Join the Brower Center, Heyday Publisher Malcolm Margolin, National Wildlife Federation's Bett Pratt-Bergstrom, and Sea Forager's Kirk Lombard in exploring the nature of environmental change in the San Francisco Bay Area. The discussion will take an epochal view of conservation and preservation, beginning with the recognition that the San Francisco Bay Area is an ancient, dynamic, and constantly changing environment.
When the first humans settled here some 14,000 years ago, Columbia mammoths, camels, llamas, bison, dire wolves, and other animals of the late Pleistocene inhabited the plain that stretched westward from what is now San Francisco past the Farallon Islands. The creation of San Francisco Bay only 8,000 years ago brought with it the great flocks of geese and ducks and the run of Chinook salmon to the rivers and streams of the central valley. With Europeans came an era of extinctions, diminishment, and environmental degradation. At the same time hundreds of thousands of acres of land have been set aside as parks, preserves, and wildlife refuges; laws have been passed to protect species and whole environments; and animals once extinct in this area—tule elk, elephant seals, bald eagles, peregrine falcons, porpoises, and most recently a condor—have returned. To make things even more complicated, people’s attitudes toward wildlife have been changing and wildlife habits have likewise been evolving.
Malcolm Margolin worked with the artist Maya Lin on her memorial of environmental change, What is Missing?, part of the Brower Center's Art/Act: Maya Lin exhibition. On January 14, he will be joined by Pratt-Bergstrom and Lombard in a discussion of how the Bay Area is changing, how peoples’ attitudes are shifting, and how wildlife is adapting.
The hour-long program will be followed by a wine reception in the Hazel Wolf Gallery.
Free, $10 suggested donation
RSVP (510) 809-0900
7pm to 8pm, David Brower Center 2150 Allston Way
A tribute to the stories, music & life of Utah Phillips. $16 advance / $18 door. 644-2020. www.thefreight.org
8pm, Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, 2020 Addison Street
$13. 525-5054. www.ashkenaz.com
8pm, Ashkenaz Music & Dance Community Center, 1317 San Pablo Avenue