A Conversation with Shelley on Shoreline's Restoration Project

Jun 4

Conversation with ecologist Shelley Pneh about Grassroots Ecology’s habitat restoration site at Shoreline at Mountain View.

Hi Shelley! How’s it going?

I'm outside getting poked by Gooseberry at the moment.

Getting poked by Gooseberry?

Yeah, I have a little corner plot of my garden where I have a beach chair. So I just sit in the shade and look at plants.

That's so nice. You have a native garden, I'm guessing?

It's mostly native, not all native.

I wanted to ask you some questions about the Mountain View site. First of all, how has it been going at the restoration site?

We started planting! I believe we had planting all done in January through March.

The timeline for me is a little bit jumbled because I know there has been restoration work done there before, but then you became the project lead of Shoreline kind of recently?

I think what you're referring to is the Permanente Creek restoration site. It is also at Shoreline. That was probably completed back in 2018. Then between 2018 and now we didn't do anything and we completely left the site. Junko and Alex were busy writing grants to continue our work there. Then, Phil Higgins, Wildlife Biologist with the City of Mountain View, has been really supportive of our work and has been supporting us in trying to get us to do more restoration work throughout the park as well.

What month was it when you became project lead there?

I believe we heard approval that our grant had been approved way back in the beginning of 2023. Then the contract was signed in October. I was technically the project lead starting in 2023, but the first days on site were late November 2023.

How has it been going now?

It's been going well. We typically have monthly volunteer weekend workdays and they receive a lot of reception. A lot of people come and we're out on a capped landfill by this marshy area, restoring the upland transitional zone. We are restoring it with native rhizomatous and shrubby plants like marsh goldenrod (Euthamnia occidentalis), gumplants (Grindelia stricta), and mugwort (Artemesia douglasiana) that are salt tolerant and will hopefully be able outcompete the nonnative vegetation, bush out and provide coverage for our small endemic endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, so that they can have shelter when king tides come and flood out the marsh. They'll have a little bit of an area where they can hide from the bird predators instead of all running up and getting picked off by birds because they're completely exposed.

But the restoration is not just for the harvest mouse, right?

Not only for the harvest mouse, but there is also a lot of habitat benefit to the smaller songbirds like the SF yellow throat, towhees, and mockingbirds. Not to mention the added flowers we plant for local pollinators as well.

Do you see songbirds at Shoreline often?

Yeah, we saw them on our BioBlitz last Saturday. So they're out there. They were not at our restoration area, but they were around, so increasing their habitat is one of our goals.

How was the BioBlitz?

It was a real treat. Merav was there. She runs the Bioblitz.Club and hosts Bioblitzes throughout the entire South Bay. I also kind of want to say East Bay as well because she's also doing Bioblitzes up in Fremont. Basically wherever landowner slash land agencies allow her to go and take a few iNaturalist or BioBlitz citizen scientists with her, which I think is really cool. So she was out there with us and then Phil was out there with us too. We were all taking photos of the different things that we saw. So, plants, animals, insects, birds, bugs, and basically anything that we could see that we could capture on our cameras.

(Take a look at what we found on the bioblitz here: www.inaturalist.org/projects/shoreline-2024-cnc-bioblitz!)

Any cool finds?

Oh so what was super exciting was that we found a racer, which is a species of snake. Phil Higgins informed me that it is only the third recorded instance of a racer in Shoreline for the past 14 years.

No way.

I think because no one is really out there looking for these snakes or no one is really out there doing a BioBlitz. It was super fun to see. We hosted around 20 people that day and we found a rare, rare-ish species of snake that is endemic and that no one has really seen at Shoreline for a while.

Who spotted it? Did anyone freak out or what?

One of the volunteers spotted the racer. She was a teacher. She took a picture but they slither away fast. It was really blurry, but you could see the beady eyes.

Did anyone bring a professional camera or people brought their phones to document so they could upload it to iNaturalist?

It was mainly phones. The people who came were more on the younger end, so high schoolers. We had a few California Naturalist alumni that were there. Merav had her own camera. I also brought a professional camera, but honestly, I was too busy doing crowd engagement. One of the sad things of hosting a BioBlitz is that I'm showing all these people all these cool things to take photos of but I myself don't have the opportunity to take the photos.

Oh, well maybe a staff BioBlitz one time? Or, I guess you can do it on your own too.

Yeah. But it's more fun with friends.

Yeah, that's true. I hear the birds in your garden.

Oh yeah. Northern Mockingbird.

What do you think is special about the Mountain View site in comparison to other sites you have worked on?

Ooh. What is special? It's kind of like Cooley Landing where it is on top of a former landfill. Literally our restoration site is on top of a landfill. So seeing this place and our intent to transform the landscape is special. We’re helping wildlife inhabit this area again. And seeing even just the resiliency of our California landscapes. Even though decades ago this land was a landfill, there are still endemic endangered species that utilize the area and call it home. And then us being there to plant more plants for the birds or more plants for the mice is special.

But for people too, right? How do you think humans are, I mean, not everything has to be beneficial for humans, but, how do you think the restoration is going to affect people's relationship with Shoreline?

Yeah, great question. So this site does get a lot of human traffic. It’s the Bay Trail. People use this trail for commuting by bike or even to train to run for a marathon, so we get a lot of passersby who slow down to ask what we’re doing. There are many signs around us that say, ‘Please Do Not Enter Sensitive Habitat,’ but they see us young folks being there sheet mulching and planting. So it’s a new thing for the people who regularly visit. But to actually have an opportunity where you can participate in making the land better, I think is really special and what Grassroots Ecology provides to the space.

What I’m also hearing is that it's almost functioning as education for the regulars, so some may not be familiar with the fact that this was a landfill or that there is habitat restoration happening. Maybe don’t even know the term habitat restoration.

That’s exactly right.

And you said you see marathoners?

Yeah. There are usually people that are training or running because it's the Bay Trail. So the Bay Trail is paved trails that connect throughout the Bay Area, so people go out there to do endurance running. Sometimes there are charity runs that operate out of Shoreline as well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that people primarily know Shoreline at Mountain View as a place for pure recreation. There's a really cute lake where you can rent paddle boards. There's a restaurant where you can host events, wedding receptions, and even a golf course. So it's very geared for outdoor human recreation. But there are not that many people who know about the endangered species of wildlife that are literally like a thousand feet away from them as they golf or paddleboard through the lake, you know?

Yeah. I mean, I had no awareness of that and I grew up going to the movie theater there all the time. Like from when I was a kid to a teenager going to the amphitheater to see shows and I had no idea that there were any endangered anything. I didn't even know about the landfills there. So how can people either get involved or interact with the space even more?

Just come visit - there is a lot to see.

Is the long-term vision with Shoreline about having people interact with nature more and there being a science education component or some bit of nature interpretation involved?

Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping and I think it’s about building awareness too. Bringing people to the space to learn about it in a new way. Or, when I think about sharing space with volunteers or building something more interpretive to bring regular passerby into this space to learn about the ecosystem and the wildlife and the endangered species that are there. But there's another side of it too where we are wondering if this site should be minimally acknowledged, so we do the habitat restoration work, and not attract more attention to it because it might lead to poaching or more habitat degradation. At the same time, it would be nice for people to enjoy the space up close. For example, I like nature experiences where I can get close and touch things or I want to get close to a flower and see who's pollinating it. Things like that.

So I guess that's one of the challenges of that site right now?

We've already ironed out a lot of challenges. For example, holding weekend workdays was a little bit of a challenge because there are wedding receptions and charity races that were happening, so we had to dance around and reschedule. Oh, my mother is waving at me. Oh, I need to move my car.

Oh no, this is great. Go move the car! I always really enjoy talking to you and learn so much. Bye Shelley.

Have a good day.

You too. Thank you.

See ya.