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Monarch Head Start: Rescuing the Western Monarch Migration
California’s Western Monarch Migration utterly collapsed in 2021 and is facing imminent elimination. Here is an article regarding Stu and Dan Gluesenkamp’s effort to coordinate a desperate rescue operation that may help Western monarchs recover to some extent from the 99+% decline that they’ve suffered since the 1980s. Time is of the essence because, as…
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Bringing the Bay Checkerspot Back to San Bruno Mountain
. Bay checkerspot butterflies were once much more widespread throughout the SF Bay Area. Many factors, including loss of habitat and host plants (Plantago erecta), have contributed to the local extirpation of the species in many sites. Coyote Ridge is the exception, where a large, healthy population can still be found. This spring, Creekside Science…
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San Francisco Presidio Restoration Monitoring
Like many military bases, the Presidio of San Francisco had a truly mixed bag of environmental effects on its land when it was an active military base. Military bases often preserve land from development, which is great, but also tend to contaminate soils, and bring in invasive plants both actively and passively. Since the decommissioning…
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Creekside Science Tackles Monarch Butterfly Overwintering Habitat Across California
The Western monarch butterfly population that overwinters in California is in a state of collapse from a panoply of causes, including pesticide use, climate change, land use-change, and deterioration of the overwintering sites along the coast. Stu has been working with overwintering monarchs since 1990, using hemispherical (fisheye) photography to quantify canopy structure and map…
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A Butterfly’s World: A Video by Kirra Swenerton of Root Wisdom
Kirra Swenerton highlighted the Bay checkerspot butterfly’s return to San Bruno Mountain in a video featuring a number of the butterfly’s life stages. Creekside Science is proud of the success of this project so far, and is looking forward to continued collaboration with Kirra and all other invested partners.
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San Bruno Mountain Lupine Seeding Year 2
In 2018 Creekside Science was awarded a Disney Butterfly Conservation Initiative grant for work with the federally endangered Mission blue butterfly (MBB). This grant covers work with MBB habitat, with a focus on restoration of the butterfly’s host lupine species. In December 2019 Creekside Science staff and Kirra Swenerton (of Root Wisdom) installed 10 blocks…
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Think Big, Connect More
In November 2019, more than 125 members of the conservation community gathered at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for the official launch of the Bay Area Conservation Lands Network 2.0 Science Expansion. CLN 2.0 inventories, synthesizes, and projects forward the impressive collective efforts that have made the Bay Area a world leader in conservation,…
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Creekside Science Senior Biologist Christal Niederer Featured By California Department of Fish and Wildlife
Christal Niederer was featured in a CNDDB Contributor Spotlight article this month that provides some background on how Christal became a vital member of Creekside Science as well as some information on some of our current projects. According to the CDFW, “the goal of the CNDDB is to provide the most current information available on…
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2018 San Mateo Thornmint Update
This has been an amazing year for San Mateo thornmint recovery. Creekside Science seeded a new location away from Edgewood Preserve this year, and had a strong showing with all plots occupied and 17% survivorship. We also seeded our three newer sites at Edgewood (for the third year), but for the first time did not seed the…
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Metcalf Canyon Jewelflower on Tulare Hill
Federally endangered Metcalf Canyon jewelflower continues to passively recruit after three years of active seeding on Tulare Hill in San Jose. In 2017 we documented a total of 412 plants at our plots, which increased to 1,312 in 2018. An exciting find was an additional dozen reproductive plants more than 200 meters from our nearest…