Native plants and critters at San Francisco’s Presidio get a new corridor toward the future
By Molly McCrea
Volunteers have reached another milestone in their effort to re-establish native plants and animal species at the Presidio of San Francisco.
On an early, chilly morning last weekend, about 100 volunteers and staff gathered at the Presidio’s Sunset Scrub, a major habitat restoration project near the park’s World War II Memorial on Lincoln Boulevard. Along a slope below Immigrant Point Overlook, they pulled out gardening tools and got to work.
In the crowd was volunteer Xavier Maximus Clark, who was smoothing out soil around a fern that he just put in the ground.
“You’re planting this. You’re planting seed. They are going to be here for decades,” Clark enthused. “Like you can come back 30, 40 years and know that you helped build this.”
The plantings at Sunset Scrub are the latest in a series of dune restoration projects shepherded by the Presidio Trust.
“So, we’re planting about 2,000 native plants today, including things like coastal buckwheat, dune tansy, lizard tail,” said Kristin Jones, project manager for the Trust’s Ecological Horticulture.
“It’s good for the Presidio, good for the environment, and makes it a nicer place to be,” added volunteer Anthony Tate.
All the plantings are part of a larger effort at the Presidio to restore native ecosystems.
“Since the mid-90s, the Presidio has been restoring piece by piece small parcels of the former dunescape that covered much of San Francisco,” explained Lew Stringer, associate director of natural resources at the Presidio Trust. “In addition to just bringing back these native plants that were once here, those plants support a web of life. They support insect life. That insect life supports bird life, and lizards and all sorts of animals up the food chain.”
This habitat will help rare and endangered species like the San Francisco lessingia and spine flowers thrive.
Not only that, thanks to this restoration, the Sunset Scrub area can now connect with the north dunes, which underwent restoration last year.
“It allows for a continuous corridor of habitat to be able to move through the area between Washington and Lincoln boulevard[s],” Jones said.
“Native plants are also very great for our soil,” said volunteer Emma Chan. “They’re great for our carbon sequestration, and they’re really great for pollinators, which we obviously need to keep our food supply up.”
As for why Clark would get up so early on a Saturday?
“Just to be out in nature, if you look around, it’s a nice view,” Clark said. ‘The ocean’s out there. It’s healing in a way. You know, we heal the planet, we heal ourselves.”
