Defense of Place is honored to lend its voice to the Save Knowland Park Coalition campaign to halt a project by the Oakland (California) Zoo that would obliterate irreplaceable and rare native grassland, plants, and fragile wildlife habitats within the 500-acre park.

Using a bait and switch strategy to bypass provisions of a 1998 Master Plan – and in betrayal of the original State-mandated purpose of the parkland – the City of Oakland and the Zoo have proposed an expansion that will besiege 52 acres of Knowland Park. The ever-shifting plans now include a 34,000 square-foot building that tops a ridgeline; an aerial gondola with 30-foot towers; animal exhibits in simulated “natural” settings; and, a chain link fence around the development that would symbolize the end of the Park’s wild, natural and open space.

“The Zoo calls the development a conservation exhibit,” said Laura Baker of the Friends of Knowland Park, “but it’s a naked land grab that destroys top-quality habitat. The cruel irony is that the public has been duped about what it’s getting in the expansion. Once the theme park goes up, the public will have to pay to access to areas they can now enjoy for free.”

Coalition leader Ruth Malone adds: “In the 21st century, it just doesn’t pass the laugh test for a city to take its finest wildland park, pave it over, and call it conservation.”

The inflated building plans would result in a multi-story building in the heart of the Park that would be more an administrative facility (featuring incomparable views of San Francisco Bay) than the Zoo-described “interpretive center.”

After attempts to mediate on the project’s size and scope failed, the Friends of Knowland Park and the California Native Plant Society sued the Zoo and the city for violations of the California Environmental Quality Act and State Planning and Zoning Laws. Hearings continue in April on the issue in Alameda County Superior Court.

However, Zoo officials are not waiting for final adjudication. Instead, they have already marked their “territory” among native heritage oaks and rare stands of maritime chaparral by spray painting the trees slated for clear-cutting for the administration building and by placing stakes that mark the gondola’s towers and terminal.

Along with dismay over the unthinkable loss of Knowland Park’s unique natural resources, Defense of Place laments the Zoo’s flouting of the public trust principle which obligates institutions and municipalities to preserve and protect public lands.

Visit the Save Knowland Park web site for visual gifts of the Park’s beauty along with the history and current news on the fight to preserve the parkland.

Check out the January 26, 2012Marin IJ column by Huey D. Johnson on the subject of wilderness protection at Pt. Reyes. The ongoing conflict over the lease extension has helped focus attention on how “sound science” is used as a political tool, allowing our elected officials to avoid the tough decisions that will protect our natural heritage for generations.

The ‘Marin Voice’ column begins: “The Point Reyes oyster conflict has accomplished at least one result of positive national environmental importance: Related research by the University of California has exposed and could solve a disastrous hurdle for U.S. environmental legislation.

It is the practice of legislators’ corrupt use of science. The formula is to call an environmental project’s scientific work inferior, state that the public needs “good science,” and then do one or more scientific studies to review that which has already been done. Faking a need for a better research effort is nothing but a smoke screen to avert a vote and to provide time to manipulate legislation. The tactic has actually been used in Congress 900 times.”

The University of California Law Review Article described in the column can be found here

California’s State Parks Commission met on January 27 in Brentwood, CA, to “reconsider” its decision last fall to remove vital protections from Washoe Meadows State Park by reclassifying significant portions of parkland. Despite overwhelming public response opposing the move, the Commissioners had voted on October 21 to downgrade some 20 percent of Washoe Meadows in order to move 9 holes of the Lake Tahoe Golf Course into the parkland as part of the Upper Truckee River Restoration Project. Continue reading →