON CONSERVANCY
1. The problems and opportunities in Claremont Canyon are large-scale. The kinds of projects the Claremont Canyon Task Force discussed during the first nine months of study during 2001 will cost at least $5 million to implement over the next ten years.
2. The wildfire fuel loads and configurations in many parts of the Canyon are in urgent need of modification.
3. Almost 30 years have passed since the 1973 CENA-supported report that proposed Claremont Canyon Park be created within the Regional Park System. Ideas within that excellent report such as a UC Berkeley/EBRPD Nature Interpretive Center at Gelston House and establishment of a trail system in the Canyon were well-received, even approved within the University and Park District, and yet remain only on the drawing boards three decades later.
4. There do not seem to be people or structures within the University or Park District that have a sustained interest in Claremont Canyon.
5. There is no effective structure within which citizens, homeowners, or even fire chiefs can speak about the problems of Claremont Canyon and get anything more than episodic or token responses from the major landowners. In response to the question "who is responsible for Claremont Canyon?" it is at present impossible to find an answer.
6. The some 3,000 homeowners near and potentially destroyed by a fire in Claremont Canyon are, like the Claremont-Elmwood Neighborhood Association, potentially the basis for a long-term commitment to managing the Canyon.
7. This is not an effort that can be sustained only by volunteerism, desirable as it is, or by the short-lived attention to issues that characterize most neighborhood associations.
A CLAREMONT CANYON CONSERVANCY needs to be a structure that can last for many decades, raise and continue to raise money to support and professionalize work that would be accomplished with and by the legal landowners in the Canyon, and bring in addition to money legal, moral, and intellectual capabilities to what is and will remain a large and complex community project.
