{"id":91189,"date":"2025-12-12T03:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T03:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/91189\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T03:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T03:48:07","slug":"native-plants-and-critters-at-san-franciscos-presidio-get-a-new-corridor-toward-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/91189\/","title":{"rendered":"Native plants and critters at San Francisco&#8217;s Presidio get a new corridor toward the future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Volunteers have reached another milestone in their effort to re-establish native plants and animal species at the <a href=\"https:\/\/presidio.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Presidio of San Francisco<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>On an early, chilly morning last weekend, about 100 volunteers and staff gathered at the Presidio&#8217;s Sunset Scrub, a major habitat restoration project near the park&#8217;s World War II Memorial on Lincoln Boulevard. Along a slope below <a href=\"https:\/\/presidio.gov\/explore\/attractions\/immigrant-point-overlook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Immigrant Point Overlook<\/a>, they pulled out gardening tools and got to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the crowd was volunteer Xavier Maximus Clark, who was smoothing out soil around a fern that he just put in the ground.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re planting this. You&#8217;re planting seed. They are going to be here for decades,&#8221; Clark enthused. &#8220;Like you can come back 30, 40 years and know that you helped build this.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The plantings at Sunset Scrub are the latest in a series of dune restoration projects shepherded by the <a href=\"https:\/\/presidio.gov\/about\/presidio-trust\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Presidio Trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, we&#8217;re planting about 2,000 native plants today, including things like coastal buckwheat, dune tansy, lizard tail,&#8221; said Kristin Jones, project manager for the Trust&#8217;s Ecological Horticulture.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s good for the Presidio, good for the environment, and makes it a nicer place to be,&#8221; added volunteer Anthony Tate.<\/p>\n<p>All the plantings are part of a larger effort at the Presidio to restore native ecosystems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since the mid-90s, the Presidio has been restoring piece by piece small parcels of the former dunescape that covered much of San Francisco,&#8221; explained Lew Stringer, associate director of natural resources at the Presidio Trust. &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This habitat will help rare and endangered species like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nps.gov\/prsf\/learn\/nature\/san-francisco-lessingia.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">San Francisco lessingia<\/a> and spine flowers thrive.<\/p>\n<p>Not only that, thanks to this restoration, the Sunset Scrub area can now connect with the <a href=\"https:\/\/sfnhs.com\/2012\/07\/09\/dunes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">north dunes<\/a>, which underwent restoration last year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It allows for a continuous corridor of habitat to be able to move through the area between Washington and Lincoln boulevard[s],&#8221; Jones said.   <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Native plants are also very great for our soil,&#8221; said volunteer Emma Chan. &#8220;They&#8217;re great for our carbon sequestration, and they&#8217;re really great for pollinators, which we obviously need to keep our food supply up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As for why Clark would get up so early on a Saturday?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just to be out in nature, if you look around, it&#8217;s a nice view,&#8221; Clark said. &#8216;The ocean&#8217;s out there. It&#8217;s healing in a way. You know, we heal the planet, we heal ourselves.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n        More from CBS News\n      <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Volunteers have reached another milestone in their effort to re-establish native plants and animal species at the Presidio&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[33216,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-91189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-project-earth","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}